Save Our Environment, save the world

Complex Ecosystmes

2011-10-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

The World Bank estimates that over 1.6 billion people depend on forests for thier livelihood and the worth of forest products traded in internationally in 2004 was estimated at US$327bil.

Forests are complex ecosystems that give us:

Products: Food, freshwater, fuel, fibre, biochemicals and genetic resources.

Regulating services: Climate regulation, disease regulation, water purification and pollination.

Cultural services: spiritual and religious, recreation and ecotourism, aesthetics, inspiration, educational and cultural heritage.

Supporting services: Soil formation, nutrient cycling and primary production.

The United Nations estimates that about 1,300sqkm of forests are lost globally every year due to conversion to agricultural land, unusustainable timber harvesting, unsustainable land management practices and poor land use planning.

According to the State of the worls'd Forest 2011 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, forests cover just over four billion ha or 31% of earth's land area. Of these, primary forests (Undisturbed native natural forests) make up for 36% but have reportedly decreaed by more than 40 million ha in the past decade. In contrast, planted forests have grown in size and now accounts for close to 7% of total forested areas.

How Malaysian manage their Forest

2011-10-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

This article will show how malaysia people manage their forest in the country.

How Malaysia Forest Are Managed

Tips to save petrol

2011-10-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

1. Pump Petrol In The Morning

When the ground temperature is still cold. The reason is the colder the ground is, the more dense the petrol is! When the ground gets warmer " petrol expands,so buying in the afternoon or in the evening returns lesser litre you ore buying.

2 Fill up when your tank is half full

The more fuel you hove in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. petrol evaporates faster than you con imagine. Petroleum storage tanks have on internal floating root. This roof serves as zero clearance between the petrol and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation.

3. Don not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode when you are filling up petrol

In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapours that are created while you ore pumping. ,

All hoses at thepump hove o vapour return. If you ore pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapour. ,

Those vapours ore being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you're getting less worth for your money.Make every drop

counts - don't pump until the tank overflows; you pay for the petrol. Always tell the attendant to set the pump to auto-stop.

4. Start up the car properly

With today's cars, it is not necessary to prime the engine first by pumping the accelerator pedal repeatedly. Do not crank the engine excessively. This only wastes fuel.When starting the engine, idle it no more than 30 seconds to warm it up. An engine will worm up foster on the rood.

However, avoid sudden accelerotion before the engine has warmed up sufficiently.

5. Do not fill up, If there is a fuel truck pumping into the storage tanks

The petrol will be stirred up and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

Nowhere is global warming felt more acutely than in the Himalayas, where ice and snow are retreating

2009-07-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

Melting caps
Nowhere is global warming felt more acutely than in the Himalayas, where ice and snow are retreating.
By SAM TAYLOR

STANDING in the Himalayan valley of Langtang, Rinjin Dorje Lama remembers where he used to play as a child in the 1960s.

"When I was a kid, it was a lot longer," said Lama, pointing at the Lirung glacier surrounded by snowy peaks on Nepal's northern border with Tibet. "We used to play on the, glacier, and it came right down to the monastery, but now it's about 2km further back."

Temperatures in the Himalayas are rising by around 0.06~C annually, according to a long-term study by the Nepalese department of hydrology. The rate is far above the global average given last year by United Nations scientists, who said surface temperatures have risen by a total of 0.74C over the past 100 years.

"I don't really understand why the glacier has gone so far back, but I am told it's due to global warming," said Lama, whose weather-beaten face makes him look older than his 57 years.

Lama has witnessed other changes in the roadless valley, 60km northwest of Kathmandu, where sure-footed ponies remain the quickest form of transport. "I feel that the sun is getting stronger, and in the past there used to be a lot more snow in winter. We used to get up to 2m in the winter, and it would stay for weeks. Last winter we only had 2cm."

On top of unpredictable weather, other dangers are increasing in Nepal's mountains because of climate change. As the meltwater flows off the glacier, lakes begin to form and grow. When the pressure becomes too great, the lake walls burst and release millions of cubic tonnes of water that can wash away people, villages and arable land.

Researchers at the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) have said five major glacial lake floods have hit Nepal since 1970, as well as at least two in Tibet and one in Bhutan.

Ang Tsering Sherpa, who grew up in Nepal's Everest region, has observed the growth of one glacial lake with growing concern. "A small pond first appeared close to the Imja glacier in about 1962," said Sherpa, who owns a trekking and expedition company in Kathmandu.

Last year, a research team from Japan meas- ured the Imja lake as being 1.Tkm, 900m wide and 92m deep.

"If that lake bursts, it will be like a tsunami," said Sherpa, who estimates that the Imja glacier has been retreating at a rate of 60m per year. "Imagine the damage that will be caused by a lake emptying within minutes into a well-inhabited valley. The loss of life will be huge."

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) calculates there are 2,000 glacial lakes forming in Nepal and around 20 are in danger of bursting.

Mountain dwellers are seeing at first hand the effects of global warming, but the changing climate will eventually have dire consequences for a much wider section of Asia's population.

Himalayan snow and ice is a massive freshwater reserve that feeds nine of Asia's major waterways, including the Indus, Ganges and Yellow rivers.

"In the long term, water scarcity will become a big problem," said Sandeep Chamling Rai, WWF climate change officer. "There will eventually be a tipping point where the amount of water from the glaciers is hugely reduced, which will result in loss of water resources for people downstream who rely on these Himalayan-fed rivers."

The ICIMOD said in August last year that climate change posed a serious threat to essential water resources in the Himalayas, putting the livelihoods of 1.3 billion people at risk.

Back in the Langtang Valley, where around 700 people and 4,000 yaks live, Lama can only watch as the ice and snow retreat from around his home.

"I am very worried, but what can we do. We are not contributing to global warming but we feel its effects. I am scared there will be no snow and ice in these mountains within the next 15 years."- AFP

Trash is not always wasted. It can be recycled or even turned into educational exhibits.

2009-07-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

Trash on show
Trash is not always wasted. It can be recycled or even turned into educational exhibits.
By DAVE COLLINS

IN a waterfront industrial area near the Bridgeport line in Stratford, Connecticut, the trucks keep dumping trash and the school buses keep dumping children.

Eight-year-old Matt Carlucci is in awe as soon as he walks through the front door of The Garbage Museum, confronted immediately by a colourful, 3.7m-tall dinosaur made out of junk. "Trash-o-saurus" resembles something out of the animated movie Robots.

Pennsylvania sculptor Leo Sewell, who grew up near a dump, fashioned the 7.3m-long piece out of old "no parking" signs, cell phones, shoes, licence plates, sunglasses, plastic toys and anything else he could get his hands on. Visitors are given a list of things to find on the dinosaur, and it's no easy feat.

"It's pretty cool," Matt said during a trip with his third-grade class from Sherman, Connecticut. "All the garbage on it, how big it is and how much it weighs."

The sculpture is 907kg, representing the average amount of garbage and recyclables each person in Connecticut discards each year. Like all the exhibits, Trash-o-saurus was designed with the goal of teaching how important recycling is.

The museum opened in 1993 at the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority's (CRRA) recycling centre in Stratford, "before 'green' was cool," a fact sheet says. About 32,200 people visited the museum and took part in its off-site programmes last year, a record.

"We don't know of any other museums dedicated to garbage and recycling in the country," said Paul Nonnenmacher, a spokesman for the CRRA, a quasi-public state trash agency.

The agency also operates a sister facility, The Trash Museum, in Hartford that drew more than 27,000 people last year.

"What's exciting is the kids go home and tell their parents what they can recycle," said Sotoria Montanari, the museum's education supervisor.

While the dinosaur sculpture is popular, children have just as much fun in the viewing area over the centre's sorting area, Montanari said. Trucks dump recyclables from 20 area towns, to the tune of 60,000 tonnes a year.

Huge piles of plastic bottles look made to jump into. Stacks of newspapers and cardboard fill another area. An assembly line of workers sorts the materials, which are crushed and sold as commodities to produce new products. Some buyers even make carpets and fleece jackets out of the recycled plastic, which can be turned into fibres.

Back down a flight of stairs near the dinosaur, children can play in a general store complete with a cash register, old cereal boxes and other reusable items.

An exhibit with stacked soda cans shows how making aluminum out of recycled materials creates 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution than mining bauxite.

Visitors can walk through the tunnel of a big, brown and plastic "composting pile" that has fake worms, bugs and pieces of fruits and vegetables sticking out of it.

Educator Robin Bennett can show you a real composting pile, and how a special kind of worm eats the garbage and converts it into what looks like dirt.

The Trash Bash activity imprisons helmet-wearing contestants behind chain- link fence doors and makes them answer questions. If the answer is wrong, others are given the green light to dump trash on them from an overhead opening.

There are also art exhibits made from reusable stuff, including a life-size mannequin made from crushed and coloured milk containers strung together with pipe cleaners. It all makes for a fun hour or two, but visitors say they also walk away with new knowledge and appreciation.

"You can see where all the garbage goes," said 10-year-old Brooke Hiatt. "You can see how and where it goes and the process of recycling stuff. I've learned that recycling is better than just wasting. If you waste, you can pollute your environment."- AP

A British-based firm insisted for years that its tanker was not to blame for poisoning thousands in West Africa

2009-07-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

Toxic Shipment
A British-based firm insisted for years that its tanker was not to blame for poisoning thousands in West Africa. Now proof of its lethal cargo has emerged.
By DAVID LEIGH and AFUA HIRSCH

ON a July day in 2006, workers at the port in Amsterdam began their usual task of removing "slop" from a ship that had sailed to the Netherlands from Algeciras in Spain. As they pumped wastefrom the Probo Koala- a vessel chartered to the British-based oil trading company
Trafigura - they were expecting the usual mix of water and oil left over from the tank after it had been washed down with water.

But the workers, employed by Dutch company Amsterdam Port Services (APS), noticed the waste was different from the ordinary material they were used to dealing with. Pitch black in colour, it gave off such a vile smell that some of the workers became sick, attracting the attention of the environmental authorities.

APS refused to continue disposing of the pungent waste unless its payment was increased. Refusing to pay the extra, Trafigura decided to pump the material back on board the ship. The Probo Koala then set sail again, carrying its foul-smelling cargo to West Africa. As the ship made its way to the Ivorian port of Abidjan, a company with no previous expe- rience in waste removal obtained the licence to handle the highly toxic material - for a sum 20 times less than the amount demanded by APS in Amsterdam.

The Probo Koala docked in Abidjan on Aug 19, 2006. In darkness at least 12 hired lorries began carrying loads from the ship's 400 tonnes of waste to as many as 18 sites around the city. As the sludge was emptied out into roads and sewers, crowds starting to form, protesting at the stench, forcing truck drivers to abandon their work. Over the following
weeks, thousands of residents in Abidjan found themselves choking and coughing, some vomiting. At least 10 are said to have died from sickness.

The episode is now the centre of a civil suit being played out at the high court in London. Of the 100,000 Ivorians said to have fallen sick, 30,000 are suing the oil trading firm Trafigura in Britain. Company bosses repeatedly insisted at the time the Probo Koala had only routinely discharged ordinary slops.
Yet three years on, after a series of legal developments, lawyers for the victims say they are now able to paint a completely different picture of what really happened. Documents have emerged saying that about two tonnes of highly poisonous hydrogen sulphide was indeed present in a sample of what was a potentially lethal sulphur and caustic soda cocktail.
Asked to comment about the potential toxicity of such a mix, John Hoskins, a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, told BBC: "If you dropped this in Trafalgar Square, you would have people being sick for several miles around and that would involve millions of people. It's not very hard to imagine that if a pregnant woman was poisoned her body reacts by aborting the foetus. There will be long-term effects. These things are chronically damaging and, once you've damaged your lungs, kidneys, that damage will not recover."

Waste exports
It is alleged that what Trafigura was really doing was very far from routine: that the company was trying to transform consignments of cheap and dirty petroleum, heavily contaminated with sulphur, into something more profitable. Trafigura employees were trying to remove sulphur from the so-called "coker gasoline", it is claimed, by adding highly-corrosive caustic soda and a catalyst. This process leaves the improved petroleum in a top layer and a toxic sludge underneath.

Lawyer Martyn Day, acting for the claimants, says the oil traders first tried the chemical process on land in early 2006 at the Tunisian port of La Skirra. "The resulting waste and toxic gases caused significant health problems leading to the port authorities banning them," he said. Day says the firm next tried the "highly unusual and dangerous step" of carrying out do-it-yourself refining in a tanker at sea off the coast of Gibraltar. They tried to dispose of the resultant toxic waste in Amsterdam and "unsuccessfully attempted to pass it off as ordinary waste".

When they were asked to pay extra by the Dutch disposal firm, Trafigura admits it pumped the waste back on board and subsequently took it down the West African coast where it could be disposed of at a fraction of the cost, hiring a local contractor to take it away.

Day says a final Trafigura attempt to continue its desulphuring operations in Norway, using a different ship, led to a tank explosion "causing a sulphur gas cloud to affect hundreds in the local population".

An analysis of the sample obtained from the Amsterdam authorities shows that, despite all Trafigura's denials, it did contain large quantities of sulphur compounds and poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas. These were by-products of desulphurisation attempts, not ordinary tank washings.

Jailed

Trafigura director Claude Dauphin found himself temporarily jailed alongside two company executives when he went out to the Ivory Coast in an attempt to handle the durriping crisis.

He was only released when the company paid more than E100mil (RM554mil) to the African government for clean-up costs and individual compensation, although it continued to deny any link between the payment and his release.

A local contractor and a port official were convicted and jailed in Abidjan for their part in the dumping. Trafigura faces possible pros- ecution in Amsterdam for illegally exporting toxic waste. But the company also faces the massive group litigation from Day. The trial is due to open in October in London.

In a significant legal move last year, Trafigura agreed to compensate claimants if they could prove a link between their illness and exposure to the waste, a cause-and-effect relationship which they continue to strenuously deny. The firm said it would only pay up to anyone who could prove to legal standards that the toxic waste directly caused their medical condition.

Day, for the claimants, says this move has the effect of excluding from the courtroom all the history of the voyage of the Probo Koala. He claims that Trafigura has followed up its move by attempts to induce claimants to change their stories.

Witness statements allege that Simon Nurney, a partner in Trafigura"s solicitors, Macfarlanes, interviewed a lead claimant who had been flown business class to a luxury hotel in Morocco, and was later offered money to retract his evidence. The high court has, as a result, banned Trafigura from further contact with witnesses.

In a statement on May 13, Macfarlanes admitted Nurney had met the witness but denied any wrongdoing. "At no time has anyone from Macfarlanes or Trafigura's legal team, our client or their agents acted improperly or offered any inducements whatsoever to any witnesses or claimants."

Trafigura's has claimed that further publicising these allegations would put the lives of their local employees in danger, hence court hearings have been held in secret because of allegations of intimidation.

The privately-owned oil trading group claims to be one of the biggest in the world, with claimed revenues of US$73bil (RM262bil) and undisclosed share ownership. It was set up offshore in 1993.

Trafigura managers worked until then for Marc Rich, the oil trader who became notorious for South African and Iranian sanctionsbusting. Rich was a fugitive from US justice for alleged tax evasion and trading with Iran, but was pardoned by President Bill Clinton. -Guardian Newspaper Service

A new road near Taman Negara may well be built at the expense of wildlife and their habitat

2009-06-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

The road to ruin -A new road near Taman Negara may well be built at the expense of wildlife and their habitat.
By TAN CHENG LI
IT would shorten the route by a mere 6.6km - probably 10 minutes of driving -but the new alignment of a stretch of road near Gua Musang, Terengganu, will eat into habitats for wildlife and allow development to inch closer to the country's premier park - Taman Negara.

Bulldozers are already hard at work at both ends of the new road, located about 45km from Gua Musang. This stretch is labelled as Phase 1-Segment 5, and is just one parcel of a bigger project by the Public Works Department (PWD) to upgrade Federal Route 8, the major thoroughfare that connects Bentong, Pahang, to Gua Musang, Kelantan.

While the existing road curves around oil palm and rubber estates for 13.7km, the realigned road will cut through these plantations as well as some tracts of forest, to cut the route by about half.

Conservationists have questioned the necessity of this shorter route. They say the new road is within the Taman Negara-Sungai Yu corridor, an important ecological bridge between the Main Range and the national park, and an area known to host elephants, tapirs and sun bears.

WWF-Malaysia chief technical officer Surin Suksuwan explains that the Taman NegaraSungai Yu corridor has almost contiguous forest cover- so its preservation will greatly enlarge the available wilderness.

This link is among several earmarked by the Town and Country Planning Department to connect four major forest complexes spanning the length of the peninsula, to form what is called the Central Forest Spine.

These four wild lands - the Main Range, Taman Negara, south-east Pahang-Chini/Bera wetlands and Endau Rompin-Kluang Wildlife Reserve - are crucial for biodiversity and environmental protection but are now fragmented from one another.

Suksuwan says a report on the Central Forest Spine, the boundaries of which are being finalised now, discourages the widening of roads in areas earmarked for forest corridors.

WWF chief executive officer Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma fears that the impact will extend beyond the actual site cleared for the road to adjacent forests.

"The upgrading and realignment of the existing road might not only impede wildlife movement between the Main Range and Taman Negara, but also accelerate forest conversion and fragmentation in surrounding areas. This in turn will disrupt ecological functions and lead to the loss of biodiversity."

He says existing forests flanking the road are vulnerable to conversion to other land uses as they are state-owned land with no protected status.

Sharma urges the Pahang state government to gazette these forests as Permanent Reserved Forest under the National Forestry Act 1984, to reduce the risk of forest conversion and maintain the connectivity between the Main Range and Taman Negara,

"It is crucial and urgent that a buffer zone is demarcated for Taman Negara to address a range of mounting concerns such as forest conversion and potential poaching pressures. No development activities should take place in this buffer zone," says Sharma.

As is often the case, new roads spell easier access - in this case, trespassing by poachers into Taman Negara. At their closest point, 2km is all that separates the new stretch of road from the 4,343 sqkm park.

Sharma urges the PWD to share information on the other phases of the road upgrading scheme with key government agencies and nongovernmental groups which might be able to provide useful recommendations on ways to minimise the environmental impact of the scheme.

Should the realignment of certain stretches be unavoidable, he proposes that measures such as elevated roads and tunnels as well as wildlife crossings be incorporated into the design, to prevent forest fragmentation.

The PWD, however, has brushed off the claims of WWF.

Responding to questions from StarTwo, it says the realignment of Phase 1-Segment 5 is to make that stretch, an accident-prone spot, safer. Upgrading the existing road will pose greater risk to the locals as vehicle speeds will be higher. It is also cheaper to construct the new alignment.

The PWD says Segment 5 does not encroach into any forest reserves: 3km will cut through secondary forest that makes up the Jalan Merapuh Malay Reserve and another 3.3km, the Felda Cegah Perah Satu oil palm plantation.

It says the existing road as well as the railway line already transect the forest corridor between the Main Range and Taman Negara, hence "the realignment of certain stretches is not a new impact to wildlife in the area that have already adapted to the presence of the road for many years." It also points out that the area is already fragmented and consists of forest, oil palm and settlements.

To minimise impact to wildlife, the PWD has produced a Wildlife Management Plan which among other things, suggests elephant warning signs, lower speed limits and reporting of wildlife sightings. The PWD also intends to construct underpasses for animal crossings in the road upgrading, in compliance with the requirements of wildlife authorities.

Countering concerns that the new road will worsen poaching of wildlife, the PWD says illegal hunting is already prevalent in the area - traps for porcupine were detected during surveys for the Wildlife Management Plan -due to accessibility. It says poaching can only be solved through deterrent measures such as severe punishment and constant surveillance.

Lost wilderness - yet another tract of forest will be sacrificed for dams and timber.

2009-06-20T19:14:00.001-07:00

Tourist attraction: the damming of Sungai Tembat will mean that the popular Tembat waterfalls will be no more

An expanse of green in the upper reaches of Terengganu, home to countless species of wildlife, including the highly endangered Sumatran rhinoceros, will soon be no more. It is being logged and will eventually be flooded for a new hydroelectric scheme. What is alarming is that
the area being cleared is three times larger than that needed for the project.
10
Under the 212MW hydroelectric project in Kuala Berang, 65km west of Kuala Terengganu, Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) will dam up Sungai Terengganu Mati and Sungai Tembat to create two reservoirs north of Kenyir Lake. In so doing it will flood 6,000ha and 130ha of Tembat and Petuang forest reserves.

As if it is not bad enough that over 6,130ha of wilderness will have to make way for the two reservoirs, the Terengganu state government intends to log another 12,620ha around the inundated area.

Much is at stake: forests and riverine habitats, together with the flora and fauna within. What worries conservationists is that the forest here is among the last few refuges of the highly endangered Sumatran rhinoceros, Malayan tiger and Malayan gaur (seladang). It also harbours the Asian elephant, tapir, primates, wild cats and plants, of which 94 species are Red Listed as threatened by extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) on the project predicts that logging will have a high impact on wildlife as an area three times larger than that required for the reservoirs will be clear-felled - not selectively logged, which would still leave behind vegetation cover.

WWF-Malaysia has questioned the need to log the additional 12,620ha as not only is the area an important wild habitat, it is also the catchment for Kenyir Lake. Destroying the catchment will hamper water flows, says WWF chief technical officer Surin Suksuwan.

Hulu Terengganu Hydroelectric Project

"Erosion resulting from logging can silt up the river and this could reduce the lifespan of the dam and affect electricity generation. It would be a disadvantage for TNB if the catchment is chopped down," he says.

There are valid reasons for preserving Petuang and Tembat. The presence of a highly endangered species, the Sumatran rhinoceros, makes them high-value forests, Tembat has also been identified as an important site for tiger conser- vation.

And not only are Petuang and Tembat part of the Central Forest Spine, the tract of forest running the length of the peninsular that is crucial for biodiversity and environmental protection, they sit within the ecological corridor that links Taman Negara with the Main Range.

With this corridor, essentially a stretch of forested lands, a larger wild sanctuary will be created for wildlife dispersion and breeding.

But Terengganu is adamant on exploiting the timber housed within Tembat and Petuang. In June 2003, then Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang had said that in view of the TNB project, the state had awarded timber concessions for some 16,000ha. Last August, the state gazette showed 6,168ha of Tembat forest reserve to have been excised, but the degazettement was backdated to November 2006.

Last November, Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said told The Star that the logging was to prevent loss of timber revenue when the area is submerged - but he failed to explain why the state is allowing logging of an extra 12,620ha outside of the 6,130ha that would be flooded.

The hydroelectric project was mooted in the 1990s. TNB had submitted an EIA in 2000 but the review panel deemed it incomplete and asked for more studies. No fresh EIA was submitted, however, until the latest DEIA dated September 2008.

But in blatant disregard for the law, portions of the forest have been laid bare even as experts were vetting the DEIA. Satellite images in the report reveals logging in the area dates back to 2003. From an image taken in January, it is esti- mated that 5,500ha have been denuded.

The effects of forest destruction are being felt. "When it rains, Sungai Tembat will be the colour of tea," says one tour operator who declined to be named. "It takes a few days for the water to clear up. This has been happening for the past two years."

He foresees that the proposed dams will lead to reduced flows- so boat trips upriver for either fishing or the riverine scenery will be a thing of the past.

The DEIA report states as much. It says silt that is washed into the rivers from barren lands will smother fish spawning grounds and kill aquatic insects which fish feed on. As the river water quality declines, so will ecotourism activities.

Another loss is the Tembat waterfalls, said to be the second biggest in Kenyir. The five cascades along the river will turn into mere trickles with the damming. The stemmed flows downstream of the dams will doom some species, and eventually transform the composition of species. The DEIA foresees a drop in populations of kelah, daun and tengas, which are what draw anglers to Kenyir.

Equally imperilled are endangered plants such as numerous dipterocarp species, orchids, begonias, rafflesia and the ginger kantan hutan ( Etlingera terengganuensis) that is endemic to Terengganu.

With the forest destruction comes other problems. The DEIA anticipates more road kills along highways in the area, and poaching too as logging roads will make the remote forest accessible. As it is, the DEIA consultants had come across old and new Thai poachers' camps while surveying the catchment.

To counter these problems, it is suggested that signboards be erected along the highways to warn of wildlife crossings and there be more enforcement and patrols by wildlife and forest rangers.

The logging and dam construction will drive elephants into nearby settlements and plantations, particularly those at the north near Setiu.The DEIA says to safeguard crops, the elephants might have to be trapped and moved to other forests.

But the jumbos of Tembat and Petuang seem destined for a life in captivity. The Mentri Besar in November said the animals will be relocated to an elephant sanctuary.

WWF executive director Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma does not think this a viable solution. "This would be too costly and the sanctuary would not be able to accommodate all the elephants in the state in the long term. The increase in reports of human-wildlife conflict within the area strongly infers that wildlife habitats are being encroached or are diminishing. More land clearing will result in more elephants and other wildlife being displaced."

With so much at risk, the DEIA has rightly cautioned the state government against logging what remains of Tembat and Petuang forest reserves, urging it to instead gazette them into catchment areas to protect the remaining wildlife and vegetation.

It says the 12,620ha outside the reservoir site should be selectively logged instead of clear-felled to reduce environmental destruction. Also, the sliver of forest west of Kenyir Lake needs to stay to enable movements of wildlife, otherwise Taman Negara and the catchment will be cut off from each other.

Sharma, however, says the suggestion in the DEIA on selective logging will not be effective. "The forest will take many years to regenerate and resume its ecosystern function as water catchment and to prevent soil erosion."

He says it is crucial that both Petuang and Tembat be gazetted as catchment forests immediately, and not after they are logged. This will conform to a National Forestry Council directive for states to protect their catchments.

"Logging or clear-felling should not be allowed in these protected forests, in line with the National Physical Plan which classifies all catchment forests as Environmentally Sensitive Area Rank 1. Logging, development and agricultural activities are not permitted in these areas."

A 2006 filepix of elephants being transported from Kenyir Lake to be released in Taman Negara. It is feared that logging for timber and two new dams will displace more elephants in Hulu Terengganu.

Planet Keepers - Six campaigners winthe environmental world's 'Nobels'.

2009-05-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

Planet Keepers
Six campaigners winthe environmental world's 'Nobels'.
By PETER GRIFFITHS

FROM the rainforests of Africa to the mountain-top coal mines of West Virginia, six campaigners who have fought governments and industry to protect the planet won prestigious Goldman Environmental Prizes recently.

The awards, often referred to as the Nobel Prizes of the environmental world, went to activists in six continents who took on everything from toxic chemical dumps in the former Soviet Union to ship-breaking in Asia.

Thisyear's African winner is Marc Ona Essangui, who campaigned against plans by a Chinese state-owned company to open an iron ore mine in the rainforests of Gabon, west Africa.

Ona, who uses a wheelchair due to child- hood polio, has been repeatedly threatened, and arrested and evicted from his home.

"Threats shouldn't prevent you from carrying on your fight. It could destroy the most beautiful forests in central Africa."

His campaign helped lead to a review of the project, which is currently on hold, the prize's organisers said.

The North America winner was Maria Gunnoe, a former waitress who campaigns against the environmental impact of mountain-top coal-mining in the Appalachian hills of West Virginia.

The method involves blasting the tops of mountains, removing the coal and pushing the rubble into valleys. Critics say it pollutes land, destroys streams and causes flooding.

In an area where coal is the backbone of the economy, Gunnoe has divided the community and received death threats.

"There's a lot of people here who support what I do. But there's others who drive in here every, day for their jobs, and given a choice, they would run over me in a heartbeat," she said in a message on her website.

In Europe, the prize went to Olga Speranskaya, a Russian scientist whose Moscow-based campaign group Eco-Accord aims to rid former Soviet republics of old toxic chemicals once used in agriculture or industry.

"They are among the most toxic and dangerous substances and cause birth defects... and even cancer," she told Reuters.

The other winners, who received their US$150,000 (RM540,000) prizes at a ceremony in San Francisco were:

> From Asia: Rizwana Hasan, from Bangladesh, who has raised public awareness of the dangers of ship-breaking.

> From South and central America: Hugo Jabini and Wanze Eduards, from Suriname, who organised local people to campaign against logging on their land.

> From islands: Yuyun Ismawati, who campaigned for better waste management in Indonesia.

Previous winners of the award, established in 1990 by two US philanthropists, include the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, hanged in 1995 after leading protests against oil companies in Nigeria.- Reuters

Recycling is taking an object, like a plastic bottle, and after you drink it, turning it into a candleholder

2009-05-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

Waste not
A husband and wife architect team is on a quest to promote a green lifestyle for themselves and their community.
By BARBARA THORNBURG

MOST things in the lives of Alejandro D'Acosta and Claudia Turrent are recycled: the trailer in which the architects live, their three-year-old Christmas tree.

"The only thing not redclada is my wife," D'Acosta says with a grin, his wedding-ring finger tattooed with her name.

"Ay, gordo! What am I going to do with you?" Turrent admonishes him, laughing, her right wrist imprinted with his name like a bracelet. The couple show their good humour, but make no mistake: they are on a serious quest to promote a sustainable way of life for themselves and their community in the nascent revoludon verde just south of the Tijuana border in Mexico.

The Ensenada coast and nearby Valle de Guadalupe wine-making region inland are testing grounds for the couple's experiments in recycling and "upcycling", the process of designing a product with its end-life in mind.

"Recycling is taking an object, like a plastic bottle, and after you drink it, turning it into a candleholder," Turrent says. "We want companies designing the plastic bottle to design it in the shape of something functional, like a roof tile." Instead of ending up in a landfill, she says, the plastic could be incorporated into an inter- locking System of bottles that provide cover. "This would help many poor people have a shelter over their heads,and at the same time, the Earth will be cleaner."

At the rear of the couple's home facing the northern Baja coastline, where waves break dramatically along the shore, a brown Christmas tree stands in the small garden. "The tree was a big discussion at Christmas," D'Acosta says. "My children told me, 'It smells like fish, and we want a new one that smells more like Christmas.' I told them, 'This tree will be for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.'"

Originally from Mexico City, the couple spent eight years living in Oaxaca, teaching and aiding poor communities in the area by building health facilities and cultural centres. Along the way, they learned to create a modern architecture based on ancient traditions.

A local bar, La Mezcaleria, features walls and a ceiling woven of carrizo or cane grass, which the indigenous people also use for roofs, window coverings and baskets.

"Es una canasta ... it's a basket," D'Acosta says of the structure. When the sun's rays stream into the interior, Goethe's description of architecture as frozen music comes to mind. "We have much to learn from indigenous people and the way they live with the land," D'Acosta says. "Some people call them backward, but they don't need cars because they grow their food in the garden next to their house. They use the natural materials that surround them to make their homes."

The couple have taken the lessons they learned in Oaxaca and created a vernacular architecture of their own based on materials that surround them in northern Baja. And the material found in most abundance here, they say, is basura - trash.

Showcase home
D'Acosta and Turrent's home is a laboratory. They joined a 1940s American mobile home with a former Mexican office trailer to create a comfortable, inexpensive dwelling that seems to float on the land, parallel to the sea. The 20m-long red mobile home, re-clad in waterproof
corrugated cardboard, houses the kitchen, living room, two girls' bedrooms and a bath. The shorter trailer, set at a right angle, serves as the master bedroom suite overlooking the ocean.

The house wears an interior skin of unpainted dry wall and is filled with recycled furnishings. A whale vertebrae is now a sculptural centrepiece atop the patio dining table. A vintage blouse is a cover for the plasma TV. A 70s desk serves as the kitchen table.

Outside, a long deck made of redwood beams from an old, deconstructed bridge stretches to the shore. An open-air aluminum-and-wood pavilion, reclaimed from an old factory, is covered with carrizo, echoing the trailer's topping of palm fronds. The materials, salvaged from their neighbour's trash heap, help to cool the spaces.

"Our neighbour used to throw things out. Now he asks us before disposing of anything," says D'Acosta, who can be found most Sundays combing the coastline for trash, often returning with a necklace of plastic bottles draped around his neck. "Gifts from our northern neighbours," he quips, referring to refuse that has washed clown from California. "They make great insulation."

He's planning to use the colourful bottles in a new wine-tasting centre at La Escuelita, a wine school started six years ago by his brother, Hugo D'Acosta, in the Valle de Guadalupe. Set in a former olive oil factory that still produces olive oil as well as wine, the school is where D'Acosta keeps stashes of trash in segregated piles.

"Another laboratorio," he says, pointing to mounds of cans, tyres, rusted pipes, barbed wire
and old wood, as well as a lone toilet where he takes up a seat to gaze at his tesoro. Treasure? Most people would look at all this and see junk. D'Acosta, like Don Quixote on his quest, conjures other visions. Buildings on the property have been fashioned from the trash: a classroom made of discarded pieces of wood from construction sites; a wine storage facility composed of used bottles; and an open-air building framed in rusted box springs. Then there's the front of the school, clad in discarded filters used in the pressing of olive oil.

His latest structure is a work in progress:a wine-tasting centre made of old barrel staves. Colourful plastic bottles will be placed between walls as insulation and to "colour the light," he says. Old wine barrels, fittingly, will make up the wine bar. "The idea of buildings is not just for function but to create sensations," D'Acosta says. "Each material~ has its own soul, and when you reuse that material it has a new soul on top of its old soul." Nature's way

Turrent has her own project, Viento, a highrise condominium in El Sauzal, a seaside community just north of Ensenada, complete with an in-
house wine-making facility that will be cooled by sea breezes and heated by the sun. She's experimenting with hand-carved furnishings - built-in benches, wooden sink stands - made from the same redwood beams that form her home's deck.

While the project is on hold, Turrent has turned her attention to retrofitting a half-dozen trailers on the property as part of a new delimarket by the sea. Come summer, when wine aficionados hit Ensenada's Fiesta de la Vendemia (Harvest Festival) and other cultural events, the new market will be in place offering organic and regional products. "The idea," she says, "is to
bring small producers together and promote the idea of buying local."

Inland, in the Valle de Guadalupe, lies D'Acosta's latest boutique-winery, Paralelo. With its corrugated metal roof painted the colour of nearby olive trees, the rammed-earth structure all but disappears into the landscape. During harvest, trucks drive up the building's eastern ramp to the roof,.releasing grapes into the vats below.

"Everything is run by gravity," D'Acosta says. No pumps are needed. Metre-wide walls, punc- tuated with barrel-shaped windows on each side of the building, regulate air flow to control temperature. "We try to work with the land- scape, not against it," says the architect, also a professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California, where his classes emphasise ecology and sustainability.

Baja conservation attorney Jose Luis Perez Rocha recently worked with D'Acosta on trans- forming an abandoned 120-year-old school into a family home in La Paz, Mexico. "Alejandro sees things differently from the rest of us," Rocha says. "He turns waste and trash into something not only useful but beautiful."

Already copies of D'Acosta's work- fences of discarded lumber or recycled grapevines - are popping up in the Valle de Guadalupe and Ensenada. But D'Acosta says that's a good thing. "People are starting to look at trash as something that has value."- LAT-WP

Some housewives have resorted to smuggling banned dishwashing soaps as the 'green' ones

2009-05-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Detergent outlaw
Some housewives have resorted to smuggling banned dishwashing soaps as the 'green' ones, well, don't clean as well.

By KIM MURPHY

By day, Patti Marcotte is a working mum-dealing with the balancing act created by a five-year-old daughter, a demanding job, a split-level house and a willful boxer puppy. Come the post-dinner hour, however, Marcotte begins operating in the shadowy world of smuggled soap.

Spokane County, Washington, last July adopted a near-total ban on sales of water-softening phosphates in dishwasher detergent- the first in the United States - in an attempt to slow the flood of pollutants that is sucking oxygen out of the endangered Spokane River,smothering its fish.

The problem, Marcotte and many of her neighbours say, is that most low-phosphate detergents are wimps when it comes to fighting greasy pots and spaghetti-crusted plates. So she has become a detergent outlaw, driving 45 minutes across the Idaho state line to pick up secret stashes of the old, bad dish cleansers.

"With the 'green' stuff, the dishes come out with a real slippery texture ... like somebody poured a cup of grease in some dishwater ...
and a white film. Just really gross," Marcotte said. "And then the food gunk just mixes around the dishwasher and when it stops, it just settles on whatever's there. I mean, it's bad."

Retailers in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, say the sight of apologetic but defiant Washingtonians loading their carts with dishwasher detergent is becoming increasingly common. For those inclined to chuckle at the travails of distant, desperate people with dirty dishes, consider this: the detergent industry has pledged to make every automatic dishwashing soap sold in the United States and Canada nearly phosphate-flee by mid-2010.

With 12 states- including Washington-phasing in low-phosphate laws by the end of next year and four others considering them, industry officials say they are gearing up to produce a new generation of products that will clean dishes while also protecting lakes and streams.

The pledge marks a significant turnaround for an industry that until recently not only opposed such laws, but also warned that many "phosphate-free" dishwashing detergents didn't work the way consumers expected them to.

But plenty soon will be available, said Dennis Griesing, vice-resident of government affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based Soap and Detergent Association. "We sort of warned Spokane that things wouldn't be ready by 2008. We had told people it's not enough time to get our best products out there. We have to do the R&D, restructure our chemical supply lines, maybe build some new plants."

Two major manufacturers have introduced nearly phosphate-free gels that work well in most water conditions, he said, and more are on the way.

The transition echoes the elimination of most phosphates from laundry detergent several years ago, but represents an entirely different technological hurdle. Previous attempts to phase out dishwasher phosphates in Europe and a brief trial in Arizona met with implacable consumer resistance.

But Spokane County authorities say that since the law went into effect, they have reduced phosphate pollution from the county's main wastewater treatment plant by 14%. Scientists say phosphorus - a nutrient that is an essential component of living cells, as abundant in human waste and yard fertiliser as it is in detergent - is one of the biggest threats to lakes and rivers whose waters take in a constant stream of phosphate-laden wastewater discharges, agricultural runoff and storm-water flows.

Acting as a fertiliser in the water, phosphates promote the uncontrolled growth of often-toxic algae blooms that, when they die, nurture bacteria. That bacteria rapidly consume much of the oxygen in the water, leaving little for plants and fish.

The Spokane River is considered one of the United States' most endangered, threatened by mining pollution, sewage treatment planl outfalls and heavy draw downs of river wate that tend to concentrate pollutants.

In an attempt to turn things around, the state Department of Ecology imposed what appear to be the lowest phosphate limits in the nation on Spokane's main water-reclamation plant. And the county instituted its dish washer detergent rules two years before the statewide low-phosphate law takes effect.

The plant is spending US$7mil (RM25.2mil) to experiment with new technologies for cleaning up remaining ohosphates in the wastewater. SpoKane County will spend up to US$250mil (RM900mii) more to build a new treatment plant after that. The state is also looking to crack down on agricultural and industrial polluters, along with leaky septic systems.

The law allows dishwasher detergents to have no more than 0.5% phosphate content. The most popular brands contain about 8% phosphates in order to remove fats and hold food particles in suspension. Most hand dish soap, which relies on scrubbing to clean plates and pots, does not contain phosphates.

Marcotte says she's environmentally conscious, but the phosphate-free dishwasher detergents she has tried left the dishes so dirty she had to wash them twice, in much hotter water, or at least rinse them after washing them - a waste of water and electricity, since she normally uses tepid water on the short cycle.

"I try to recycle and do my part," she said. "The whole thing is if they're going to take away something that works, they need to replace it with something that works." - LAT-WP

Waste energy - A chicken waste-to-energy project is gaining attention.

2009-05-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

Waste energy
A chicken waste-to-energy project is gaining attention.
By SANDHYA SOMASHEKHAR

DO NOT try to tell Oren Heatwole that chicken poop smells. "Total myth," he said before a colleague, eager to prove the point, scooped up a mulchy handful and inhaled deeply.

Heatwole, a former chicken farmer, might be biased. But he isn't the only fan of the stuff. Scientists at Virginia Tech are experimenting with technology that would convert what you might call an abundant resource here in the Shenandoah Valley into energy.

Virginia Tech has built a prototype chicken-waste-to-energy machine. Using a process called pyrolysis, the device super-heats the droppings to transform them into three products: an oil that can be used for heating, a slowrelease fertiliser and a gas that the researchers hope will one day be recycled to power the machine.

If successful, the project also will help reduce a source of pollution in Chesapeake Bay. Although the raw waste has long been recognised as a top-flotch fertiliser, if applied too heavily, it can flush into waterways and eventually the bay. That has led to severe restrictions on its use.

It will be at least two years before the technology is perfected and the unit - now built for about US$1 rail (RM3.6mil) - is affordable for the average poultry farmer, said Foster Agblevor, the Virginia Tech professor in charge of the project.

Environmental groups have been largely critical of efforts to generate energy from waste products such as garbage or droppings. Often such plants produce harmful emissions. In addition, critics note that raw poultry waste already brings in top dollar as a fertiliser - more, some-times, than the energy it can produce.

"It does not make sense to try to solve a waste problem as an energy solution," said Mike Tidwell, director of the non-profit Chesapeake Climate Action Network in Maryland. "It is an unproven technology that is going to serve only to delay and confuse the real solutions in Virginia, which are energy efficiency and true renewable energy like wind and solar."- LAT-WP

Converting Chicken Waste to Power

Scientists at Virgina Tech are developing technology to convert chicken waste to energy. In this process, chicken litter - a mixture of manure, feathers, bedding and fee - is super-heated by a portable machine. The heat breaks down the mixture and yields oil for heating, fertiliser and non-combustible gas.

Related Topic: Uses of Garbage Enzyme

Earth Hour at 28th March 2009

2009-03-25T05:59:00.000-07:00

62 countries including Malaysia have committed to participate in WWF’s Earth Hour in 2009. This will be the first time Malaysia officially takes part in Earth Hour and our Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah bin Ahmad Badawi has indicated his support and endorsement of Malaysia’s participation.

The campaign, which hopes to reach out to more than one billion people in 1000 cities around the world, encourage individuals, businesses and governments to switch off lights for just one hour on Saturday March 28, 2009 at 8:30pm to convey their support for action on climate change. Cities already committed to Earth Hour include Los Angeles, Las Vegas, London, Hong Kong, Sydney, Rome, Manila, Oslo, Cape Town, Warsaw, Lisbon, Singapore, Istanbul, Mexico City, Toronto, Dubai and Copenhagen.

2009 is a critical year in terms of the political decisions that will be made at global climate negotiations in December 2009. Earth Hour, aims to highlight the voice of the people of the world and represent a visual mandate for meaningful policy on climate change.

If you would like to pledge your support of Earth Hour log on to http://www.earthhour.org/malaysia and sign up. If your company would like to participate in Earth Hour, please call WWF-Malaysia at Tel: +603 7803 3772 or Email: ARaj@wwf.org.my

websites on global warming

2008-08-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/fcons.asp

This site shows how the rise in average temperature will have far-reaching effects on the Earth's climate patterns and on all living things.

Http://climateneutralnetwork.org/

Climate Neutral Network-A coalition that works to develop a competitive marketplace for products and services that have little or no effect on the Earth's climate.

Http://www.climatenetwork.org/eco/

Eco-The Climate Action Network Online-Newsletter published at the UN Climate Talks by a worldwide network of non-governmental organisations working on strategies to combat climate change.

Http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/goes.html

GOES Satellite imaging Technology-This site offers advanced satellite imagery of the Earth's surface, wind, and water patterns.

Http://www.greenplaybook.org/

Green Playbook-This online tool offers tips, tools and strategies to help local governments take immediate action on climate change by rapidly advancig green buildings, neighborhoods and infrastructure.

Wishing the grey skies away

2008-08-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

WebSights
Wishing the grey skies away

THE Olympic Games finally kicked off with a blast in Beijing after days of being shrouded in a muggy haze.

It was a relief for the world's athletes who congregated in China for the biggest event of the year when the Beijing skies cleared up - there were moments last week when the quality of the ah- seemed too hazardous for the Games to go on.

It is definitely a relief for the organisers, as the air quality in the Chinese capital has been their most pressing problem for a while now.

The Chinese government reportedly spent US$17bil trying to clean it and since July 20,
it had banned half of the city's three million cars from the streets, closed factories, and halted most construction, hoping it would reduce the levels of pollution.

Despite all its efforts, clear skies remain an elusive target. In the end, it will come down to the wild card of weather: rain and wind, To stay abreast with China's fickle air quality throughout the Games, especially if you are going to Beijng or waiting lot your favourite outdoor event to begin, check out AIRNow at http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=where.world

The website offers daily air quality index (AQI) for different countries ill the world, so once you've checked on China, you can check the air quality in other parts of the world, including Malaysia.

The AQI is an index for reporting daily air quality. It tells you how clean or polluted your outdoor air is, and what associated health effects might be a concern for you, The AQI focuses on health effects you may experience within a few hours or days after breathing polluted air.

While all the world's environmentalists are coming down hard on China for its AQI, it is good for us to try and understand the circumstances that are causing the air pollution. To learn more, go to http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/02/chinas_air_poll.html

This website provides not only the various sides of the story but also a wider context of the issue.

Malaysia may be thousands of miles away from China, but we have our own persistent haze problem. Only last Sunday, we woke up to hazy skies triggered by forest fires in Indonesia's Sumatra island. Forest fires from Indonesia caused by traditional farming
methods created a choking haze, which shrouds the region annually.

In Malaysia, air quality is described as the Air Pollutant Index (API), The API is an
indicator of air quality and was developed based on scientific assessment of the presence of pollutants and its impact on health. The API system of Malaysia closely follows tile Pollutant Standard Index (PSI) developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA).

To learn how the API scale and terms are used in describing the air quality levels, go to the official website of Malaysia's Environment Department at http://www.doe.gov.my/v2/en/content/air-pollutant -index-api-reading-0

Daily readings of the API index can be obtained at http://www.doe.gov.my/apims/

It will tell you if the API exceeds 500, which is a state of emergency,

Usually, this means that non-essential government services are suspended in the affected areas. Sometimes all the ports, offices, shops and restaurants will be closed too.

For the latest news on global incidences of air pollution and its effects, the best site
to visit is http://www.airpollutionnews.com/

If you are wondering what the effects of air pollution are, try
http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/asthma/triggers/085.html#ArticleParsysMiddleColumn0002

According to this medical depository, different people can react very differently to air pollution; some people may notice chest tightness or cough, while others may not notice any effects.

Even a healthy, high-performance athlete in much better physical condition than the rest of us will be physically affected from days or weeks of working out in an environment with a high API.

Another useful website for pointers on staying healthy in a hazy environment is
http://healthandenergy.com/air_pollution_health_effects.htm

Although stakeholders - scientists, environmentafists, economists, politicians -are still debating about how to control air pollution, many agree that one of the main causes is the rapid population growth and development in countries like India and China.

Rapid development will also lead to a higher release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. These gases contribute to other environmental problems such as global warming and climate change. Read about it at http://www.ucsusa.org/giobal_warming/

If you don't want to be bogged down by facts, check out the map of the warming world and other changes in the climate system at http://www.climatehotmap.org/

Sightings of hornbills in the forest are no longer as common as before.

2008-08-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

Rare Sight

In what minght deceivingly seem like an encouraging indicator to the casual bird watcher, hornbills nave oeen spotted flying in clusters over certain areas in Malaysia.

But don't be fooled. Those familiar with the bebavioural tendencies of this enigmatic bird know that the unusual sightings may be a sign of disturbances in the forest ecosystem.

"Hornbills typically fly for miles and miles foraging for food, but now that large tracts of forests have been removed, you see more clusters of them concentrated in specific areas," explains avid birdwatcher Mohd Raft Abdul Kudus.

"This is not agood sign, It suggests that hornbills have been robbed of their food source and large trees that they need for nesting."

Rafi spends his weekends exploring various well-known birding spots in Malaysia, which include Lake Kenyir, Pulau Pangkor, Langkawi, Genting Highlands, Taman Negara and the peat swamps of Lanjut in Pahang.

"I've noticed the number of hornbills dwindling in all these places. It's not easy to see them anymore," he laments.

Malaysia is home,to 10 of 54 known species of hornbills worldwide, eight or nine of
which are found in most parts of the country. Only the plain-pouched hornbill is exclusively seen in Perak's Belnm-Temenggor forest, where all 10 species can be found and five are known to nest.

According to the IUCN-World Conservation Union Red List, the world's main authority on globally threatened biodiversity, six of the 10 species found in Malaysia are classified as "near-threatened", while the more elusive plain-pouched is currently considered to be "vulnerable".

"An experienced boatman told me that you could count up to 15,000 plain-pouched hornbills flying in Belum-Temengor five years ago during the peak season for mass migration, Now the numbers have been reduced to 2,000 or 3,000," says Raft.

Fewer birds
If current trends are anything to go by, the globally threatened birds face a challenging predicament due to Malaysia's rapidly evolving landscape.

Similar thoughts are echoed by Allen Jeyarajasingam, co-author of the essential Field Guide to the Birds of West Malaysia and Singapore.

"We definitely have lower numbers now, especially in Selangor. You could see more hornbills in the 70s, but that was a different time," be says regretfully.

Volunteers with the Malaysian Nature Society's (MNS) Hornbill centred. That lorest is reputed to be one of few remaining frontiers that can support sizable populations of large birds such as the hornbill.

"From my many trips to Temenggor, 1 have seen significant changes to the landscape.
The non-sustainable logging of old-growth forests and increased construction of access roads has opened up more land," says Lira.

"Orang asli villagers are also clearing the forests to plant rubber," he said, reiterating that the sheer size of a hornbill demands large trees with existing hollows or crevices to
nest in.

Lira reveals that the highest count recorded by MNS in Belum-Temenggor was 2,400 plain-pouched hornbills in 1993, but now they count roughly 1,500.

"It looks like there has been a reduction in numbers but we have to continue surveying the area for a few more years before we can conclusively state that there is a decline," he explains. More studies

MNS conservation officer Ravinder highlights the need to better understand hornbills.
"We are currently collecting information about the nesting spots in BeIum-Temenggor
through the ongoing survey, which was initiated in 2004 she says.

She admits that research efforts so far have barely scratched the surface of all there is to know about the birds.

"Our main obstacle is funding but we will soon employ radiotagging methods for a more comprehensive study on the numbers and distribution of hornbills."

Lim says once they have the necessary data, they could inform the state Forestry Department so they logging is prevented in the outlined areas.

"It would also be wise to replant fruit trees and not just timber trees as the hornbills
have lost an important food source due t6 the clearing of forests."

Both could not stress more on the importance of extending gazettement of the Royal Belum State Park to include Temenggor forest reserve.

"We recently sent a delegation to speak with the Chief Minister of Perak about this and response so far has been very encouraging," says Ravinder, offering hope for our feathered friends up north.

But who's taking care of hornbill habitats located outside of Belum-Temenggor?
Raft, who has been actively birding for four years now, spoke peat swamps anG suP-coastal swamps in south-east and midwest Malaysia, where the population of wrinkled hornbills is now concentrated," he said.

Raft cites the work of Dr David Wells, an acclaimed ornithologist from Universiti Malaya who has written several articles on horn- bills. "He reckons that the status of the wrinkled hornbill should be moved up from 'near-threatened' to 'vulnerable'."

MNS senior conservation officer Yeap Chin Aik expresses his own words of caution: "Already one can only find hornbills in well-forested areas. If our forest cover continues to decline, the current 'near-threatened' species will become 'vulnerable', a very unenviable promotion."

Indonesian homemakers turn trash into fashion frills.

2008-08-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

Flash from trash

USED detergent labels and toothpaste tubes from Indonesia are going from landfills to fashion frills on bags and wallets sold in Singapore, Australia and the United States.

The fad known as "trashion" has gained mainstream acceptance with chic, urban designers worldwide now posting big profits by using leftover, discarded and found materials to create jewellery, clothing and housewares.

But in Indonesia, where half the population of 235 million live on less than US$2 (RM6) a day, homemakers, disabled workers and local entrepreneurs are the ones embracing the eco-ftiendly fashion. The goal, they say, is to reduce pollution while providing jobs to the poorest of the poor,

Aswin Aditya, founder of the Jakarta-based company Plastic Works, buys plastic packaging from trash scavengers for US$0.66 (RM2) a kilogramme. His nine employees cut, sew and craft it into wallets, umbrellas and shower curtains that sell for between US$25 and US$85 (RM7S and RM255).

One of the destinations is Monsoon Vermont, an lntemet-based eco-shop in the United States that receives around f,O00 products a month, be said.

Recycling facilities are virtually non-existent across most of Indonesia, where landfills
are spilling over and where uncollected rubbish is often burned or ends up clogging streets and waterways. For some, the trashion industry is seen as a tiny but viable solution to unmanaged, growing consumer waste.

"What we do is small, but every little bit helps," said Aditya, who trains homemakers to produce goods suitable for export.

Indonesian designers, meanwhile, are showing their support for eco-fashion on the
catwalk.

Computer-chip dresses and frocks made from plastic wrap wowed audiences in March,
when models strutted their stuff during Eco Chic, an Asia-wide fashion show launched in Jakarta to help transform trash into brute couture.

Ann Wizer, director of the Jakarta-based non-profit design venture XS Project, says her
goal is to raise awareness about waste production and environmental degradation. But as
the potential for profits increase, prominent designers and corporations also are adopting
earth-friendly measures.

She urged consumers to be aware of businesses that appear green but are actually business ventures.

"This isn't about making money, it's about positive change," the former designer said.

That means providing jobs to a country suffering from widespread unemployment.
Regardless of the model, the money from the sale of trashion products goes back to the
communities that craft them. Both Plastic Works and KS also support local projects in
health and sanitation.

Saving is rewarding - Tips to save water

2008-07-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

1. Shorten your shower by a minutes or two and you'll save up to 150 gallons per month. Even better if you bathe using water caught in a pail. Consider bathing young children together.

2. Turn off the tap when lathering soap, brushing teeth, shampooing, shaving and washing face. Place a bucket to collect excess water when showering. This can be used for other purpose, such as for toilet use.

3. Bathe your pets outdoors in an area in need of water. Do the same when washing your car.

4. Use a toilet bowl with a half flush option and minimise the number of flushes in a day.

5. Do not use running water to wash vegetables, dishes, clothes and cars. Use water collected in a sink/pail instead. Do not flush water to wash the driveway and sidewalk. Use a broom instead.

6. Designate one glass for your drinking water each day or refill a water bottle. This will cut down on the number of glasses to wash.

7. When doing laundry, match the water level to the size of the load. When buying new appliances, consider those that offer cycle and load size adjustments, they're more water and energy efficient.

8. Do not over-water the lawn and avoid watering during rainy season. Best to water the garden early in the morning of late evening to avoid evaporation from heat and wind. Spreading a layer of organic mulch around plants retains moisture and saves water, time and money. Collect rain water to be used for the garden.

9. Repair leaking taps and toilets and always ensure taps are tightly closed. Monitor your water bill for unusually high use. Your bill and water meter are tools that can help you discover leaks. Cjeck internal water piping regularly and report main distribution leakages to the relevant authorities.

10. Encourage your school system and local government to develop and promote water conservation among children and adults. Make suggestions to your employer about ways to save water and money at work. Share water conservation tips with friends and neighbours.

>> The right way to recycle rainwater

Uses of Garbage Enzyme

2008-07-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

Garbage enzyme has many uses for the environment, agriculture and even in homes.

In agriculture, garbage enzyme is used:
- to reduce the usage of chemical fertilizers
- to keep the farm free from insects and infections
- as a soil fertilizer for vegetable growing
- as a natural pesticide and herbicide
- to convert sandy land to fertile farm land
- keep the air cool and clean in the farm atmosphere
- clean the dirty and impure water in the farm

In homes, garbage enzyme is used:
- as a household cleaning liquid
- to remove foul odours, molds and grime in the kitchen and toilet
- as an anti-bacterial and anti-viral agent
- to drive away insects
- to clean carpets and remove ticks
- for laundry washing and ironing
- for mopping floors
- for cleaning cars

The enzymes not only chase away the insects but also reduces foul odours and infections.

Enzymes are added to the animal feed to aid in their food digestion.

Enzymes are also added to the drinking water in the farms.

The animal waste are used as organic fertilizers for growing crops in the fields.

Odours from the pigs and their waste are greatly reduced through the use of enzymes.

The animal waste are flushed into this pond and duckweeds grow and flourish due to the rich nutrients present.

A closer view of the duckweeds in the pond.

Kitchen or garbage waste when added with enzymes make good fertilizers for the soil.

Even sandy land can be converted into a piece of useful farm land!

After 4 months, the plants on this piece of sandy land have grown to a considerable height.

Animal waste is carefully packed away to be used as organic fertilizers.

Now we get abundant crops of organic fruits with the use of enzymes!

Source: www.o3enzyme.com

Related Topic: Converting Chicken Waste to Power

Use Enzyme to Reduce Global Warming

2008-07-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

What is Garbage Enzyme?

Dr Rosukon's Garbage Enzyme is a complex organic substance of protein chains and mineral salts and juvenile hormones.

Functions of Garbage Enzyme

- resolve / decompose
- transform / change
- compose / make up / combine
- catalysis

As a result of catalysis, ozone is produced which can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and this in turn reduces global warming.

This enzyme can be produced easily with the organic waste from our kitchens.

During enzyme production, O₃+ NO₃+CO₃are generated and these could help purify and whiten the clouds in the sky. Those clouds that trap lots of heavy metals appear dark. Those dark clouds cause more heat to be trapped on earth due to the greenhouse effect. O₃(ozone) from the garbage enzymes could reduce the heavy metals in the clouds and this would reduce global warming.

More NO₃ (nitrite) in the air is useful as nutrients for the plants and soil.

Nutrient for Plant & Enviromental Friendly to Earth

If every household makes and uses enzymes, it would help tremendously in the reduction of global warming.

How to Make Garbage Enzyme

Uses of Garbage Enzyme

Source: www.o3enzyme.com

How to Make Garbage Enzyme

2008-07-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

Black sugar is one of the ingredients needed for making garbage enzyme.

This kitchen waste is another ingredient used for the production of garbage enzyme.

These bottles contain kitchen waste with black sugar and water. Fermentation will take place in the bottles for 3 months. Then after filtration and removal of the residue, garbage enzyme is obtained. The residue can be used again for a new batch of production by adding fresh garbage. The residue can also be dried, then blended and buried in the ground as a fertilizer.

These bottles of garbage enzyme are ready for use.

What is Garbage Enzyme?

Uses of Garbage Enzyme

Source: www.o3enzyme.com

Use Garbage Enzyme to Save Our Earth

2008-07-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Ozone has been recognised as effective bleaching agent and a powerful disinfectant, killing bacteria and funguses more rapidly than chlorine. Ozone helps clean the air and give higher oxygen level in the environment

The solution: use Enzyme
Save the earth with the waste product from our kitchen

House Hold, Non-toxic & pollution free kitchen, Remove the foul odour, mold and grime

Garbage Enzyme

This morning, a friend told me of a garbage enzyme workshop workshop which contributes to a better earth friendly environment.

I was my first time hearing of such thing. With the changes in the climate and the many waste thrown into garbage, I was listening attentively to her, when I found out that we can contribute to the climate change through a simple DIY formula using kitchen waste (fruits' skin and unwanted vegetables).

This not only helps in protecting our ozone layer and lower global temperature, but actually provides a natural and environment friendly way to use the enzyme liquid as a household cleaner, air purifier, laundry and floor detergent, shampoo (yes, shampoo!!), body care, car care and or course as an organic fertiliser.

It removes odor, molds and grime, it's antibacterial and anti-viral.

It's all natural, and in fact, it doesn't even smell and actually acts as an insecticide as well!

The dilution ratio for usage is approximately 1:1000 to use enzyme as insecticide, 1:100 for pesticide, diluting it 200X to be used as air-refreshener and 500x as hormones for plants to get more fruits or flowers.

1 Tbp of enzymes for 1 litre of detergent water/dish washing liquid/shampoo (or 1tsp for 500cc) will help reduce the side effects in chemicals and enhance the nutrients.

The ratio of making this would be mixing 3 parts of the unwanted fruits and vegetables to 1 part of brown sugar (not sure whether this is gula melaka or that special brown sugar for making desserts) with 10 parts of water.

Keep these in an airtight container and leave it unopened for 3 months. After that, you can pour them into individual containers for your daily household usage and personal care.

I hope to be able to go and listen more to this enzyme talk in English on Saturday, 9th August, 1-4pm at Putra Stadium, Bukit Jalil. I understand there's also a whole day awareness program on climate changes starting from 10am, right up to 8pm.

Imposing giants - Global reef checks show the species have disappeared from even the best reefs over most of its range.

2008-04-13T02:50:00.000-07:00

Imposing giants

HUMPHEAD wrasses (also known as Napoleon or Maori wrasse) are among the most beautiful, yet bizarre-looking, fish in the sea. With their bulbous lips, prominent forehead humps and a body pattern consisting of swirls, spots and lines in shadesof electric blue, grey and green, humpheads rank high on recre ational divers' "must see" list - yet they are being eaten out of existence,
Global reef checks show the species have disappeared from even the best reefs over most of its range. In Peninsular Malaysia's east coast, in islands such as Redang, Tioman and Tenggol, divers report that humpheads have vanished from reefs. Thefe is little information on humphead trade in the peninsula.
Humpheads occur patchily through- out the lndo-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. Though widely distributed, they are not abundant in the wild. Late sexual maturity (they breed only in the fifth year or later), slow growth, predictable spawning sites, hermaphroditism (sex reversal) and rarity make them highly vulnerable to over-exploitation.
Humpheads can grow up to 2.3m in length and 190kg in weight, and live up to 40 to 50 years. Once a female reaches a size of 20 to 22kg, it turns into a male and thrive to be the dominant male. In Pulau Layang-Layang, Dr Steve Oakley has observed the dominant male mating with over 100 females in one day.
Adult humpheads are usually found at reef slopes while juveniles, at the reef top. Their colours change with age - from silver-grey with yellow spots in juveniles to a deep olive green with black spots in adults. The males have prominent humps on their foreheads and are greener in colour.
Humpheads are omnivores and feed on molluscs, fish and crustaceans, among others. Oakley says as humphead numbers decline, the reef ecology will change. He says spiny sea urchins and crown-of-thorns starfish have invaded many reefs simply because humpheads, which prey on them, have declined in numbers.
Unlike some species of groupers, humpheads have not been commercially bred yet. Farming efforts have failed to go beyond the larval stage.
Apart from the humphead wrasse, various species of groupers are also netted in large numbers for the live reef fish trade, triggering yet another worry.
IUCN-World Conservation Union has listed eight species of groupers as "endangered" and intends to propose some for inclusion in the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species.

The Asian craving for a particular reef fish is emptying our seas - Eaten to the brink

2008-04-13T02:45:00.000-07:00

Eaten to the brink

The Asian craving for a particular reef fish is emptying our seas.

HUNDREDS of fish cages bob up and down in the waters of Marudu Bay, off Kudat in 5abah. In these cages are sought-after marine delicacies such as groupers, lobsters and crabs, as well as a staggering number of humphead wrasses.
From the massive number of humpheads holed up in the floating pens, it is impossible to tell that this is a fish species classed as "endangered" by the IUCN-World Conservation Union and whose trade is governed by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
In Kudat, like in the Sabahan coastal towns of Tawau, Sandakan and Lahad Datu, fishermen continue to haul in humpheads
(Cheilinus undulatus). Several times a week, these fish and the popular groupers, are bundied alive into air-filled plastic bags which are then packed into polystyrene boxes, transported to Kota Kinabalu, and sent on the evening flight to Hong Kong or Singapore. It is a time-perfected technique which gets seafood, alive and swimming, into restaurants.
Sabah exported 27,000 tails of humphead last year - an alarming figure since scientists believe wild humphead stocks in Sabah waters are almost exhausted and aggressive fishing can only doom the species."
Once a normal table fish, humpheads (or su me/) somehow acquired a luxury tag in the early 1990s. Those who want to flaunt their wealth and success would indulge in this pricey fish in restaurants in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Malaysia. What used to
sell for RM30 a kg in 1980 now goes for RM250 to RM300 a kg. Soon a scramble for the fish ensued.
Before long, fears of over-fishing pushed humpheads onto Appendix II of Cites in October 2004 - the first coral reef fish m be listed. Everyone thought all would be well since trade would now be controlled through import and export permits.
On the contrary, the Cites listing has done little for humpheads in Sabah as trade quotas remain high. Many are stumped by the export ration set by Sabah Fisheries Department last February - a monthly.200 tails for each of the 19 exporters. This works out to 45,600 tails annually, a figure deemed excessive by many, considering that it is five times Indonesia's annual quota of 8,900 tails.
"There is concern over how the export quota was set as the amount of humphead wrasse exported last year is even higher than
that before the Cites listing," says Maritime Institute of Malaysia (MIMA) senior researcher Tan Kim Hooi, who has written a
policy document on humphead wrasse fisheries.
Doubts also arose over the scientific ratiohale behind the quota. A Cites Appendix II listing requires a non-detrimental finding (NDF) study to determine that trade will not threaten survival of the species. This study is only now being done.
Sabah Fisheries, World Wide Fund for Nature and wildlife trade monitoring body, Traffic, are assessing wild humphead populations in Pulau Lankayan, Kudat and Sempoma. They are expected to recommend a new export quota when the present one
expires in June.

Dwindling stocks
There are already signs that Asians' taste for steamed su mei is depleting wild stocks.
"Sabah's export of the high-value fish last year, although high, was just over half of the allowable quota. This can mean two things -either humphead populations are not really that big or the species has been over-fished," says Tan.
Also, Sabahan fishermen and traders all tell the same tale about the fish they call mameng: the catch has dropped as have fish sizes, when compared to the 90s.
"Ten years ago; i can get several fish of lOkg to 15kg in a week. Now, not even one in a month," says Kudat fish trader Wong Sin Hin. Today, the harvest is mostly juvenile fish which have to be fattened up in pens over three months or more, to reach the preferred plate size of 500g to lkg (about 30-40cm in length) before shipment.
Marine scientist Dr Steve Oak!ey warns that netting young fish before they have had a chance to breed will curtail future stocks of the species. Insisting on size restrictions for humphead harvests, he says breeding adult fish should be left in the sea. Better yet, he adds, humphead fisheries should be closed until it can be proven sustainable.
Oaldey, whose group the Tropical Research And Conservation Centre (Tracc) has surveyed reefs in Sabah and Sarawak, believes hump-heads are locally extinct over most of the South China Sea. Viable breeding populations exist in two islands protected by dive tourism: Sipadan and Layang-Layang. Another healthy group exists off Brunei - but only because it is within the Champion oil held, a protected "no fishing" zone. Tracc surveys of Layang-Layang between 1996 and 2002 found a big humphead population of 300 females, 21 males and 100 sub-adults. However, the fish were not seen last year. The reason, Oakley fears, could be because a Chinese vessel was allowed to fish there.
For now, Sabah's humphead catch figures remain impressive only because stocks are coming from the Philippines, which does not trade in the fish. Traders and fishermen in Kudat attest to this and the fact that Filipino fishers use cyanide to stun the fish, a destructive fishing method that can kill them as well as harm other marine life and the fragile coral reef habitat.
Lax enforcement, together with difficulties in patrolling Sabah's 1,600km of coastline and extensive fishing area of 51,360 sq km, share the blame for the prevalent fish smuggling.
As humpheads from foreign waters are traded as Sabah's, Tan of Mima says a generous export quota will deplete humphead
stocks not only in Malaysian waters, but also in Indonesia and the Philippines. Already, high demand and lucrative prices have fuelled poaching.
In December 2006, a Chinese vessel was detained at Tnbbataha Marine Park in Palawan, the Philippines, with 800 live fish
onboard, including 300 humpheads. In the same year, the Bunaken Marine Park in northem Sulawesi saw three cases of poaching
involving 207,450 and 36 humpheads.
Indonesia had set an annual export of 8,000 tails in 2005 but revised it to 8,900 tails last year, and only allows harvest from specified areas, namely Papua, Maluku and Nusa Tenggara.

Over-dining
But high exports of humpbeads is not the only concern. Equally worrying is their being eaten in large numbers in local restaurants. Chinese and Hong Kong tourists to Sabah routinely feast on su mei as it is cheaper than back home.
Cites. however, only regulates internationalm trade of wildlife. At the airport in Kota Kinabalu. frozen humpbeads are going for RM75 a kg. The sales personnel look puzzled when asked about the need for Cites permits.
To curb local consumption. Oakley wants national and state rules tightened to bar humphead fishing and give it the protected status that it needs.
"Humpheads are even more endangered than orang utans because there are more orang utans in Sabah forests than humpheads
in its waters. But you can still eat the fish in a KK (Kota Kinabalu) restaurant. We are decimating this species for a poor reason ... merely to put a fish on the table."
He adds that humpheads, being a major draw of the dive industry in Seychelles and Maldives, are totally protected there,
"Malaysia needs to realise that tourists bring in more money than selling the last few humpheads would."
Apart from harvest restrains, marine sanctuaries can further raise hope for humpheads. "With these protected areas, you will guard the habitat not only for humpheads but for other marine species too," says WWF marine scientist Dr Annadel Salvio Cabanban.
She says the recent survey of Pulau Lankayan off Sandakan, a popular dive destination, uncovered 23 juvenile humpheads,
with the largest one measuring 25cm. "With long-term protection of Lankayan, we might get a breeding population there in 20 years' time." And because humpbead larvae travel with ocean currents, Cabanban says those produced in other protected areas might reach our waters. SQ she is hopeful for the, species if more such sites are found.
Protection efforts should also not ignore seagrass beds and mangroves as both are important habitats for humpheads, serving as nursery ground for many reef fish. It is also crucial to safeguard the humphead's breeding grounds. Humpheads display aggregate spawning behaviour by gathering at specific sites to breed. Fishermen can target such sites, so Mima researcher Siti Nazatul lzura Mohd lshak recommends that they be documented and managed, such as by having a closed season during spawning period.
To safeguard humphead trade, Sabah Fisheries has held several workshops to inform traders about the risks of over-fishing
and Cites requirements. Come July, a new and most likely lower - export quota is expected. But are there enough humpbeads
left in the wild to repopulate our reefs? In the end, the fate of this fish hangs on just one simple gesture from people - don't order su mei for dinner.

Industrial pollution in China

2008-04-13T02:08:00.000-07:00

Chinese farmers collecting dead fish hauled from a pond polluted by nearby factory discharges in south-west China's Chongqing municipality last month.

China faces a daunting task reaching its own goals to curb profligate energy use and serious pollution due to stubborn resistance in the booming industrial sector.

The Philippines expressed alarm over the commercial hunting of the thresher shark

2008-04-13T02:02:00.000-07:00

File photo of fishermen transporting a load of harvested shark fins aboard a small outrigger from the port of Jolo town in the southern Philippine island of Sulu.

Last month, the Philippines expressed alarm over the commercial hunting of the thresher shark, considered a vulnerable species worldwide. philippine wildlife officials said there had been a wholesale slaughter of the 3m-fish for Chinese restaurants.

Dry spring in the Roman bridge over the Guadalquivir river in Cordoba

2008-04-13T01:58:00.000-07:00

View of the Roman bridge over the Guadalquivir river in Cordoba, southern Spain.The 331m bridge was built by the Romans in the first century AD and remodelled last year. Records show Spain is experiencing one of its driest springs.

Water woes in Kampala

2008-04-13T01:49:00.000-07:00

Water woes
A woman filling jugs with water at a water distribution point in the Nuguru Go Down Slum in Kampala.

The United Nations declared 2008 the international Year of Sanitation, and it made use of international Water Day on March 21 to highlight the issue.

"In teh world today, there are 15 million deaths caused by infectious diseases," said David Heyman, World Health Organisation assistant director general for health security and environment. "if we had good sanitation today, and good water supplies,we could decrease that immediately by two million-those children who are dying unnecessarily from diarrhoea diseases."

Clogged canals in downtown Jakarta

2008-04-13T01:41:00.000-07:00

Clogged canals

Scavengers collecting polythene and other recyclable items from a polluted canal in downtown Jakarta.

Jakarta's water supply has suffered from regular cuts in recent years as pollution enters its main source of water through canals where communities live alongside, as well as from rivers that cross it on their way to the Java Sea.

an estimated 220 of the Palos Verdes blues butterflies existed in the wild in California

2008-04-13T01:27:00.000-07:00

Males are largely blue, Females appear grey

CAPTIVE-breeding has raised the numbers of a rare butterfly species. Trouble is, there are not many places to release them.

Last year, an estimated 220 of the Palos Verdes blues butterflies existed in the wild in California, so few that experts feared they could be wiped out by a single hillside brush fire.

Yet in 12 days earlier last month, 2,400 blues - three times more than forecast - emerged at a laboratory housed at Moorpark College, about a 45-minute drive to the north-west from Los Angeles. But with a life span of three to 38 days, hundreds of the butterflies may die in captivity.

Biologists can't simply release the butterflies in any nice-looking garden or park. This is a federally protected species, and there are regulations to follow. Also, landowners must be willing to accept the butterflies with all their
protections. Permits ean take months. Officials fear publicity could attract butterfly poachers.

A coastal bluff on the Palos Verdes Peninsula was approved for release recently but with the large number of blues, federal wildlife officials are scrambling to identify more sites on the peninsula for the butterflies.

Chongqing denies further mass relocation in Three Gorges area to save environment

2007-11-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

A Chongqing government spokesman on Thursday denied media reports that another four million people would be relocated because of environmental problems caused by the Three Gorges project.

　　Last month, China Business News quoted vice mayor of Chongqing Yu Yuanmu as saying the ecological safety of the area was at risk from the growing population.

　　But spokesman Wen Tianping, speaking at a regular press conference held by the Chongqing authorities on Thursday, insisted that the plan to encourage millions to leave their homes was just part of the urbanization drive and was not a forced relocation.

　　"The reports that another four million people will be moved out of the Three Gorges Reservoir area are not accurate," Wen said.

　　"The municipality aims to attract three to four million people from rural to urban areas by 2020 to narrow the urban-rural wealth gap," he said.

　　Another vice mayor of Chongqing Tang Xiwei said last month that the municipality''s development would focus on the areas within a radius of one hour''s drive from the downtown area.

　　Chongqing plans to have 22 million residents in the area by 2020, three to four million more than the current 18 million, according to Tang.

　　The area accounts for 78 percent of Chongqing''s economy volume and is expected to account for 80 percent by 2020, Tang added.

　　On June 7, Chongqing and Chengdu, capital of neighboring Sichuan Province, were selected by the National Development and Reform Commission, the country''s top economic planner, as pilot cities to work towards coordinated and balanced development between urban and rural areas.

　　In March 1997, the city, which sits on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, was approved as a centrally-administered municipality, the fourth after Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. It was expected to spearhead economic development in China''s central and western regions.

　　Covering 82,000 square kilometers, the municipality has a population of more than 27.98 million, 55 percent of whom live in rural areas.

　　China has relocated 1.22 million people for the Three Gorges project so far and will have relocated nearly 1.4 million by the conclusion of the relocation process by the summer flood season next year, according to an official with the office of the Three Gorges Project Committee of the State Council.

Save Our Environment

2007-11-27T06:12:00.000-08:00

World　Environment　Day，commemorated　each　year　on　5June，is　one　of　the　 principal　vehicles　through　which　the　United　Nations　stimulates　worldwide 　awareness　of　the　environment　and　enhances　political　attention　and　 action.

TheWorld　Environment　Day　slogan　selected　for　2007isMelting　Ice－a　Hot　 Topic？In　support　of　International　Polar　Year，theWED　themeselectedfor　 2007focuses　on　the　effects　thatclimatechangeishaving　on　polar　ecosystems 　and　communities，and　the　ensuing　consequences　aroundtheworld.

Inresponse　to　the　slogan　and　in　light　ofthe　core　work　and　keytask　 ofenvironmental　protection　in　China，The　State　Environmental　Protection　 Administration　selected　the　"Less　Emission　of　Pollutants　and　the　 Environment－Friendly　Society"as　China's　slogan　for　2007WEDtoshowcase　the 　Chinese　government　and　people's　determination　andaction.

OnJune 5，2006，Bei－jing and　Vancouver，host　cities of　the　next　Olympic　 Summer　and　Winter　Games，and　theUnited　Nations　Environment　Program　(UNEP) jointlycalled　on　car　owners　in　the　two　cities　to　drive　one　day　less　in　 2007tomark　the　World　Environment　Day.The　Construction　and　Environment　 Department　of　the　Beijing　Organizing　Committee　for　the　Games　of　the　XXIX 　Olympiad　(BOCOG)urged　BOCOG　staff　to　do　their　part　in　creating　 conditions　for　one　more　"blue　sky"in　theChinesecapital.

Don’t reuse food and water containers

2007-07-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Do not reuse plastic food and water containers. This is the advice given by Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

He said this was because the quality of such products was “questionable” and Malaysians were at risk of being exposed to chemicals which might seep into the food or liquid.

“Takeaway plastic food containers used in eating outlets are disposable items and designed for single use only.

They are not intended for repeated storage of food,” he said in an interview with The Star.

Instead, Dr Chua said that people should only use reusable plastic food containers such as cups, plates, bowls, bottles and boxes used in household kitchens for repeated storage of food because these containers have attributes such as sturdiness and thermal stability.

He emphasised that takeaway food containers which were labelled “microwave safe” for reheating should not be reused.

As for mineral water plastic bottles, Dr Chua said it was not advisable to keep on reusing them.

“It is not easy to clean. You can never reach the inside and in the hot Malaysian weather, the stability is questionable,” he said.

His comments were based on a recently concluded study commissioned by the ministry to the Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, carried out by Prof Dr Mustafa Ali Mohamad.

The study showed that in 45 of the 47 containers examined, at least one chemical was detected. However, the level of the leachate detected was low.

The scope of the study was to analyse chemicals in plastic polystyrene food containers.

The chemicals analysed were styrene monomer, bisphenol A (BPA), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), benzyl butyle phthalate (BBP), di- 2-ethylexyl adipate (DEHA) and di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP).

The samples included different types of food and water containers and were extracted at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Dr Chua said the level of chemicals was low “but you cannot rule out the small amounts excreted which will accumulate in the body.”

He cited the potential that BBP had in affecting a person’s endocrine function such as the thyroid gland and pancreas. Dr Chua also said it was safe to freeze meat directly in its original commercial plastic wrapping.

For long storage, rewrap or over-wrap the meat tightly with moisture-proof freezer bags to maintain the quality and texture of the meat, he said.

Some idea for waste recycling - Old PC recycling

2007-03-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

Monitor Recyclee for smoking plate

Mouse recycle for art display

Mouse recycle to art display

Pc Casing turn into BBQ fire holder

Keybord turn to art display

Monitor turn to pet house

Don't Throw away your old PC...Try to do something useful from itYour keyboard can do this...

How to recycle plastic?

Sea levels on the rise

2007-02-25T02:00:00.000-08:00

Over the past 30 years, temperatures in the Arctic have been creeping up, rising half a degree Celsius with attendant increases in glacial melting and decreases in sea ice.

Experts predict that at current levels of greenhouse gases-car-bon dioxide alone is at 375 parts per million-the earth may warm by as such as 35C, matching conditions roughly 130,000 years ago. Now a refined climate model is predicting, among other things, sea level rises of as much as six metres, according to research results published in the journal Science.

Modeller Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and palaeoclimatologist Jonathan Over-peck of the University of Arizona matched results from the Community climate system Model and climate records preserved in ice cores, exposed coral reefs, fossilised pollen and the chemical makeup of shells to determine the accuracy of the computer simulation.

Roughly 130,000 years ago, the Arctic enjoyed higher levels of solar radiation, leading to increased warming in the summer and the retreat of glaciers worldwide. The model correctly predicted the extent of the resulting Arctic ice melt, enough to raise sea levels by roughly three metres.

"Getting the past climate change correct in these models gives us more confidence in their ability to predict future climate change," otto-Bliesner says.

"These ice sheets have melted before and sea levels rose. The warmth needed isn't that much above present conditions."

But sea levels rose as much as six metres 130,000 years ago and Overpeck speculates that may have been the result of additional melting in Antarctica.

After all, the ice there is not all landlocked; some rests in the ocean and a little warming in sea temperatures could melt it or pry it loose. And this time around, the warming is global, rather than concentrated in the Arctic.

"In the Antarctic, all you have to do is break up the ice sheet and float it away and that would raise the sea level," he says.

"It's just like throwing a bunch of ice cubes into a full glass of water and watching the water spill over."

Such a sea level rise would permanently inundate low-lying lands like new orleans, southern Florida, Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Already sea level rise has increased to an inch per decade, thanks to melting ice and warm water expansion, according to Overpeck.

And evidence that the Arctic is exponentially warming continues to accumulate.

Indeed, in another paper in the same issue of Science, Goran Ekstrom of Harvard University reported a marked increase in so-called glacial earthquakes-seismic events recorded throughout the world when Greenland's glaciers slip past rock-since 2002.

In fact, last year alone saw twice as many quakes as in previous years, with most of that increase coming during the summer months.

"We need to start serious measures to reduce greenhouse gases within the next decade," Overpeck says.

"If we don't do something soon, we're committed to four to six metres of sea level rise in the future.

How to Save Gas at Home

2006-03-27T03:43:00.000-08:00

Light your stove only when you are ready to cook and ingredients are within reach
Pressure cooking saves fuel and cookirg time
Avoid using too much water when cooking as it wastes fuel and it takes a longer time to evaporate.
Reduce flame when boiling starts to save fuel.
Cover cooking pots and pans with a lid to prevent beat from evaporating.
use a small burner as it consumes 6% to 10% less gas than the big burner.
Clean the burner or wick if you see an orange, yellow or non‑uniform flame.
Source : Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca)

How to conserve Fuel On the Road

2006-03-27T03:38:00.000-08:00

Practise car‑pooling and use public transport.
Plan your trips and avoid stop-and‑go traffic.
Have good braking habits as stopand‑go driving wastes fuel.
Use clutch only when changing gears to prevent loss of energy and clutch lining damage
Maintain a steady cruising speed
Do not overfill your petrol tanks as fuel will be wasted through evaporation and spillage.
Check and service your car regularly.
Clean air filter regularly to avoid rapid wear of engine components and higher fuel consumption.
Use correct gears as incorrect shifting can lead to as much as 20% increase in fuel use.
Check your tyres ‑ under‑inflated tyres increase rolling resistance and fuel use.

Material for Water Filter to get the clean water

2005-12-29T06:43:00.000-08:00

Garnet (USA) *1
Most ideal for use in domestic industrial water filtretion due to high
density and the high level of hardness and toughness. It is efficient for removing particles, sediments, mud and suspendent solids in the water.

Zeolite Sand (Australia) *2
Zeolite have an unusual crystaltine structure and with greater absorbing power.

Anthracite Carbon (USA)
Reduce chlorine, smell and chemica meanwhile trapping the sediments, being the primary function the carbon, it leaves some chlorine in the water.

Mining Graded Sand (Local)
Most idea for use in domestic industrial water due to high level of hardness and toughness. It is efficient for removing particles, sediments, mud and suspendent solid in the water.

Fine Silicon Sand
Removes dirts prevent disease such as Tyhoid, Cholera, Bihdryia
Amoeba.
Prevent Virus like :Tyhoid, Cholera, Bihdryia and Amoeba

*1 People love garnets because of their colors and shape. The most common color is deep red, but they also come in black, green, cream, and other colors. Perfect garnet crystals have 12 diamond-shaped sides. Clear (but colored) garnets are used in jewelry, but garnets more commonly contain tiny inclusions that make them opaque and 'dirty' looking. The unusual hardness of garnets (H ~ 7) makes non-jewelry garnets great in sandpaper.

*2 Zeolites are an unusual group of minerals and are becoming an important asset as a healing crystal. They combine, rarity, beauty, complexity and unique crystal habits. Many like to use the healing effects of Zeolites. Healing properties differ depending on variety. Clear Apophyllite is used to bring a spiritual consciousness. Stilbite aids psychic knowing, guidance, and direction. We will be adding more about the healing properties of Zeolites in the near future.

How to recycle plastic?

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All plastics can be recycled but what is collected depends on what scrap dealers want to buy. So check with your local recycling, centre first, To raise acceptance by scrap dealers, do these: rinse and dry the bottles, flatten PET bottles, separate the different kinds of plastic (caps and labels), and remove paper labels and stickers.

These can be recycled:

PET bottles (that used t6 contain carbonated drinks, mineral water, cooking oil)
Bottles and containers for packing foodstuff, toiletries, lubricant oils
Film-grade plastic (bags, sweet and fruit wrappers, instant noodle packs, fruit wrappers)
Household plastic ware (pots, baskets, cutlery, kitchen ware, hangers, furniture)
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) items (pipes, casings, gutters, water pipes)
Miscellaneous: blister packs, egg cartons, drinking straws, video cassettes, CDs, raffia, toothbrush, pens,
Plastic parts from computers and electrical appliances
Automobile plastics (bumper, spoiler, dashboards, mudguard)
Polystyrene. These are currently not collected for recycling or cannot be recycled:
Containers for hazardous materials (chemicals, paints, agro-chemicals)
Laboratory apparatus
Nylon
Soft plastic-aluminium packs for packing biscuits, coffee and creamer. These are not recycled because the process of segregating both materials is lengthy.

What is it recycled into?

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Recycled resin is used alone or mixed with virgin resin to make all kinds of goods, such as non-food grade plastic products, car interiors, packaging items, plastic lumber and synthetic fibres.

Why recycle plastic?

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Plastics are derived from non-renewable fossil fuels. As they cannot decay naturally, they take up precious landfill space. When burnt in dumpsites, plastics release toxic fumes. Plastics production involves the use of potentially harmful chemicals, which are added as stabilizers or colorants.