Natural Environment Blog

International travel travel company, Abercrombie & Kent, have partnered with Australian based conservation organization, Rainforest Rescue, to help ensure that Australia’s ancient Daintree rainforest is protected forever.

Abercrombie & Kent (A&K), who specialize in luxury journeys across seven continents, is supporting Rainforest Rescue’s “Daintree Buyback and Protect Forever” project.

About the Project

This Daintree Buyback and Protect Forever project identifies, and purchases precious rainforest at risk of development and establishes nature refuge status which protects it forever under Queensland law. 

Since it started in 2000, the project has purchased and protected 10 properties in the Daintree, thanks to individuals’ donations and corporate support. These are properties that could otherwise have been purchased by a developer wanting to build.

About the Daintree

The Daintree rainforest is located in Tropical Far North Queensland Australia, just north of Cairns. The Daintree is among the most significant regional ecosystems in the world.

The Daintree contains the largest range of plants and animals anywhere on Earth. Unfortunately, it also contains the highest number of threatened species anywhere on Earth.

At more than 135 million years old, the Daintree rainforest is also among the oldest rainforests in the world.

Although the Daintree rainforest is a World Heritage Listed area, many parts are still not protected and are under theat from development. 

The Partnership

As part of the partnership, A&K will be encouraging its clients to visit the Daintree rainforest, to learn about the region, as well as to learn about this project. 

A&K, who are also involved with Friends of Conservation, see travel as a way of educating individuals in the diversity of culture and the untamed beauty of the natural world. 

“A&K has always believed passionately in adventures that both respect the natural environment and benefit indigenous peoples.  Our long held philosophy is governed in equal parts by this unswerving commitment to conservation whilst creating lasting travel experiences. It is this thinking that has lead to the establishment of A&K Philanthropy and the announcement of this initiative with Rainforest Rescue. We aim to make a difference whilst giving A&K travellers the most inspiring lifetime experiences.” says Jorie Butler Kent, Vice Chairman of Abercrombie & Kent Group, who is also founder of A&K Philanthropy. 

Rainforest Rescue Corporate Partnerships Manager, Lana Nancarrow said ”It’s great to have organisations like Abercrombie & Kent supporting us, as with many of our other corporate partners, they’re business philosophy is founded on a strong commitment to conserving our natural environment”.

Rainforest Resue has been in business for over 10 years now, and have been busy establishing a number of projects dedicated to conservation.  They are completely supported by donations from individuals, philanthropists, business sponsorship and foundation grants. They do not receive government funding.

Rainforests are some of the world’s most ancient and complex ecosystems. They barely cover 2% of the Earth, yet more than half of all plant and animal species live there. 

Despite covering such as small part of the Earth, rainforests continue to be destroyed every day. At the current rate of deforestation, we will only have 20% of the world’s forests left by 2030.

Saving the world’s rainforests from deforestation is not a small task (just ask the UK government!). Many environmentally conscience individuals and organizations around the world are devising new ways to protect our valuable rainforests. 

Click to Save the Rainforests

One new way of protecting rainforests comes in the form of “The Rainforest Site”. The Rainforest Site is a website that allows us all to do our bit for the rainforests. By using this site, you can help keep rainforests around the world alive.

And the great thing is, it doesn’t cost you any money. Not a cent. 

All you need to do is click a button on The Rainforest Website. When you click that button, The Rainforest Website gets money from their sponsors. They then pass this money to charity organizations who help preserve the rainforests. 

According to The Rainforest Site, more than 150 million visitors have preserved more than 40,500 acres of land to date.

How Does it Work?

When you click on the button, the website displays advertising from their sponsors. These sponsors actually pay The Rainforest Site so that their advertising can appear.

100% of the sponsors’ money goes to their charity partners, who fund programs to protect and preserve rainforest habitat.

So it would follow that, the more popular the site is, the more likely sponsors will want to advertise (i.e. more people are seeing their ads). 

Who are the Charity Partners?

When you click, the following organizations get money (from the website’s sponsors). These organizations then use the money to protect the world’s rainforests:

• The Nature Conservancy
• Rainforest Conservation Fund
• World Land Trust-US
• Rainforest2Reef

These organizations protect and preserve rainforest habitat in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, the United States, Canada, the Pacific, and more.

Cool, I Want to Help! How do I do it? 

To help save the rainforests:

1. Open The Rainforest Site
2. Click on the button entitled “Click Here to Give - it’s FREE!”
3. Repeat each day 

That’s all!

By repeating each day, you’ll ensure that money is finding it’s way to these important organizations who help protect the world’s rainforests.

To Help You Remember…

To help you remember, you could set The Rainforest Site as your “home page” when you open up the browser. Most browsers let you do this through their “Options” dialog box. 

For example:

• In Firefox, go to “Tools > Options“
• In Internet Explorer, go to “Tools > Internet Options“
• In Safari, it’s under “Edit > Preferences“

World's longest insect - a 56.7cm stick insect. Photo by Natural History Museum in Britain.

The world’s longest insect has been discovered in the Borneo rainforests and handed to the Natural History Museum in London.

The insect, a stick-insect, measures 56.7cm long. 

New Species

Not only is the stick-insect the world’s longest insect, it’s also a newly discovered species. The insect has been named Phobaeticus chani or “Chan’s Megastick” in honor of Datuk Chan Chew Lun, who donated the specimen to the Museum.

The dead insect was initially found 10 years ago by a collector who had no idea that it was the longest insect ever discovered, or that it was a new species. It wasn’t until an entomologist, Datuk Chan Chew Lun, saw it in the collection that the significance of the insect was realized.

Longest Body

Even without its legs, Chan’s Megastick has a body that measures 35.7cm. This is a world record for the longest insect body. 

Previous Record Holders

The previous record holder for longest insect was another stick-insect called Phobaeticus serratipes. It could also be found in Malaysia, as well as parts of Indonesia.

The previous record for the longest insect body was 32.8cm long, held by the Phobaeticus kirbyi, also from Borneo.

‘We’ve known about both of the previous record holders for over a hundred years, so it is extraordinary that an even bigger species has only just been discovered,’ said Dr George Beccaloni, stick-insect expert at the Natural History Museum.

Unique Eggs

Size isn’t the only thing special about Chan’s Megastick. It’s eggs are thought to be unique in the insect world. According to the Museum, “Each egg capsule has wing-like extensions on either side like a miniature golden snitch, allowing them to drift in the wind when the female drops them, thereby helping the species to spread”.

Green groups have had a mixed reaction to a new report, commissioned by the British government, on how to deal with deforestation and its impact on climate change.

The Eliasch Review, entitled Climate Change: Financing Global Forests, provides a particular focus on the financial side of this issue. It has also been written in anticipation of a new climate change deal in Copenhagan in late, 2009.

A key recommendation of the report is for a multi-billion fund be set up to provide financial incentives to rainforest nations, so that their rainforests become more valuable alive than dead. 

The report also suggests that “an ambitious international climate change deal should aim to halve deforestation emissions by 2020 and make the forest sector carbon neutral by 2030″.

According to Greenpeace, this isn’t ambitious enough. 

“This report shows a dangerous lack of ambition and vastly underestimates the scale of the action needed to tackle climate change” says Andy Tait, Greenpeace head of biodiversity.

“The review assumes a target of 50% emissions cuts by 2050. This is simply inadequate. There is a strong possibility that the UK will be legally obliged to make an 80% reduction over this period, and all developed countries will need to hit and possibly exceed this target to effectively tackle climate change” he continued.

Note that Greenpeace have previously proposed their own solution for saving the world’s rainforests.

Tom Pickens, from Friends of the Earth was also concerned about the Eliasch Review. He said “This scheme has the potential to cause even greater conflict over forests”.

But not all environmental groups shared this sentiment.

WWF-UK say the review is “welcome recognition of the importance of reducing emissions through deforestation in a global agreement to tackle climate change”.

“Sufficient and long-term funding is needed to act as an incentive to protect forests. More than one billion of the world’s poorest people rely on forests for their livelihoods, so any measures to reduce emissions from deforestation must ensure that local communities enjoy continued access to, and benefits from, forests resources” said Emily Brickell, climate and forests officer for WWF-UK.

However, while WWF-UK praise the report for its recommendations, they still believe more could be done. In particular, they believe other sources of funding should be considered, such as the use of revenues from the auctioning of pollution permits under the EU emissions trading scheme.

View the Eliasch Review web page, or download the full report (large PDF document).

I recently wrote about the Prince’s Rainforest Project website - the website for Prince Charles’ Rainforest Project. As mentioned in that article, the main aim of the project is to make the rainforests “more valuable alive than dead”.

I just received the latest newsletter from the website announcing some of  the latest developments for the project.  One of these is that the project has now been added as a category in the Sony World Photography Awards for 2009. The project partnered with Sony Europe and the Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) to create a new prize category for the awards - The Prince’s Rainforest Award.

The photography awards are one of the largest photographic events in the world today, so this will almost certainly raise the profile of The Prince’s Rainforest Project.

The awards have two categories - amateur and professional. The winner of the professional category will receive funding from Sony to photograph the rainforests of the world. A selection of the amateur category will have their photographs displayed in Cannes during the awards festival. The photos will also be used by the Prince’s Rainforest Project throughout the year.

The World Photography Festival runs in Cannes from the 14th – 19th of April. The theme for 2009’s festival is The Environment.

Submissions are now open, so if you’re interested in participating, check out the official SWPA website.

In New Zealand, the Christchurch city council chopped down six trees smack bang in the middle of the city today. What makes it astonishing, is that today is both World Environment Day and Arbor Day!

The council has admitted that this was a “terrible coincidence”. The trees were being removed to make way for a controversial service lane.

Given the theme for his year’s World Environment Day (”Kick the habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy!”), this is even more of a “terrible coincidence”. Forest destruction is one of the worst causes of greenhouse gas.

And, the fact that New Zealand was also observing Arbor Day makes it almost laughable. The whole purpose of Arbor Day is to encourage individuals and groups to plant and care for trees!

And, as if that’s not enough, New Zealand was also the official host of this year’s World Environment Day…

One Christchurch resident said:

As a city that is known as the Garden City, we have that image to uphold. This makes a mockery of `let’s be aware of the environment and let’s walk or cycle to work

I imagine there will be a few red faces in the Christchurch City Council today!

Prince Charles has today launched the official website for his Rainforest Project. As I mentioned earlier, today is World Environment Day, so it’s a perfect day for launching a website aimed at saving the rainforests.

The main aim of the project, which launched on October 25 last year, is to make the rainforests “more valuable alive than dead”. Today, in many developing countries, rainforests are worth more dead than alive. This is mainly due to demand from developed countries for beef, palm oil, and soya.

When launching the Rainforest Project at a WWF dinner in October last year, Prince Charles said that rainforest destruction is responsible for around 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, second only to the energy sector. Further to this, both the Stern review and the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change report believe tackling deforestation may be one of the quickest and most cost effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

Prince Charles also said the following about the deforestation issue:

It seems to me that the central issue in this whole debate is how we put a true value on standing rainforests to the world community – we simply have to find ways of putting a price on them which makes them more valuable alive than dead.

Elaborating on this, Prince Charles says the project’s objective is:

To find innovative ways of paying the countries that are the custodians of the tropical rainforests an appropriate price for the eco-system services they provide and so out-compete the drivers of deforestation.

In today’s money driven society, this makes a lot of sense. After all, if countries are paid more for their eco-systems services than they are for the drivers of deforestation, then they will no longer allow their own rainforests to be destroyed. Furthermore, not only will they see value in keeping their existing rainforests, they will also see value in increasing the size of their rainforests - after all, more rainforest means more money.

How Will The Project Achieve Its Objective?

The project is engaging with rainforest nations, governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations to find the solutions to deforestation.

The project is also backed by 13 major global companies: Shell, Rio Tinto Zinc, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Sun Media, Sky, Deutsche Bank, Man Group, KPMG, Barclays Bank, Finsbury and the European Climate Exchange.

Furthermore, the project is being advised by experts including: Lord Stern; Steve Howard, Chief Executive of the Climate Group; Kevin Conrad, the Executive Director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations; Andrew Mitchell of the Global Canopy Programme; Kristalina Georgieva, Vice President of the World Bank; Reijo Kempinnen, head of the European Commission Representation in the UK; and Barry Gardiner MP.

How You Can Help

You can pledge your support on the Prince’s Rainforest Project website.

Video of Prince Charles Introducing the Rainforest Project

Here’s a video of Prince Charles introducing the Rainforest Project, as well as explaining why he feels this is such an important cause.

New satellite images have shown that Papua New Guinea’s rainforests are being destroyed much faster than previously thought.

Until now, Papua New Guinea was thought to have a very low rate of deforestation and degradation. These satellite images prove otherwise.

Papua New Guinea has the world’s third largest tropical rainforest. At the current rate of deforestation, 83 percent of accessible forests, and 53 percent of the country’s total forests, will be destroyed by 2021.

Most of the rainforest destruction is occurring due to commercial logging, agriculture and burning. Most of the logging is done by Malaysian logging firms. Typically, these timber companies pay landowners very little. According to Mongabay, these large companies pay landowners about $4-12 per cubic meter for logs, but sell the same logs for up to $160 per cubic meter.

The rainforest is not only being cleared for logging by the multinational timber firms though. It is also being done to make way for an increasing population. Papua New Guinea has one of the fastest rates of population growth in the world. This increase in population requires more land for subsistence farming.

Earlier this year, the Papua New Guinea government was accused of going from “Eco Hero” to “Eco Zero”. Dr Derek Wall, the Green party’s principal speaker, said:

In my view the Papuan government have gone from green heroes to eco zeros. One of the major causes of climate change is rainforest destruction and Papua New Guinea is under assault from corporations who want to clear cut its forests. This corporate onslaught is aided by a government that just a few weeks ago we all thought was green.

In response to the recent satellite photos, PNG’s Forest Minister, Belden Namah says:

We try to come up with policies to manage our forests, but we have interference by the industry and what I am saying is that as a government we should take a bold stand

He continues:

Industry may be a player in contributing to the economy of this country but I am more worried about generations tomorrow, about the clean air we can generate revenue and I think with the policy of carbon sequestration… is the way to go.

Satellite images: University of Papua New Guinea file photo.

In Canada, a group of residents have saved a rainforest from destruction by purchasing it for almost 1 million dollars.

The Saltspring Island residents spent 5 months fundraising so that they could save the eight-hectare Creekside Rainforest from being sold on the open market. This would almost certainly have led to the rainforest being destroyed and the land being used for development.

Approximately 1,000 individuals pitched in for the rainforest, which will now be handed over to the Land Conservancy of B.C. so that it can be protected forever. Among the individuals were residents (including school children) and non-residents of the island.

Despite being told it would be impossible to save the rainforest, the residents succeeded. Here’s what the conservancy’s executive-director, Bill Turner said about the campaign:

Working through the highs and lows of a fundraising campaign can be stressful, but it all disappears when you see the smiling faces of residents, especially the children, after a property is saved.

Source: Canada.com