Twiglet: Abies (fir; family: Pinaceae)

A genus of conifer tree in wich the leaves are crowded on the twig, often approximately in two row; they are needle-like and single, leaving a round, flat scar when they fall, thus producing a small twig.

The female cones are borne erect; they shatter at maturity, but the woody axis persists.

Many fine ornamental species are now widely cultivated for their lofty, deeply pyramidal, monopodial crowns.

To grown, the species require a most climate and are sensitive to atmospheric pollution.

There is about 40-50 species, widespread throughout the northern hemisphere, especially on mountian/alpine habitats.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of Plant Sciences

Forests make heatwaves ‘initially warmer’

During heatwaves forests reduce their evaporation, causing the atmosphere to warm up even more, say researchers.

During extremely long periods of heat, however, this reduction enables the forests to continue their evaporation for longer, so the net effect is ultimately one of cooling in relation to the surroundings, explained a team of scientists led by Ryan Teuling from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, Dr Teuling worked on the investigation in collaboration with climate researchers from a number of European countries.

The study was prompted by recent heatwaves in Europe, which had raised interest in questions about the influence of land use on temperatures and climate.

Up to now, scientists had assumed that a lack of precipitation during heatwaves automatically led to a reduction in evaporation.

That reduction was thought to be less for forests, because trees, with their deeper root systems, have more water available to them. Examination of the precise role of land use, however, has been largely neglected up to now.

The study found large differences in evaporation strategies during heat waves. Grasslands evaporate more at higher temperatures and stop only when no more water is available.

Forests, in contrast, respond to higher temperatures by evaporating less, which leaves more water at their disposal.

During brief heatwaves, therefore, the greatest warming is found above forests, but during prolonged heat waves the increased evaporation of grasslands ends up causing a shortage of water.

This can lead to exceptionally high temperatures, such as those measured in France in the summer of 2003.

This mechanism might also offer an explanation for the unusually high temperatures near Moscow this summer, the researchers suggest.

In these types of extreme situations, forests in fact have a cooling effect on the climate.

The research was done on the basis of observations made above forests and grasslands in Europe by an extensive network of flux towers. For areas without towers, satellite data were used.

Source: Wageningen University press release

Date: 06/09/2010

Illegal logging continues to plague Madagascar’s rainforest parks

Despite government assurances that it would crack down on the rosewood trade, illegal logging continues in Madagascar’s rainforest parks, according to new information provided by sources on the ground and reported in Wildmadagascar.com.

The sources report logging in three parks: Mananara, Makira, and Masoala. All three are known for their high levels of biodiversity, including endangered lemurs.

Rosewood logs are being transported to Tamatave (Toamasina), Madagascar’s main port, despite a national moratorium on logging and export of precious hardwoods. Most rosewood ends up going to China, where it is in high demand for furniture.

The Malagasy sources report that local law enforcement—the new Brigade Mixte Forestière established to reduce logging—is impeded the Forest Ministry, which has failed to grant them the right to use search warrants on private property.

The sources also claim that rosewood confiscated by authorities is being stolen from official stockpiles.

Illegal logging exploded last year in the aftermath of a military coup that displaced the democratically-elected, but increasingly autocratic president, Marc Ravalomanana.

National parks, especially in the North-East of the country, were ransacked by loggers employed by timber barons who traditionally capitalize on political instability or natural disasters to replenish timber stocks and traffic ill-gotten wood.

Madagascar is now ruled by a “transition authority” that has so far shown little inclination to hold free and fair elections and has been be slow to address the logging crisis despite pressure from the international community.

Source: Wildmadagascar.com

Date:06/09/2010

Twiglet: Abscission; abscisic acid

Topical for this time of year (in the northern hemisphere at least), abscission referes to the rejection of plant organs, such as leaves in the autumn.

This occurs at an abscission zone, where hydrolytic enzymes reduce cell adhension. The process can be promoted by abscisic acid and inhibited by respiratory poisons, and is controlled in nature by the proportions and gradients of auxin and ethylene. Other hormones may be involved.

Abscisic acid is a terpenoid compound that is one of the five major plant horones. Althought it is synthesised in the chloroplasts, it occurs throughout the plant body and is particularly concentrated in the leaves, fruits and seeds.

It has a powerful grown inhibiting properties generally and also promotes leaf abscission and the senescence of plants and/or their organs, and induces the closing of the stomata and dormancy in seeds and buds.

Its effect is antagonistic to the plant growth hormones, and it is thought to act by inhibiting the synthesis of protein and nucleic acids.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of Plant Sciences

China timber sector looks at tougher EU/US import rules

The China Timber and Wood Products Circulation Association (CTWPCA) is seeking to establish a body to help importers navigate new environmental regulations in the US and EU that restrict trade in illegally logged timber, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO).

In a recent market report, ITTO said that Chinese importers fear failing to meet the new regulations that govern the sourcing of timber products.

The US’s Lacey Act and the EU’s FLEGT ruling put the burden of responsibility on importing companies, holding them to the environmental laws of producing countries.

Companies found to be sourcing illegally logged timber could be subject to fines or worse.

A company accused of using illicit rosewood from Madagascar, was the first company to be charged and investigated under the Lacey Act.

The legislation was amended in 2008 to include “anyone who imported, exported, transported, sold, received, acquired or purchased the wood products made from that illegal timber, who knew or should have known that the wood was illegal.” The firm’s case is pending.

According to ITTO, CTWPCA believes traders need “guidance and support” on the new international requirements.

The body would also set up a “responsible procurement system” for timber imports, seek to address corruption in the timber import and trade sector, and aim to help Chinese timber traders meet international standards.

China already has guidelines governing Chinese companies operating forest concessions overseas.

These compel companies to abide by local environmental laws and take measures to reduce pollution. However, some observers suggest that there is no indication that these mandatory rules are being enforced.

Source: Mongabay.com

Date: 02/09/2010

REDD+ could do more harm than good, forestry experts warn

As governments across Latin America prepare to implement a new financial mechanism aimed at mitigating climate change by curbing carbon emissions from the destruction of tropical forests, experts have warned against a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Instead, they are calling for flexible, balanced solutions to the surrounding this new mechanism.

Among the experts’ main concerns are that the wealthy and powerful could capture many of the benefits, largely at the expense of rural communities, including indigenous groups.

Organised by Mexico’s National Forestry Commission and the Swiss government, with scientific support from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a recent conference’s findings and recommendations will be feed into a UN Forum on Forests (UNFF) meeting scheduled to take place in early 2011, marking the launch of the International Year of Forests.

The Mexico gathering brought together scientists, as well as representatives of governments and non-government organisations, for discussions on governance, decentralisation and REDD+ in Latin America.

Under REDD+ (for reducing deforestation and forest degradation), industrialised countries will provide developing nations with sizeable sums of money in exchange for verifiable storage of carbon in forests, in addition to the conservation and sustainable management of forests.

Forest destruction currently accounts for up to 18% of annual global carbon emissions. Several Latin American countries, including Mexico, have taken the lead in designing REDD+ schemes and stand to benefit significantly.

“Good forest governance – involving transparent and inclusive relationships between governments, forests and the people who depend on them – is fundamental for ensuring that REDD+ helps forest-dependent communities move out of poverty, instead of fueling corruption and funding entrenched bureaucracies,” said Elena Petkova, a CIFOR scientist.

“REDD+ schemes could either flounder on governance failures or flourish under successful governance.”

The central aim of the conference in Oaxaca was to provide science-based advice on the design and implementation of REDD+ schemes, so these schemes can capture carbon and reduce emissions effectively, while at the same time generate significant benefits from sustainable forest management that are equitably shared.

“About 40 years of public sector investment in curbing deforestation, while producing many local successes, has fallen far short of its goal,” said another CIFOR scientist, Andrew Wardell, who was also attending the conference.

“REDD+ might be our last chance to save the world’s tropical forests. So, it’s extremely important to get it right in Latin America and elsewhere.

“This region holds nearly a quarter of the world’s forests, upon which millions of people depend, and over the last five years, it has accounted for 65% percent of global net forest loss.”

Source: CIFOR press release

Date: 03/09/2010

US wolf re-introduction still leaves aspens quaking

The re-introduction of wolves in a US National Park in the mid-1990s is not helping quaking aspens (Populus tremuloides) to become re-established, as many researchers hoped.

In a study published in the journal Ecology showed that the population of wolves in Yellowstone Park was not deterring elks from eating young trees and saplings.

It was assumed that the presence of wolves would create a “landscape of fear”, resulting in no-go areas for elks.

Researchers writing in the Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) journal said that the aspens were not regenerating well in the park as a result of the elk eating the young trees.

However, they added that the conventional wisdom suggested that as the wolves were predators of the elk, it was thought that the elk would eventually learn to avoid high-risk areas in which the wolves were found.

This would then allow plants in those areas – such as aspen – to grow big enough without being eaten and killed by the elk. And in the long-term, the thinking went, the habitat would be restored.

In this latest study, lead author Matthew Kauffman – a US Geological Survey scientist – suggested the findings showed that claims of an ecosystem-wide recovery of aspen were premature.

“This study not only confirms that elk are responsible for the decline of aspen in Yellowstone beginning in the 1890s, but also that none of the aspen groves studied after wolf restoration appear to be regenerating, even in areas risky to elk,” Dr Kauffman explained.

Because the “landscape of fear” idea did not appear to be benefiting aspen, the team concluded that if the Northern Range elk population did not continue to decline (their numbers are 40% of what they were before wolves), many of Yellowstone’s aspen stands were unlikely to recover.

“A landscape-level aspen recovery is likely only to occur if wolves, in combination with other predators and climate factors, further reduce the elk population,” observed Dr Kauffman.

The paper, Are wolves saving Yellowstone’s aspen? A landscape-level test of a behaviorally mediated trophic cascade, has been published online in Ecology. The authors of the paper are: Matthew Kauffman (USGS), Jedediah Brodie (University of Montana) and Erik Jules (Humboldt State University).

Source: ESA press release

Date: 01/09/2010

North Korea begins agroforestry scheme to halt degradation

A “pioneering agroforestry project” in North Korea is restoring heavily degraded landscapes and providing much-needed food for communities, says the World Agroforestry Centre.

Jianchu Xu, the Centre’s East-Asia co-ordinator,  said agroforestry – in this case the growing of trees on sloping land – was uniquely suited to DPR Korea for addressing food security and protecting the environment.

“What we have managed to achieve so far has had a dramatic impact on people’s lives and the local environment,” he explained.

“Previously malnourished communities are now producing their own trees and growing chestnut, walnut, peaches, pears and other fruits and berries as well as medicinal bushes.”

Following the collapse of the socialist bloc in 1989 and a lack of subsidies for agriculture in DPR Korea, famine and malnutrition became widespread in rural areas.

DPR Korea is a harsh mountainous country where only 16% of the land area is suitable for cultivation, data from the Centre suggests.

It addded that out of  desperation in the 1990s, people turned to the marginal sloping lands but this had a price: deforestation for cropping land and fuelwood left entire landscapes denuded and depleted of nutrients.

In an attempt to reverse the situation, an innovative project began in 2002 involving the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection. The World Agroforestry Centre was later brought in to provide technical advice.

A system of establishing user groups with one representative from each family enabled demonstration plots to be set up and a large number of households have benefited from knowledge about growing multi-purpose trees.

Using these types of trees have helped  improve and stabilise soils, as well as provide fertilizer, fodder or fruits.

To further support the development of appopriate skills in North Korea, the World Agroforestry Centre has announced plans to publish an agroforestry manual.

The Centre added that work was also underway to develop an agroforestry policy for sloping lands management, as well as establishing an agroforestry inventory.

Source: World Agroforestry Centre press release

Date: 27/08/2010

Trying to curb the appetite of tree-hungry chopsticks

For the humble chopstick, life is predictable, reports Alice-Azania Jarvis in the Independent newspaper.

Start off as a tree, one of the 25 million felled each year for the purpose. Spend a brief few weeks, newly-whittled, encased in paper. Then wind up on someone’s plate, where you are expertly used to shovel noodles, or rice, or meat into a mouth.

Then that’s it. It’s time to face the great landfill in the sky. Millions of chopsticks meet their end like this. In fact, billions – 45 billion a year in China alone, taking with them some 100 acres of birch, poplar and bamboo forest a day.

It is one reason why attempts are under way to turn the Chinese off their disposable cutlery and on to the longer-lasting kind.

In 2006, the Government introduced a 5% tax on all disposable wooden chopsticks following petitions from schoolchildren and citizens’ group.

Since then, efforts to curb the wooden sticks’ use have increased. A BYOC (Bring Your Own Chopsticks) movement has been actively petitioning for sustainable options for some time.

Described by the China Post as a collection of “young yuppies”, they carry around their own implements when dining out. Occasionally, claims the Post, restaurant owners take it upon themselves to reward the yuppies’ efforts with a complimentary bowl of soup.

Greenpeace launched a campaign with the slogan “say no to disposable chopsticks.” In 2008, activists dressed as orang-utans invaded corporate cafeterias – Microsoft, Intel and IBM among them – to discourage diners from going disposable.

Then, earlier this year, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce joined with five other government departments to warn that companies using disposables could soon face legal restrictions. They claimed to “aim at decreasing the use of the throwaway utensil”.

“Production, circulation and recycling of disposable chopsticks should be more strictly supervised,” they explained.

It’s a stark about-face for the Chinese government. Prior to the measure, they had actively encouraged disposables’ use. They were, reasoned authorities, more hygienic that their reusable cousins.

The debate over throwaway instruments, while raging in China, is by no means limited to chopsticks.

In the UK, disposable cutlery is thought to be used for an average of three minutes before being discarded.

Plastics – including convenience cutlery, crockery and cups – account for 7% of office waste. That’s before the countless millions of knives, forks and spoons churned out by fast food restaurants, cafes and supermarkets are taken into account.

Recent years have seen the rise of the Carry Your Own Cutlery (CYOC) movement, while websites such as recyclethis.co.uk offer readers advice on how to reuse their plastic implements.

Increasingly, retailers are under pressure to offer – if not reusable – then at least recyclable options.

Starbucks recently pledged to introduce renewable materials during its next round of store upgrades and has committed to using entirely recyclable cups by 2015. Pret-a-Manger, meanwhile, has pledged to go “landfill-free” by 2012.

Not everyone has been so quick to change. McDonald’s, while using recycled paper in much of its packaging, defends its choice of plastic cutlery on the grounds that washing up would waste energy.

How effective China’s measures will be remains to be seen. The BYOC has been slow in picking up active support, and the government’s waste warning, while a step in an environmentally-friendly direction, is more bark than bite.

Legislation is looming, though as yet there are few concrete incentives for diners to trade in their disposables. Wooden chopsticks cost restaurant owners a fraction of what the more durable alternatives do, since the cost of sterilisation is high.

What’s more, the alternative melamine-resin chopsticks have a notoriously high formaldehyde content, which is neither great news for the environment nor diners’ health.

Polls by news outlets have found broad support for reusable items. Some 84.2% of participants told a recent Sina.com poll that they would swap for more durable options.

Still, analysts point out that the authorities’ interest is divided: environmentally, cutting down on chopsticks makes sense; economically – in the short term at least – it doesn’t.

More than 300,000 people are employed by the wooden chopstick industry, across 300 factories. Exports of their wares bring in $200m a year.

In 2009, it was claimed that 300 restaurants in Beijing had ceased to provide disposable chopsticks. In a country of some 1.3 billion diners, there’s a long way left to go.

Source: Independent

Date: 31/08/2010

Model shows ‘waves of forest degradation’

An international team of researchers has developed a model that suggests degradation of tropical forests occurs in a series of “waves”, reports the BBC News website’s Mark Kinver.

High-value trees were felled in the first “wave”, followed by a wave that removed mid-value timber before the remaining wood was felled for charcoal.

The team hopes the model will help manage forests as vital carbon sinks and limit the loss of biodiversity.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers said an economic theory was used to provide a general model to predict patterns of tree loss.

This translates to a prediction that waves of forest degradation will emanate from major demand centres and expand into nearby forested areas, targeting resources in sequence, starting with those of highest value,” they wrote in their PNAS paper.

“Such a sequence of demand, linked to resource utilisation, has been demonstrated for unmanaged fisheries… but has not been shown for the exploitation of differently valued tropical forest products.”

The team used data collected in the area surrounding Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, to see how far the degradation “waves” had travelled between 1991 and 2005.

“The first wave that emanates is high-value timber, and that is mostly used for export,” explained co-author Antje Ahrends, an ecologist at the Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh.

“There has been a massive demand for this in China, and this is where most of the timber ends up.”

Dr Ahrends said the first wave moved out from Dar es Salaam rapidly, averaging about nine kilometres each year, because the “timber companies had lorries and loads of people working for them”.

“For the firms, it is only worthwhile to stay in a forest when timber can be accessed relatively easily,” she told BBC News.

“So once it becomes not so easy to get hold of the rest, the companies generally move on.”

The first wave had already moved outside of the team’s study area, and Dr Ahrends estimated that it was already more than 200km from Dar es Salaam.

The second wave saw trees being felled for medium-valued timber, which was generally used in the city for construction and furniture.

“This is expanding very rapidly, in line with urban migration,” she explained. “The town has an average growth rate of about 7% each year, so there is – again – a rapidly growing demand for this material.”

The timber is harvested by local companies, again with lorries, allowing large volumes to be collected in a relatively short space of time. This resulted in this degradation wave to also cover about nine kilometres each year.

The third and final wave involved local people collecting wood to make charcoal for cooking.

“It’s the most destructive of all of the waves because charcoal burners would collect everything,” observed Dr Ahrends, who was based at the York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Dynamics when she carried out this research.

“It is only worthwhile moving on once there are no sizeable trees left in the forest.”

As a result, the charcoal wave had moved relatively slowly – from 20km outside Dar es Salaam in 1991 to 50km away in 2005.

“It is the most difficult of the waves to tackle because it is very poor people who burn charcoal and their livelihoods depend upon it.”

“Targeting that wave would mean trying to provide alternative resources for cooking, and alternative incomes for people who burn charcoal.

Species loss

The team also developed their model to gauge what impact forest degradation had on “public good” services, such as carbon storage and biodiversity.

They did this by recording what species of trees were in a particular area of the study, and what size the individual trees were.

“This later enabled us to calculate species richness and also the amount of carbon those trees were storing,” Dr Ahrends said.

“We found that there was a very strong linear impacts; for example, tree species richness dropped to only 14 species-per-sample-unit close to Dar es Salaam, whereas it is more than 40 species in areas 200km away.”

Dr Ahrends suggested that the model could be used to understand the impact of forest degradation in other sub-Sarahan nations in Africa.

“This is because conditions are very similar: high levels of corruption, weak law enforcement and very rapid rates of urbanisation.”

She added that the team’s model could help policymakers who were looking at ways to limit deforestation rates.

“What is really important is to understand the pattern of degradation and the way it spreads,” she suggested.

“While we have a good understanding of deforestation – which is the complete clearance of a forest – it is much more difficult to measure degradation.

“So if you have this simple model, then you have a basic understanding of how degradation might spread… which may help you develop some prediction of where it might spread from and how far it might spread.”

Source: BBC News website

Date: 03/08/2010

Deadly oak disease hits Welsh private woodland

An outbreak of the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, otherwise known as sudden oak death, has been discovered for the first time in Wales on trees in a privately-owned woodland, reports the Forestry Commission Wales.

Staff from Forestry Commission Wales and the Food & Environment Research Agency (Fera) have visited the owner of the woodland in Denbighshire and a notice has been served to fell the infected Japanese larch trees. Only a small number of trees are infected, and the owner will use the timber on site.

Sudden oak death is a fungus pathogen that kills many of the trees that it infects. It was first found on Japanese larch trees in Wales in June this year in public woodlands  near Port Talbot, near Bridgend.

The outbreak in South Wales was the first time P. ramorum has been encountered on larch elsewhere in Great Britain since it was first discovered on larch in South-West England in 2009.

The woodland owner, Wendy Charles-Warner, contacted Take Cover, to say: “We feel rather aggrieved at the tone of the [Forestry Commission] press releases stating that we have been served with enforcement notices as if we were responsible for this outbreak and somehow in the wrong.

“We could take no steps to prevent this disease which is mainly airborne, have done nothing wrong and have at every point done everything we can to assist the forestry commission.”

A motor rally set to attract thousands of spectators to South Wales in July was postponed as a result of an ou6tbreak of the tree disease.

The route of the Swansea Bay Rally ran through forests that had been hit by the infection.

Richard Siddons from the Forestry Commission Wales said the organisation was “determined to minimise the impacts of this serious tree disease on woodlands, and the support of woodland owners in looking out for early signs of P. ramorum infection will play a key part in achieving that”.

It seems as if the warm but wet summer has been a key driver in the development of tree pathogens, with a number of cases making the headlines.

In April, a group of woodland experts expressed their fears for the future of British native oaks in light of the emergence of a disease called Acute Oak Decline, a bacterial infection that, they warned, could be as devastating for the English Landscape as Dutch elm disease in the 1970s.

They called for much more financial support from the UK government to help tackle the problem through research and land management measures.

In July, the Forestry Commission announced a £600,000 support package for woodland owners in South-West England and Wales to help tackle the outbreak of P. ramorum infection on larch trees. The package is part of Defra’s £25 million, five-year Phytophthora management programme.

Forestry Commission Wales is developing a complementary programme of support for private woodland owners who have P. ramorum confirmed on their land. Details of this support will be announced in September.

Ms Charles-Warner, in her comment to the story on this blog (see below for her full response), added: ”

The ‘package of assistance’ that the Commission have announced is £300 per hectare, which we are not receiving or going to receive.

“If you have knowledge of tree felling you will appreciate that in a situation where stringent biosecurity measures have to be used and the trees have to be felled and brashed by hand that is a paltry sum, even in the highly unlikely event that you receive it.

She went on to say that she was “deeply concerned” about the situation: “If the Commission wishes landowners to report Phytopthora Ramorum and control it, in order to protect commercial forestry, then realistic support needs to be in place.

“Many landowners faced with a the prospect of funding felling and site clearance work themselves with the attendant stress and unpleasantness, are likely to ignore the disease and not report it.”

More information about sudden oak death can be found on the Forestry Commission’s website at www.forestry.gov.uk/pramorum.

To find out more about the support fund or to report suspected P. ramorum infection in their trees, woodland owners should contact Forestry Commission Wales’s Grants & Regulations Office on tel: 0300 068 0300 or email: bww.ts@forestry.gsi.gov.uk.

Source: Forestry Commission Wales press release

Date: 25/08/2010

Anne Frank’s tree of hope toppled by storm

Sad news, the 150-year-old horse chestnut that brought comfort to Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis in World War Two has toppled in high winds and heavy rain.

The tree, whose trunk was diseased and rotten, snapped a metre (3ft) above the ground, and crashed into neighbouring gardens in Amsterdam at 13.30 local time,  it is reported.

It smashed into a brick wall and sheds, but nobody was  injured.

The Anne Frank House museum, which has a million visitors a year, escaped unscathed during Monday’s poor weather.

“Someone yelled: ‘It’s falling. The tree is falling,’ and then you heard it go down,” museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart told the Associated Press. “Luckily no one was hurt.”

‘Unpleasantly surprised’

A global campaign to save “the Anne Frank tree” was launched in 2007 after Dutch officials and conservationists declared it a safety hazard and ordered it felled. They feared it could topple and crash into the museum.

But the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation won a court injunction in November that year, stopping the city authorities from chopping it down. Neighbours and campaigners argued that, as a symbol of freedom, the tree was worth making extraordinary efforts to preserve.

But it was blighted with fungus and moths, and two years ago conservationists encased the trunk in steel girders to prop it up.

The Netherlands’ Trees Institute, a leading supporter of the project to save the tree, said it was “unpleasantly surprised” to hear it had fallen.

“On the advice of experts in tree care, it had been calculated that the tree could live several more decades” the institute said in a statement. “Alas, in the event it seems that nature is stronger.”

The Jewish teenager referred several times to the tree in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained in hiding.

Anne Frank wrote on 23 February 1944: “From my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind.”

She died, aged 15, the following year in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Source: Anne Frank Museum

Date: 23/08/2010

British public ‘ignorant about trees’

According to a survey reported in Horticulture Week, a trade magazine, more than three-quarters of the people questioned believed that the main role of trees was to provide shade.

The questions, posed on behalf of Velvet Tissues – a UK-based toilet paper firm – also had a few more positive messages when it came to people’s attitudes towards trees, such as 75% agreed that trees featured in a favourite memory and 9% remember kissing a childhood sweetheart under a tree.

More than two-thirds of the people questioned considered the oak to be the UK’s most iconic tree, yet – depressingly – a third were not able to identify it.

The survey is hardly scientific,  and it is surely closely tied to a PR campaign in which the company describes itself as a tree lover (its website says it plants three trees for every one it cuts down to make its products), we felt it was worth featuring on this blog.

Sadly, it was not possible to get more details on the survey’s background because there is nothing on the company’s website and Horticulture Week only ran a very short story on the findings.

Source: Horticulture Week

Date: 25/08/2010

International forestry researchers look to future

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has released a plan of work for 2011-2013, as a part of its 2008-2018 Strategy.

The organisation – established in 1999 – sets out its mission statement as advancing “human well-being, environmental conservation, and equity by conducting research to inform policies and practices that affect forests in developing countries”.

The updated plan provides more details on CIFOR’s six projects, and what outcomes they hope to achieve:

• Enhancing the role of forests in climate mitigation

• Enhancing the role of forests in adaptation to climate change

• Improving livelihoods through smallholder and community forestry

• Managing trade-offs between conservation and development at landscape scales

• Managing impacts of globalized trade and investment on forests and forest communities

• Sustainable management of tropical production forests

The 145-page work plan, Medium term plan for 2011-13, is available as a free-to-download pdf (size: 1.5MB)

Source: Climate-L.org

Date: 25/08/2010

Africa push for ‘great tree wall’

African leaders are meeting in Chad to push the idea of planting a tree belt across Africa from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east, reports the BBC News website.

The Great Green Wall project is backed by the African Union and is aimed at halting the advancing Sahara Desert.

The belt would be 15km (nine miles) wide and 7,775km (4,831 miles) long.

The initiative, conceived five years ago, has not started because of a lack of funding and some experts worry it would not be maintained properly.

The BBC’s Tidiane Sy in Senegal says the initiative has the full backing of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who is in Chad with 10 other heads of state to discuss desertification.

His government has created the website dedicated to the Great Green Wall. But our reporter says many other leaders seem ready to forget the project.

At the Copenhagen Climate Change summit last year, for instance, the Senegalese delegation made a presentation on the project.

It is envisaged that the belt would go through 11 countries from east to west.

The trees should be “drought-adapted species”, preferably native to the areas planted, the Great Green Wall website says, listing 37 suitable species.

The initiative says it hopes the trees will slow soil erosion; slow wind speeds and help rain water filter into the ground, to stop the desert from growing.

It also says a richer soil content will help communities across the Sahel who depend on land for grazing and agriculture.

Senegal says it has spent about $2m (£1.35m) on it and communities are being encouraged to plant trees.

The BBC’s former Chad correspondent Celeste Hicks says older people in N’Djamena – where the conference is being held – talk anecdotally about how the capital city has become a dustbowl over the last 20 years as the Sahara Desert has encroached southwards.

The country has made efforts to plant a green belt of trees around the capital, and tens of thousands of young trees are being grown in nurseries on the outskirts of the city, she says.

But so far little has been done to transplant these trees to the northern desert areas to become part of the Great Green Wall.

Source: BBC News website

Date: 17/06/2010

Boost for Indonesian ‘ecosystem restoration’ forest

Indonesia’s forests  received a boost when the nation’s government announced plans to double the size of the country’s first forest for “ecosystem restoration”, according to a joint press release issued by the RSPB.

It says that Indonesian Forest Minister Zulkifli Hasan has announced that he will expand the 52,000 hectare concession held by Burung Indonesia, the RSPB (UK) and BirdLife International in central Sumatra to a total area of 98,000 hectares.

According to the RSPB, the restoration area now equals two-thirds the size of greater London and is greater than the size of Singapore.

The bird conservation group welcomed the news, adding that other applications for ‘forest restoration’ licences are being submitted to the nation’s forestry ministry.

In 2009, the ministry is reported to have received as many applications for forest restoration licences as it did for logging concessions.

Applications for forest restoration totalled a further two million hectares, and are now being assessed.

The 98,000 hectares where the minister announced he would grant “ecosystem restoration” is within Harapan Rainforest, one of the last remaining areas of dry lowland Sumatran forest and is one of the most threatened rainforests in the world.

It is home to a host of rare animal and plant species, including the critically endangered Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), of which fewer than 300 remain in the wild.

It supports an amazing 55 mammal species, including the globally-threatened Asian elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) and Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), as well as the world’s rarest stork – the Storm’s stork (Ciconia stormi) – and a rich diversity of other wildlife.

An initial licence of 52,000 hectares was granted to the environmental consortium in 2008, allowing them to protect, nurture and restore the forest in a former logging concession.

Illegal logging has been significantly decreased and forest fires, which once released significant carbon dioxide emissions, have been all but stamped out. Not only is the forest an important carbon store, but the tree planting programme in Harapan Rainforest is capturing more carbon from the atmosphere.

Botanic experts from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK have identified a plant growing in the forest, Emblemantha urnulata B. C. Stone, that is unique to the area and had only been recorded twice before.

Agus B. Utomo, the Executive Director of Burung Indonesia, said: “The Ministry of Forestry had the foresight to create a new form of forest management in 2004 with the ‘ecosystem restoration’ licence.

“We’re delighted that ecosystem restoration is now an integral part of forest management strategies in Indonesia. As a result, Burung Indonesia is already planning to expand our portfolio of ecosystem restoration concessions.”

Source : RSPB press release

Date: 18/06/2010

Indonesia ‘failing on pledge to reduce forest fires’

The Indonesian government failed to live up to its promises to reduce fires across the tropical nation last year, reports Mongabay.com.

It quotes The Jakarta Post as saying that the nation’s 2009 State Environment Report revealed a 59% increase in the number of fire hotspots from 19,192 in 2008 to 32,416 last year.

Officials are reported as saying that land clearing was the primary cause because, unlike temperature forests, intact rainforests rarely burn naturally.

“Illegal land clearing with fires by local people in Kalimantan and Sumatra is still rampant,” Heddy Mukna, deputy assistant for forest and land management at the Environment Ministry told the Post.

The state of Kalimantan on the island of Borneo saw fires triple in some areas from 2008 to 2009.

Haze blanketed much of the island last year during the “burning season”.

In 2007, the Indonesian government announced plan to cut forest fires in half to mitigate climate change from 35,279 fires in 2006.

The government has since revised that reduction from 50% to just 20%.

Indonesia is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world behind China and the US.

An estimated 80% of the nation’s 2.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions is from rainforest and peatland destruction.

Source: Mongabay.com

Date: 13/06/2010

Cancer drug derived from rainforest shrub set for human trials

A potential cancer drug developed from an Australian rainforest plant is set to progress to human trials, reports the Strait Times.

Quoting the AFP wires, the newspaper explains that the drug is being put forward to the next stage after fighting off inoperable tumours in pets.

Queensland firm QBiotics Limited said its EBC-46, derived from the seeds of a tropical rainforest shrub, was ready to be tested on humans after successfully treating solid tumours in more than 100 dogs, cats and horses.

“We’ve treated over 150 animals… with a variety of tumours, and we’re prepared to move into human studies,” explained chief executive Victoria Gordon.

Dr Gordon said the results so far indicated the drug could work to counter a range of malignant growths, such as skin cancers, head and neck cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer.

She said the drug works like a detonator inside tumours, prompting inactive beneficial white cells to begin to fight and destroy the cancer.

The company is reported as spending six years developing the drug since the previously unknown molecule in the native Australian plant blushwood was discovered.

It hopes to raise enough funds to begin human trials in 2011.

Dr Gordon said the compound proves the value of retaining Australia’s unique tropical rainforests.

Source: The Strait Times (Singapore)/AFP

Date: 14/06/2010

UK elms – ‘not out of the woods yet’

Colin Tudge, the author of The Secret Life of Trees, is invited by the UK’s Telegraph newspaper to give his reaction to efforts to breed a Dutch elm disease-resistant species.

It’s an interesting read as he gives his reaction to this battle with nature, so here it is:

Could the English elm, so sadly laid low by Dutch elm disease, make a comeback? Paul King, who breeds trees at Raine in Essex, is on the case. Nearly 25 years ago he acquired cuttings from a few mature trees. He has now multiplied the tissues to produce a whole new generation of young elms that seem to be resistant (and are on sale for £120 apiece). Scientists at the Forestry Commission’s research centre in Surrey welcome his initiative – they are on the case, too – but are cautious. Resistance, they point out, is a tricky business.

The English elm, Ulmus procera, is probably not a “true” native – Britain has only 39 “truly” native trees – and was most likely introduced by Neolithic farmers from south-east Europe, via Spain. But it is an honorary citizen, treasured for its usefulness and its looks, favourite of landscape painters, notably of Constable; a tree of open woodland but just as happy in hedgerows where, if it was left alone, it flourished by the tens of millions. In the West Country it was known as “the Wiltshire weed”.

The first sign of trouble came in 1910 when the fungus Ophiostoma ulmi, a distant and degenerate cousin of the truffle, started killing trees in mainland Europe. It acquired its name, Dutch elm disease, in 1921 because it was first properly researched in Holland. It arrived in Britain by 1927 and looked very nasty. Happily, the disease died down by the Forties, after killing 10 to 40 per cent of our elms. Dr Tom Pearce of the Forestry Commission predicted, in 1960, that such a thing should not happen again – unless, he added, “the fungus completely changes its present trend of behaviour”.

Which it duly did. A new, closely related species of Ophiostoma appeared in North America – Ophiostoma novo-ulmi. It arrived in Britain in 1967 on imported logs, and throughout the Seventies and into the Eighties it killed about 25 million out of about 30 million elms, including most of the particular English species, Ulmus procera.

Dutch elm disease has all the biological attributes needed to be thoroughly nasty. It is one of the many “wilt diseases” of trees, which spread through the vessels of the xylem and block them. The spores are carried passively with wonderful efficiency in the sap, through the whole tree, and spread via the roots of separate trees that are often joined underground. The spores don’t live long once the tree has died and so should die out as their host succumbs – but they have a trump card: they are carried from tree to tree and from forest to forest by flying bark beetles of the genus Scolytus.

There is some innate resistance among the world’s many species of elm. The Ophiostoma fungus probably arose in Asia, so the Asian elms have evolved in its presence – and have developed considerable resistance. Breeding programmes are afoot in Europe to introduce genes from Asian species into European types by various means – and may yet succeed. Meanwhile, as Paul King has found, even within susceptible species, such as Ulmus procera, there will usually be some resistant strains. If they can be bred, perhaps we will have a new resistant strain.

So why the caution? Well, for one thing, it depends what the tree is really resistant to: the fungus or its insect vector? Paul King’s new trees are probably not resistant to the fungus itself, but are simply less palatable to the beetle. Of course, the fungus can’t usually infest the tree without the beetles – but it surely would be better to be specifically equipped with genes that would protect it even if beetles did get in.

The sad tale of Britain’s elms parallels that of the American chestnut, Castanea dentata – with some intriguing contrasts. For the American Indians and for the first immigrant Europeans, the American chestnut was a wonder tree. Its nuts were a food staple – and supported 40 million wild turkeys for good measure – and its trunks provided timber. There were so many that a squirrel could travel from chestnut to chestnut from Maine to Georgia without setting foot on the ground, or so the story went.

But the overconfident forestry “improvers” of the 19th century were still not content. They began to import Asian species with bigger nuts, to crossbreed. Inevitably, the newcomers came with their own diseases. And the American chestnuts, beset by novel pathogens, succumbed. By the end of the Twenties, the American chestnut, once perhaps the commonest North American broadleaf, was all but gone.

Again, through too much zeal, the Americans felled great swathes of chestnuts to create a firewall against the spread of infection. This failed to contain the disease – but it did, so some biologists suggest, remove the myriad genetic variations from among the wild trees, which might have included some that would have conferred resistance.

By leaving our own beleaguered elms to live on in the hedges, and nurturing the few survivors, as Paul King and others have been doing, we may avoid that final fate. (In truth, the American chestnut might not quite be dead. At least, George W Bush planted one outside the White House on Arbor Day in 2005 – but it is a hybrid: 15 per cent of its genes are from resistant Asian species. It is a sad relic, like an exhumed dodo).

Overall, the message is mixed. We could see the heroic efforts of a few growers and scientists as a triumph of human ingenuity over natural adversity – the continuing tale of “man’s conquest of nature”. Or we could see this endeavour as a desperate, last-ditch attempt to ward off the consequences of our own folly. For these are tales of hubris. We thought we could do what we liked in the name of commerce. But actually, life is more complicated than we ever supposed – and in the end, it is beyond our ken. Cause and effect relationships in nature are non-linear, which means it is intrinsically impossible to predict the outcome, beyond saying it won’t be good.

Source: Telegraph newspaper

Date: 09/06/2010

Wales to update its ancient woodlands map

Forestry Commission Wales has announced plans to update the nation’s Ancient Woodland Inventory.

In a press release, the commission said that these habitats, which date back to at least the 17^th Century, “support many species of plants and wildlife that depend on the evolving but continuous environments created by dead and dying wood and broken sunlight”.

It added that the inventory was first produced about 30 years ago, and since then, technology for gathering data had improved dramatically and better sources of information had come to light.

The update, which will be carried out over the next 12 months, will identify former ancient woodlands that have subsequently been planted with conifer trees to satisfy the demand for timber over many decades.

These woodlands are known as Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS).

This information will guide decisions on restoring some of the PAWS to their natural state by removing non-native trees and planting native broadleaf species such as oak, birch, rowan and ash.

“Such work helps to increase the variety of different plant and wildlife species in the woodland by improving habitats and providing food and shelter,” the commission explained.

Wood pastures – ancient and veteran trees found on grazed sites – will also be systematically recorded as part of the update to the inventory.

Despite the ecological value of wood pasture, it has no legal protection, so identification on the inventory may help protect these sites from damage or destruction.

The concept of  “ancient woodland” was developed in the 1970s and 1980s, when studies showed that woodlands that have had a continuous woodland cover for centuries were typically of higher nature conservation value than those that had developed recently.

The baseline date of 1600 AD was adopted because reasonable maps were available from this time (in England, at least).

But the commission admitted that it was an arbitrary date, and there was no clear ecological cut-off.

Michelle van Velzen, forestry and environment policy and programme manager at Forestry Commission Wales, said: “Ancient woodlands are a precious and finite resource that cannot be recreated.

“This update to the Ancient Woodland Inventory will ensure we have the most comprehensive and accurate information on the extent and nature of ancient woodlands in Wales.”

The update to the inventory will be completed in March 2011 and the new information will be supplied to local authorities for their use when developing planning policy that affects woodland.

Source: Forestry Commission Wales press release

Date: 11/06/2010