Guest guest Posted January 12, 2007 Report Share Posted January 12, 2007 Today for you 41 news items about Mama Earth's trees. Location, number and subject listed below. Condensed / abbreviated article is listed further below.Can be viewed on the web at http://www.livejournal.com/users/olyecology or by sending a blank email message to earthtreenews---Alaska: 1) Yellow Cedar snag habitat lasts a long time --Washington: 2) Big beautiful native trees seen differently after urban windstorm--Oregon: 3) Pleasant Yankee and Brown Elk timber sales, 4) BLM old-growth liquidation, 5) ELF arsonists, 6) Skyline Community Forest, --California: 7) One of the last frontiers, 8) Fire and Archeology, 9) Pine forest not recovering, 10) Berkeley treesit,--Montana: 11) Supreme Court favors Lolo NF challenge --West Virginia: 12) He likes to sell land he doesn't own--Vermont: 13) Clear-cutting and subsistence farming has taken 85% of region's trees--USA: 14) New Forest Service Chief, 15) Loss of open space? --Canada: 16) 6 log companies face native blockades, 17) Quebec takes Ontario trees,--UK: 18) UK forest history--Armenia: 19) plants & forests nearing extinction, 20) Plan to Combat Desertification--Congo: 21) Oil explorations damaging diverse ecological zones --Niger: 22) Save the Giraffes--Zimbabwe: 23) To conscientise them on the dangers of deforestation--Uganda: 24) Government pushes for industrialization--Guyana: 26) They really do export logs--Mexico: 27) Chiapas blockade --Costa Rica: 28) pesticides drifting and accumulating in mountain forests,--South America: 29) Soil nutrients define tree species dispersal--Peru: 30) deforestation in the Huallaga river basin--India: 31) Large-scale timber racket raided by Horowpathabna police --South East Asia: 32) Supports 20-25% of global terrestrial biodiversity--Philippines: 33) Supreme Court's landmark decision to protect forests--Malaysia: 34) Penans' blockade to stop bulldozers and chainsaws --Indonesia: 35) EU makes agreement regarding log exports, 36) Forest conversions--Australia: 37) Save the Elm trees, 38) Nundle State Forest, 39) logging in Tasmania's Upper Florentine Valley, 40) Atrocious location for pulp mill, 41) Beach sheoaks girdled for better views for homes, Alaska:1) With yellow cedars dying at alarming rates, some scientists are trying to find ways to harness the power of the strongest Alaska trees. For the past 100 years, more than half of the trees within the 500,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest have died, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Hennon and others have linked the decline to climate change. With warmer temperatures and lower rates of snowfall in late winter and early spring, some scientists theorize that the tree's shallow roots are being exposed to blasts of cold air, killing them in their prime. When yellow cedars die, they can remain standing for decades without decaying. The reason has been attributed to the composition of oils and their compounds within the tree's core, the " heartwood, " which are slowly altered after the tree dies. U.S. Forest Service scientist Rick Kelsey, based in Corvallis, Ore., said it was only common sense to explore whether any practical use could be found for the hyper-defensive trees. " The snags remain fairly decay resistant until 80 years after they die, " he said Southeast Alaska's coastlines are dotted with yellow cedar snags, but living trees can be found on coastlines from northern California to Prince William Sound. They are somewhat rare in the Juneau area. They also are ancient. Yellow cedars coexisted with dinosaurs, Hennon said. Kelsey's studies have focused primarily on the heartwood, which makes up the tree's strength and contains the defensive essential oils. Kelsey and his team in Corvallis isolated more than a dozen essential oil compounds in varying concentrations. They include nootkatin, tropolone and carvacrol. Some of these can be found in everyday food such as oregano and thyme. http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/ap_alaska/story/8545277p-8439049c.html Washington:2) Douglas fir. Western hemlock. Western red cedar. They are trees the way Tiger Woods is a golfer and Ethel Merman was a singer and Richard Pryor was funny and Bill Gates is rich. Aspiring rivals flail beneath them. Gravity, yielding more than 200 feet to some trunks, seems to have signed a lifetime waiver. Then came the stunning winds of Dec. 14 and 15. At speeds just shy of 70 miles an hour in Seattle and beyond 110 m.p.h. in the Cascade Range to the east, they knocked the Puget Sound region on its back, leaving more than a million people without power, tens of thousands for more than a week. The winds' weapons, more often than not, were the great evergreens, slamming onto power lines, houses, cars and roads. "I've never seen so much tree damage in my career," said John Hushagen, a longtime arborist here. There is no count of how many trees were lost in the storm. Whatever the total, it is sawdust compared with the mountainsides' worth clear-cut over a century of logging in the Pacific Northwest and the development of recent decades that has pushed people eastward from Seattle onto golf course communities carved from second- and third-growth timber farms. "People get tired of the trees falling on their property and on their roofs, and they just want them all cut down," said Sarah Griffith, the urban forestry program manager with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. "We say, Hey, this tree just survived 80 m.p.h. winds. It's going to be O.K." In the first desperate days after the storm, the King County division of Water and Land Resources urged restraint. "Many trees have been lost to the windstorm," Greg Rabourn, a project manager with the agency, said in a news release at the time, "and we don't want to lose many more to bad advice or hysteria." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/us/08trees.html?_r=1 & oref=slogin Oregon:3) In mid-December, the Coos Bay Bureau of Land Management granted the Cascadia Wildlands Project's administrative protests of the Pleasant Yankee and Brown Elk timber sales, which together would clearcut over 100 acres of mature forests 30 miles west of Roseburg. After filing a lawsuit challenging the legality of the timber sales, the BLM backtracked, rescinded their original decision and granted the merits of our protest. Our protest and lawsuit, amongst other claims, relied on our recent red tree vole victory in the Cow Catcher/Cotton Snake case. Again, the BLM failed to do required red tree vole surveys and instead relied on an internal memo that took them off the survey list. We were assisted by Umpqua Watersheds, Oregon Wild, Friends of the Coquille and were represented by powerhouse attorney Susan Jane Brown and legal interns with the Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center. http://www.cascwild.org4) As many Forest Service units proceed with restoration-driven forest management, the southern Oregon BLM continues with an old-growth liquidation program. The Galls Foot timber sale is the newest old-growth logging proposal issued by the Ashland Resource Area of the Medford BLM. We need your comments to help influence the outcome of this timber sale. This timber sale, located 15 miles east of Grants Pass, would: 1) clearcut 427 acres of forests over 120 years old 2) aggressively thin 1,154 acres of mature fores 3) build 4.2 miles of new permanent road… Instead of converting complex older forests into fiber farms, tell the BLM to focus tax-payer dollars on much needed forest restoration, like road decommissioning, plantation thinning, aquatic habitat enhancement and other beneficial projects. You need not be a forest biologist to comment, just a concerned citizen. Feel free to personalize your letter and cc the Cascadia Wildlands Project. Send comments by the close of business on January 19 to: Medford District Office, 3040 Biddle Road, Medford, Oregon 97504 or email Medford_Mail http://www.cascwild.org5) A recent posting on the Portland Independent Media Center website. " As this civilization decays around us—as the wars spread and the natural disasters increase in frequency—and as those trapped by western culture slowly break from their cognitive dissonance and open their hearts and minds, a new reality will begin to reveal itself. Our task is to let this transformation take its course, and to speed it along where we can. " History is littered with historical determinists who were convinced the revolution was just around the corner. A few were right, most were wrong. And history is full of social upheavals in which true believers decided the cause was so great that they would step beyond the boundaries of law. Some have been vindicated by history, some scorned. When I consider the ELF arsonists, I find myself thinking of the militant nineteenth-century abolitionist John Brown. So appalled was Brown by the institution of slavery that he tried to spark a revolution. He thought all that was needed was a firm nudge and the whole South would erupt in a slave rebellion. He was wrong, and was caught. His actions enraged the southern populace, and the system against which he struggled prosecuted him, convicted him, and hanged him. At the time he was viewed as a crazed visionary whose quixotic strivings had changed nothing. But as the forces of abolition gained strength—as the real revolution unfolded—he became something much more potent. He became a symbol. Over the course of decades, what was first considered lunacy and extremism came to be regarded as courage and righteousness. Years from now, when we have a clearer understanding of the full damage we have done to the Earth, is it possible the ELF arsonists will be remembered in similar fashion? http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/07-1om/Rasmussen.html6) But what rests between the peaks and the city is the icon Bend residents are rallying around: a sea of green ponderosa pines known as the Skyline Forest. When people try to sell the image of Central Oregon, this is what they show. Open Spaces. Room to breathe. Paradise. The Skyline Forest, also known as the Bull Springs Tree Farm, stands near Highway 20 about 10 miles from Bend. It is a lush, often used outdoor playground for many, both locals and visitors alike. The forest is poised to become one of the nation's only - and potentially the largest - community forests. For Bend, it is a chance for one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. to leverage itself to not just save a tree, but an entire forest, from development. At nearly 33,000 acres, the Skyline Forest is seen by nearly every Bend resident that goes outside, or merely peers out a window, each day. "The community has shown unprecedented interest in this," said Brad Chalfant, the executive director of the Deschutes Basin Land Trust. "And you only have to drive around town and look out to the mountains to understand why." Although there is no dictionary definition for a community forest, it's essentially forested land that owned by a community, held for the benefit of the community and available for a variety of productive purposes. "It's property that transcends what one would typically think of as a park," Chalfant said. Spearheading the campaign to preserve the Skyline Forest is the Bend-based Deschutes Basin Land Trust. The conservation group has had interest in purchasing the land for six or seven years, in hopes of creating a community forest. The trust plans to use a combination of grants, bonds and donations to purchase the forest. If the deal takes place, the trust would manage the area. The Skyline Forest is currently controlled by a Florida-based business known as Fidelity National Financial Inc. Fidelity National took control of nearly 70 percent of Cascade Timberlands, a holding company for 300,000 acres of Oregon forests - including Skyline. Although terms of the deal were never disclosed, it is rumored that Fidelity paid at least $83 million, likely more. http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/article/bend_oregon_rallies_around_community_forest/C509/L 99/California:7) "It's a frontier, one of the last frontiers," says Taylor, 40, greeting individual trees like old friends as he scouts a sheltered creek bed where he has found record-setting redwoods in the past. "And it was pretty much unexplored." In the space of eight weeks last summer, he and fellow amateur naturalist Chris Atkins, 44, discovered what are believed to be the three tallest trees in the world, all of them higher than 370 feet and as much as 2,200 years old. The discoverers christened them Helios, after the Greek sun god; Hyperion, his father; and Icarus, the youth whose wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. Separately and as a team, Atkins and Taylor are credited with cataloguing more extreme trees — those measuring 350 feet and up — than anyone else. Yet until they located the new champions in Redwood National Park, 90 miles north of here, their achievement was unappreciated outside a small fraternity of similarly obsessed scientists and enthusiasts. Now, after years of tracking trees as a hobby and at their own expense, the men are months away from completing their quest to measure all the loftiest redwoods. They know where California's last unexplored stands are, and by next summer they expect to have canvassed them all. The odds of finding a tree taller than the 379.1-foot Hyperion are less than 1 percent, they say. Coast redwoods grow in a 470-mile ribbon from southern Oregon to Big Sur and routinely top 300 feet, or the height of a 30-story building. (The giant sequoia, the redwood's inland cousin, have massive trunks that make them the world's biggest trees by volume.) Only 36 coast redwoods taller than 360 feet have been recorded; Atkins or Taylor had a hand in locating 28 of them. In the 370-feet-and-up category, there are only four. Atkins and Taylor found them all. Their stalking grounds are forests where, to the untrained eye, one giant looks pretty much like the next. Yet a prize is as likely to be within sight of a popular trail or highway as hidden in an untouched grove. http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/16400291.htm8) The flames of a wildfire that night were moving fast, too. When she arrived, Hangan learned that bulldozers were already in place in nearby Corral Canyon, poised to carve a firebreak through the rugged terrain. And that's where she needed to be - not as a firefighter saving trees or homes but as a US Forest Service archaeologist saving ancient native American sites from destruction by the firefighters themselves. In the burning away of centuries of plant growth, new finds are often exposed. Fire actually wreaks less havoc on such sites than the bulldozers that firefighters use to stop the advancing flames do. In the past, old villages and ancient resting places have survived wildfires with relatively little damage. When crews clear a fire line, however, they can unknowingly destroy a site. That's where an archaeologist like Hangan comes in. On a recent beautiful, clear day here in the national forest, 45 miles east of San Diego, Hangan makes the same bumpy ride into Corral Canyon that she did five months ago. But its oak trees give no clue as to the season. Branches cast linear, not leafy, shadows on the charred earth. And little is left of the thick undergrowth that blanketed these hillsides. Hangan looks down, scanning the ground as she usually does when she's on a site (a habit she can't seem to break, she says, laughing, even when she isn't on the job). Today, something catches her eye. Stopping in her tracks, she bends to pick up an arrowhead, whole and chiseled to a perfect point. " I haven't found one of these in years, " she says, a note of triumph in her voice. Unearthing fragments of arrowheads isn't unusual for Hangan; stumbling on an intact specimen is. Some people might be tempted to slip the arrowhead into a pocket, or take it home to show a friend or sell on eBay, where there is a spike in listings of such finds after every wildfire. Instead, she carries it several steps off the path, and with a tender pat, tucks it behind a small rock. It is Margaret Hangan's hope that that's where it will be - tomorrow, next week, and if coming generations are fortunate, on other sunny afternoons millenniums from now. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0108/p20s01-sten.html9) Hundreds of thousands of pine trees were burned when the Cedar fire raged through the 25,000-acre park in October 2003. More than three years later, about 99 percent of the pine trees in the park are dead. "Recovery of the pines may not be happening," Wells said. "We just don't have many of them." As part of the field work for his 2001 doctoral dissertation, Wells examined pine trees in six plots around the park, about 40 miles east of San Diego. Wells studied five previous fires that had swept through Cuyamaca Rancho and theorized that many of the park's pines would survive a blaze. Wildfires typically create a mosaic, burning with ferocity in some spots and leaving others unscathed. The Cedar fire proved him wrong. Before the fire, Wells counted 800 pine trees in the plots he studied. Three survived the flames. "This fire event was off the scale in terms of its intensity," he said. Wells pointed out the change at one plot he studied, where barren pines rise like 30-foot-tall charred toothpicks. Bushes of ceanothus, or mountain lilacs, blanket the ground. The mountain lilacs sprout after fires from seeds that can remain dormant for up to 200 years. They produce bluish purple flower clusters in the spring, masses of green bushes in the winter. Mountain lilacs typically flourish for years after a fire, until new pine trees grow and retake the land. "You can't exclude fire from a forest for 70 years and then with one fire fix everything," Wells said. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070107-9999-1m7trees.html10) A girl who called herself Lizard said they should all stretch their arms straight up in the air. They did and thanked her for the suggestion. Someone who identified himself as Aquaman talked about how every tree has its own " soul, spirit and life force. " A woman who goes by the name Doctress Neutopia told them about a film she's making called " Lovolution. " Then they learned a song that went, " Will we look to the forest? Listen to the silence? Will we heal our connections? Will we? " They chanted " Om, " someone began drumming and then it began: an ancient pagan ritual known as the spiral dance. Singing their song and forming one long line, they walked around and around in circles within circles, forming a spiral. A man told them it was key to look each other in the eyes during the spiral dance. " It's pretty amazing, " he said. At the end, Aquaman had a simple request. " Before you leave, " he told the others, " spend some time with the trees and really get to know them. " They could have future opportunities to befriend the oaks. Pickett said they might be back in February to celebrate the tree sitters' two-month mark. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/07/BAGIGNEBEK1.DTLMontana: 11) Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court provided good news to wildlife species dependent on old-growth forest habitat by refusing to accept the timber industry's appeal of a 9th Circuit ruling in a case (Ecology Center vs. Austin) questioning how much scientific review is necessary for industrial logging projects in national forests. Back in 2002 the Ecology Center - now called the WildWest Institute - challenged the Lolo National Forest's Lolo Post-Burn logging project, claiming the 4,600 acre logging project would result in the loss of valuable wildlife habitat created by the fires that burned in the Lolo National Forest in 2000. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the conservation organizing saying the Forest Service provided scant evidence to prove the agency's claim that logging in old-growth forests would benefit wildlife. Rather, the 9th Circuit said it was unclear whether the proposed logging would benefit old-growth dependent species like the northern goshawk and pileated woodpecker. The Court also said the Forest Service should have conducted soil tests in the actual proposed logging areas to determine if soil quality would be affected, indicating that the agency's method of testing similar soil types in other non-logging areas was not enough. http://www.newwest.net/index.php/citjo/article/a_victory_for_species_dependent_on_old_growth_hab itat/C38/L38/ West Virginia:12) Sheriff Mark Miller explained that McEndree allegedly sold property on Wallace Road to a logging company for $170,000. The problem was that McEndree did not own the property he sold. Miller explained that McEndree went around Harrison County looking for property with good timber on it. After finding the desirable property, he went to the Harrison County Courthouse to inquire who owned the land. He learned that the property owner lives in Florida and has another address in Toledo. McEndree then allegedly created an alias for himself, and set up a Post Office box in Toledo, under the name of a fictitious farm, Miller said. Upon setting up his identity, he contacted the logging company to put a price on the land. The company then gave $170,000 to McEndree, because that was its estimate of the timber's value, reports indicated. Miller said the logging company had mailed payments to McEndree in installments of $50,000 and $100,000. The owner's father lives in the area and alerted him that trees were being cut down on his property, and had asked whether he sold the land to a logging company. The owner alerted the Harrison County Sheriff's Office of what was happening. McEndree was asked by the HCSO to come into the office for questioning, and was later arrested and charged with third-degree felony theft. The maximum penalty for a third degree felony is five years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. http://www.theintelligencer.net/community/articles.asp?articleID=14800Vermont: 13) The land appeared to be dying and washing away. Clear-cut logging and subsistence farming had felled 85 percent of the region's trees. Every rainstorm caused streams to swell and choke with mud and debris that ran off the denuded slopes. The scene was not the rainforests of South America or the ravaged plains of Africa. It was Vermont in the mid-19th century. It is hard to picture today, but at that time the once Green Mountain State was facing a stark environmental nightmare. Some would suggest it was a precursor to what the world faces today where forests are disappearing, global fishing stocks are collapsing, and climate change threatens alterations that some fear could last for centuries. After 200 years of settlement, Vermont had few remaining forest stands and its logging industry was collapsing. Its farming economy, primarily based on sheep, was in serious danger as far more fertile and desirable lands opened up out West. One of the first to issue a warning was George Perkins Marsh. The Vermont resident became one of America's first environmentalists and philosophers in 1848 when he wrote " Man and Nature, " warning that civilizations collapsed when land was ruined and forests were destroyed. The book had a powerful impact on another native son, Frederick S. Billings. A lawyer, he had made a fortune during the California Gold Rush and the rise of the railroads in the West. He returned to Vermont in 1869 and quickly realized something had to be done to save the environment. Billings was inspired by Marsh to begin buying land to regenerate Vermont's forests. The property he chose included Marsh's old farm at the base of Mount Tom in Woodstock, Vt. During a recent visit to the area with journalists who write about the environment, I saw the results of what Billings began nearly 150 years ago. Near the former Marsh/Billings house rise tall, mature Norway spruce. In the hills behind there are more spruce mixed with hemlock, beech and maple. Bubbling creeks splash through the 550 acres of dense, mature woodlands and open meadows. http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/commentary/hc-plcvermont0107.artjan07,0,3593339.story?coll= hc-headlines-commentaryUSA:14) The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the selection of Abigail Kimbell as the 16th chief of the Forest Service. Kimbell succeeds Chief Dale Bosworth, who is retiring on Feb. 2 after 41 years with the Forest Service. " Abigail Kimbell is a veteran of the Forest Service who began as a seasonal worker and has since filled an impressive series of field assignments, " said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. " Gail brings a wealth of knowledge to her new position. She is well respected both within the agency and by our stakeholders. I'm confident she will do a terrific job as chief. " " I am grateful to Dale Bosworth for his 41 years of public service and especially for the tremendous leadership he provided during his six years as chief, " Johanns continued. " I am struck by all that the Forest Service accomplished under his watch, from advancing the Healthy Forest Initiative to a four-fold increase in fuels treatment work. He also bolstered the agency's financial system, making it a source of pride government wide. I wish Dale all the best in retirement. " Kimbell currently serves as Regional Forester for the Northern Region in Missoula, Montana, which includes northern Idaho, and North Dakota. As Forest Service Chief, Kimbell will oversee an organization of over 30,000 employees and a budget of just over $4 billion. Before becoming regional forester, Kimbell served in the Washington Office as Associate Deputy Chief for the National Forest System, with responsibility for assisting in the development of the Healthy Forest Restoration. oc.news15) " Loss of open space is an issue that affects the sustainability of both the National Forests and Grasslands and private forests, " according to the document. " Open space -- including public and private land, wilderness and working land -- provides a multitude of public benefits and ecosystem services we all need and enjoy. " To conserve open space being lost to private land sales, industrial use, road-building and destructive land use practices, the agency says it seeks to work with a variety of organizations to develop a national plan titled the " USDA Forest Service Open Space Conservation Strategy and Implementation Plan. " Keith Hammer, chair of the Swan View Coalition, expressed a different view. He said he considered it encouraging " that there is a recognition of the value of open space, " whether public or private. " Our property values are enhanced by the beauty of the open spaces, " he said. As the Flathead Valley has become more urbanized, Hammer noted, people seek quiet, peaceful refuges to escape the hustle and bustle. " As things become more busy and noisy in the valley bottom, people need a place to get away from what they're involved in every day, " he said. http://bigforkeagle.com/articles/2007/01/10/news/news03.txtCanada: 16) MONTREAL - Six forestry companies face native blockades of logging roads as a protest against perceived intransigence by the federal and Quebec governments unless the companies agree to suspend logging within a 10,000 square-kilometre tract of land north of Ottawa. " If the companies physically try to go in, they will be physically stopped, " Russell Diabo, an adviser to the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, said Monday. Similar action in the past resulted in an agreement first being reached in 1991. Domtar Inc. has the largest stake in the area, accounting for about 60 per cent of the 800,000 to one million cubic metres of lumber available for harvest, he said. The other firms are Commonwealth Plywood, Bowater Louisiana Pacific, Makibois and Tembec Davidson. Harvests would normally take place once the land freezes in one to three weeks. At issue is the federal government's refusal to recognize the band's leadership and Quebec's delay in approving recommendations of an integrated resource management plan. Letters were sent Friday to the companies, telling them the community " wants all forestry operations suspended until some matters are cleared up " between the Algonquins and the two governments. http://www.940news.com/nouvelles.php?cat=22 & id=1087117) "The wood we see as being critical to ever opening the mill again is being sold to our competitors, so we don't understand why the government of Ontario would let this happen," Fleet says. Ontario's historic flows indicate no more than two per cent of Ontario's Crown wood goes to Quebec, Minister of Natural Resources David Ramsay says. In fact, the province is a net importer of raw wood receiving material from New York, Minnesota and Manitoba. It does not receive Quebec fibre. Down the road in Timmins on Hwy. 101 Little John Enterprise is experiencing some challenges of its own. Owner John Kapel, Sr. told the Ministry of Natural Resources he would not harvest his respected conifer lots this winter because of a surplus, but would in the new year. "I signed a letter with the Governor General over that wood. It is mine for life," Kapel says. "Every year it is renewed for five years. I have another year to go and it is not supposed to be cut because it belongs to me." Kapel says Quebec legislation dictates no private or public wood leaves their province in a round form. In Ontario however," there are places where the wood is barreling out of the district to Quebec (in raw form)," he says The circumstances around the two mills have left Ramsay defending his position on wood harvesting. Not approving the transfer of Ontario wood to Quebec means "I would have to put all the bush workers out (of work), so tough, that is the way we do business." Even if the company was to resolve their labour differences, there is no guarantee the mill would open again because the wood being harvested is the company's closest feed source. Mobilizing logging crews for areas farther away means the company's operating costs double and this makes "opening the mill almost impossible." http://www.nob.on.ca/industry/forestry/01-07-quebec-wood.aspUK:18) Most of the UK was once covered by forest. Clearance for timber, fuel, and agriculture meant that by 1900, forest and woodland2 cover had fallen to about 5% of its land area. Timber demand during the First World War led to the creation of the Forestry Commission in 1919, with the aim of building up a strategic timber reserve. Large scale forest planting took place, mainly of productive non-native conifer species (such as Sitka spruce, native to North America) on land of marginal value for agriculture. One such example is Kielder Forest in Northumberland. The area of woodland has now risen to 11.6% of the UK land area (or 2.8 million hectares). The amount, type, and ownership of woodlands vary within the UK (Fig. 1). The majority of native trees, suchas oak, are broadleaves (with flat leaves rather than needles), but some, such as Scots pine, are conifers. Woodland is considered 'semi-natural' if it is composed of locally native species. A small proportion of this woodland is classed as 'ancient', as it dates back to at least 1600 AD (or 1750 AD in Scotland3), and is often biodiverse and of cultural importance (an example being Sherwood Forest). Around 30% of forest is owned by the devolved governments and managed by the Forestry Commission or the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) in Northern Ireland. However, only a small amount of this is semi-natural or ancient woodland. http://www.alphagalileo.org/images/postpn275.pdfArmenia:19) Precious plants are nearing extinction in the forest area surrounding Vanadzor. Agricultural scientist Lilia Bayramyan has identified such medicinal herbs and wild plants as nettle, thyme, mint, cat thyme, motherwort, Solomon's s eal, St. John's wort, etc. Her observation in and around Vanadzor's central bazaar last spring reveal that about four metric tons of herbs and wild plants were collected and sold each day during that period. "If this trend continues the reserves of precious plants will be exhausted in two years," Lilia Bayramyan concludes. Biologist Karen Afrikyan in his turn notes that in the near future one sort of both thyme and St John's wort will end up in the Red Book. Bayramyan explains that the ruthless collection of herbs is not the only human activity that threatens these precious plants. Her studies also suggest that the plants are endangered above all by logging in the area. "Since logging began, the temperature has risen. The precious plants began withering in the sunlight. Now they can only grow in the upper or trans-alpine layer of the forest. And people, in their turn, keep picking them." The result of all this is that in the formerly forested areas of Vanadzor, precious plants are being replaced by herbaceous plants. Lilia Bayramyan has also discovered that as a consequence of the destruction of forest areas, fewer minerals are enriching the soil and nourishing the precious plants. "The quantity of phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium has decreased as a result of soil drenching," she said. In return, favorable conditions for grass have been created. Wild horse-radish, trefoil, and coltsfoot have overtaken the former forests and, growing rapidly, prevent any other tree or plant seeds that end up here from taking root. "The fact is the forest is slowly receding," Karen Afrikyan said. This means that a tree seed that falls on the soil will encounter the so-called dead layer composed of weeds and forest remains. This layer, as the phytosociologist explains, prevents the plant from reaching the main organic layer and, therefore, from finding nourishment. http://www.hetq.am/eng/ecology/0701-vanadzor.html20) The National Action Plan to Combat Desertification in Armenia developed under the guidance of Ashot Vardevanyan envisages only one action to combat desertification in Lori— the neutralization of the harmful impact of the Shamlor reservoir. Four years have passed since the action plan was adopted but nothing has been done because of the lack of funds. Instead various projects aimed at forest restoration have been implemented without any expert supervision. According Volodya Buniatyan, who heads the Lori Marz Department of Ecology and Agriculture, saplings have taken root on only 300 of the 1,500 hectares of land on which they were planted. Buniatyan favorably assesses the planting carried out over the last three years, though he says that only 40 % of the trees planted in Stepanavan, Lalvar, and Dilijan between 2003 and 2005 have taken root. Karen Afrikyan points to areas in Lori that have been irrevocably lost and will not even be restored as forest zones in centuries. Among them he singles out the forests of Gugark and Vanadzor. At the same time, there has been a fundamental change in the composition of the Vanadzor forests, which prior to logging were 90% oaks and beeches. http://www.hetq.am/eng/ecology/0701-vanadzor.htmlCongo:21) BRAZZAVILLE - Oil exploration activities, including underground explosions, are seriously damaging Congo Republic's most diverse ecological zone in violation of national park legislation, conservationists say. Stretching from deep in the Atlantic Ocean to the central African country's inland hills, Congo's Conkouati-Douli National Park is home to a host of rare and endangered species including leatherback turtles, mandrills, gorillas and chimpanzees. The US-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) says oil exploration by Zetah, a subsidiary of French oil company Maurel & Prom, is damaging the park's habitat and says the Brazzaville government should never have granted exploration rights because the law creating the park prohibits it. http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39718/story.htmNiger:22) The only giraffes left in West Africa and the only giraffes in the world that still live in their natural habitat and not in nature preserves, Niger's Giraffa camelopardalis peralta have been on the brink of extinction for years. With no major predators and a population in good health, the giraffes are menaced more by human activity - from road accidents to habitat clearing to poaching - than anything else. Indeed, the giraffes and the humans from the Kollo region - mostly farmers trying to eke out a living from harsh, dry earth - live in an uneasy harmony. Outsiders such as international environmental groups and the European Community insist that the giraffe is a national treasure. With the support of government organizations, protective measures have been put into place to stop the once-rampant poaching. At the same time, life for villagers outside the capital of Niamey is difficult. " The [human] population is starving, " explains Omer Dovi, an energetic man with an easy smile and keen eyes who is the operations manager of the Association to Save the Giraffes of Niger (ASGN), a local nongovernmental organization that promotes ecotourism and development. " There's not that much to eat in the village so when a giraffe is hit, the villagers don't let anything go to waste. " Villagers butchered the carcass and divvied up the meat so fast, recalls Jean-Patrick Suraud, a French ecologist who is researching West Africa's giraffes, that when he arrived on the scene just a few hours later there was nothing but a stain left on the road. The giraffe, a pouty-lipped animal with a long supple black tongue (the better to eat thorny acacia plants with, my dear), and a brain the size of an orange, has a unique set of spots - like a human fingerprint - that allows researchers to recognize them. http://niger1.com/nigergiraffes.htmlZimbabwe:23) " The Forestry Commission has taken the initiative by holding workshops with resettled farmers who are into tobacco farming to conscientise them on the dangers of deforestation, " he said. Mr Marufu said they are providing gum tree seedlings to the farmers so that they could establish their own plantations, with a view of planting the trees every year and the programme was expected to bear fruits within five years. He pointed out that emphasis was on farmers to establish a plantation equivalent to the amount of energy required in curing their crop. " For every one hectare of tobacco, a farmer needs to plant approximately 200 trees every year for a period of at least five years, " he said. He advised all tobacco farmers to approach Forestry Commission offices in any district for advice and access to gum tree seedlings. http://allafrica.com/stories/200701080381.htmlUganda:24) As the government pushes for industrialization at the expense of the country's limited forest cover, Uganda once dubbed the pearl of Africa may eventually become a sterile desert, a fate that has befallen 30 percent of the world's dry lands. According to a World Bank report, three-quarters of dry lands in Africa and North America are at some stage of desertification. Biodiversity defined as the full variety of life from genes to species to ecosystems, is in trouble when government's deforestation plans go ahead un-abetted. Although tropical rain forests like the Bugala forests on Kalangala Island cover only 6 percent of the land surface, they contain more than half of the rare species of plants and animals of the entire world. That's why the destruction of our forests spells trouble for the country's reservoir of biodiversity. It should be borne in mind that we are destroying part of the ecological circle, thereby depriving all future generations of what we ourselves were bequeathed. In addition to creating a habitable environment, wild species found in forests are the source of products that help sustain humanity. For instance more than 40 percent of all prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies in the U.S are substances originally extracted from plants and animals found in forests. http://allafrica.com/stories/200701081489.htmlGuyana:25) The great collection of world woods by Samuel Record at Yale University includes a large number of samples from Guyana from the 1930s, which were used with Venezuelan timbers for descriptions in the classic text "Timbers of the New World " (Record & Hess 1943, facsimile reprint 1972). Properties of the main commercial Guyanese timbers are available in public-domain comparative databases such as PROSPECT http://www.plants.ox.ac.uk/ofi/prospect of which both Indian and Chinese log importers are aware. In the ten months from January-October 2006, the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) recorded names of 125 timbers produced as logs, of which 60 timbers were exported. Fourteen of those were exported in volumes greater than 1000 cubic metres (m3) and three of those in volumes greater than 10,000 m3. The GFC recorded, for the same period, 93 timbers produced as chainsawn lumber, of which 51 chainsawn and millsawn timbers were exported. There are considerable errors in volumes, and confusion about names in the GFC data, but Samantha Griffith is simply wrong in saying that "Guyana is not . . . well established in the timber market", at least in qualitative terms. http://guyanaforestry.blogspot.com/2007/01/independent-inquiry-needed-into.htmlMexico: 27) Hundreds of inhabitants of the Sierra de Chiapas blocked trucks and machinery transporting wood from the zone, and initiated a protest vigil in front of the municipal presidency in Motozintla in protest of the timber companies which are exploiting the resouces without any plan for forest recovery. Campesinos from Motozintla, El Porvenir y Siltepec explained that following Hurricane Stan, in October 2005, 168,000 hectares of these municipalities remain devastated. They said the government has initiated no program of reforestation, posing a risk to the lives of thousands of people in the region. The protesters announced that would not allow the indifference of the authorities, that they would maintain their vigil and take other actions until the exploitation is stopped and a plan is applied to reforest the Sierra. " In the Sierra, they have not reforested anything. In Motozintla they've installed a plant with the best technology to exploit the wood, but the bad management has impeded the clearing of our fields and the greater part of our harvest has been lost, " explained Lucio Roblero, representative of the Indigenous Ecological Federation of Chiapas, one of the organizations participating in the vigil. The members of the communities and social organizations in the region say that after the storm the timber companies suspended their operations for want of roads to remove the product, but in May 2006 they resumed exploitation. http://www.ww4report.com/node/3025Costa Rica:28) New research published today on ES & T's Research ASAP website reveals that surprisingly high levels of pesticides currently used in Costa Rica are being transported to high-altitude forests, some of which are in protected areas such as national parks and volcanoes. The new data are the most complete for Costa Rica and the first to show that pesticides used in lowlands accumulate in tropical mountain forests miles away. Researchers say that a meteorological quirk created by mountain ranges carries the pesticides to destinations previously considered too far from agricultural areas to be of concern. Wania explains that air above farms is carried up the sides of mountains and then cools at higher altitudes. As the air cools, precipitation forms and carries the chemicals down in rainwater and fog. The La Selva Biological Station was a typical sampling site. "La Selva looks like a picture-book jungle, as pristine as it gets, but agricultural activities are very close by. I drove through one banana plantation after another," Wania says. Pesticides are not only transported to mountain forests, the researchers say, but they also accumulate there. In some cases, the team found that levels were almost an order of magnitude greater on mountains than in low-lying areas closer to plantations. http://pubs.acs.org//journals/esthag-w/2007/jan/science/ee_pesticide.htmlSouth America: 29) The finding, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenges the theory that at local scales tree distributions in a forest simply reflect patterns of seed dispersal, said James W. Dalling, a U. of I. professor of plant biology and a principal researcher on the study. The study evaluated three sites: two lowland forests, in central Panama and eastern Ecuador, and a mountain forest in southern Colombia. The researchers plotted every tree and mapped the distribution of soil nutrients on a total of 100 hectares (247 acres) at the sites. The study included 1,400 tree species and more than 500,000 trees. The researchers compared distribution maps of 10 essential plant nutrients in the soils to species maps of all trees more than 1 centimeter in diameter. Prior to the study, the researchers had expected to see some influence of soil nutrients on forest composition, but the results were more pronounced than anticipated. " The fact that up to half of the species are showing an association with one or more nutrients is quite remarkable, " Dalling said. Although plants in temperate forests influence the soils around them (through the uptake of nutrients, decomposition of leaf litter on the forest floor and through root exudates), in tropical forests local neighborhoods contain so many species that the ability of individual species to influence soil properties is likely to be small. At the site in Ecuador, calcium and magnesium had the strongest effects. In the Panamanian forest, boron and potassium were the most influential nutrients assayed. And in the Colombian mountain forest, potassium, phosphorous, iron and nitrogen, in that order, showed the strongest effects on the distribution of trees. " There are all kinds of minerals out there that plants seem to be responding to that we didn't think were likely to be important, " Dalling said. Further studies are needed, he said, to evaluate these influences in more detail. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Soil_Nutrients_Shape_Tropical_Forests_A_Large_Scale_Study_Indi cates_999.htmlPeru:30) PERU - 20,000 Peruvians and 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of agricultural land are affected by the overflowing rivers, mainly the Huallaga and the Mayo river in the Amazon jungle. The flooding started in November. one of the causes for the flooding is the brutal deforestation in the Huallaga river basin which is destabilizing the river banks. People urgently require food, medicine, blankets, mosquito nets, among other things. http://sky-watch.blogspot.com/2007/01/unusually-warm-conditions-prevail-in.htmlIndia: 31) Sri Lanka - A large-scale timber racket carried out in a forest reserve in Wahagahapuwewa area in the Yan Oya valley was raided by the Horowpathabna police on Saturday. Sub Inspector of police E.M. Sujeewea Mahanama who led the team of police personnel who raided the site, said that according to what was revealed in the inquiry, this racket had been carried out for nearly two years with the assistance of certain public officers. One hundred and five logs of Palu wood cut from the forest reserve were taken into custody. Most of them were seen piled in the forest ready to be transported. The logs were brought to the Horowpathana police station using ten tractors. The suspects and the timber were due to be produced before Kebithigollewa Magistrate yesterday. http://www.dailymirror.lk/2007/01/08/index.aspSouth East Asia:32) The forests of tropical Asia support 20-25% of global terrestrial biodiversity, but are now being rapidly cleared for commercial agriculture, while most forest areas that remain are degraded by uncontrolled logging. The protected area system is inadequate, even on paper, and legal protection has often done little to deter hunting and other forms of exploitation. This regional crisis is well documented, but the response so far has been insufficient and piecemeal. The problems are social and political in origin, but Science has an essential role to play in planning, prioritizing and implementing solutions. Ecological understanding is going to be particularly important in the long-term management of small protected areas and in the restoration of degraded habitats. Unfortunately, most ecological research in South East Asia has focused on a narrow range of largely academic problems, with the result that we understand neither how intact forest communities function nor how they are changed by human impacts. This seminar will give a brief introduction to ten gaps in our current knowledge and suggest how these gaps can be filled. http://leafmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/01/top-ten-things-we-need-to-know-about.html Philippines:33) The Supreme Court rendered a landmark decision that called attention to the need to protect the country's dwindling forests, and to preserve ecological balance over and above the business interests of a few. The high tribunal condemned the destruction of the environment and drove home the message that all of us must play an important role in conserving our forests, which form part of our sources of food and water. For so many times, we have seen the disastrous consequences of forest destruction and how severely we have suffered from the fury of Mother Nature. The court thumbed down the petition filed by the Paper Industries Corp. of the Philippines, the country's largest logging concession, to have its Timber License Agreement 43 converted automatically into an Integrated Forest Management Agreement. License agreement 43 covers 75,343 hectares of forest land in Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Sur, Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental—the single biggest area in the country set aside for logging. The Supreme Court judgment now compels Picop to comply with a) payment of delinquent forest charges amounting to P167,592,440 as of Aug. 22, 2002; b) a five-year forest protection plan, c) a seven-year reforestation plan; and d) clearances from the indigenous people's commission and local government units concerned for the remaining areas. But this does not restore the 75,000 hectares covered by the expired TLA which Picop wanted to covert into IFMA. Feeling vindicated by the court's verdict, Alvarez described it as a "triumph of the environment which confirms the need to uphold the rules for environment conservation and security as mandated by the Constitution." http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=felMaragay_jan8_2007Malaysia:34) Since February 2004, the settled Penans have erected a blockade to stop bulldozers and chainsaws of logging giant Samling group from entering what they say are native territories. Samling was given five logging concessions in the Baram district in the mid-1980s. The blockade sits within the Selaan-Linau Forest Management Unit (FMU). To complicate matters, the Penans' Kelabit neighbours in Long Lellang (four hours' walk away) have thrown their support behind Samling. The Kelabits blamed the Penans for "obstructing development" from reaching their village. Fuel and food shortages in Long Lellang were highlighted by the local media after a trip organised by the Sarawak Forest Corporation and Samling in October. It was said that the lack of roads, as well as irregular air service, have resulted in high transportation costs. George Pushu of Long Lellang said construction of a road would benefit his village and six others nearby, including Long Benali. The Penans, however, see the road project as a way for loggers to access primary forests. Settled since the early 1980s, the previously nomadic Penans have learnt to raise chickens and cultivate hill paddy and vegetables, but still hunt and fish to supplement their diet. They also gather rattan to be weaved into mats and baskets, gaharu (a valuable aromatic resin), medicinal plants and sago palm. Dennis Bujang, 48, of Long Benali, said the community was merely protecting their forests against encroachment that would contaminate rivers and drive away animals, as experienced by other Penan communities in the logged middle Baram. http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2007/1/9/lifefocus/16219792 & sec=lifefocusIndonesia: 35) The European Union and Indonesia, home to most of the world's orangutans, have agreed to negotiate a pact aimed at helping stop illegal logging which is threatening their habitat, the EU said on Tuesday. The voluntary accord, once complete, will provide assurance that Indonesian forest products imported to the EU are verified as legal. The EU is the third largest market for Indonesian timber after China and the United States. " The EU and Indonesia recognise that as consumers and producers of tropical timber we have a joint responsibility to eradicate illegal logging, " EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said after talks in Brussels with Indonesian officials. Washington last November signed a similar pact with Indonesia, where according to the World Bank some 70 to 80 percent of logging is done illegally on public lands. Inadequate law enforcement and the ruthless methods of the loggers are part of the problem. The island of Borneo, which is shared by Indonesia and Malaysia, is home to more than three-quarters of the world's remaining 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans, which once numbered in the hundreds of thousands across Southeast Asia. An estimated 7,000 to 7,500 of the orange shaggy-haired apes living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra have been identified as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union, with illegal logging one of the main factors. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L09162481.htm36) Java - The issues of population pressure outside Java are now critical. Although the amount of land and resources outside Java seem abundant, soil fertility and other physical characteristics are not so promising for agricultural practices. Conversion from tropical rain forests to agricultural land does not always create land with good-quality crops, especially paddy fields. It should not surprise people when these lands are classified as critical; deforested and degraded. As a result of a national policy to maintain rice self-sufficiency -- especially the expansion of rice fields outside Java, lowland areas planted in rice increased in all regions except Java. In Kalimantan, for example, the expansion of lowland rice fields from 1980 to 1990 reached 4.9 percent; while in Sumatra, 2.5 percent; in Sulawesi, 2.4 percent. In Java there was a slight decrease of 0.2 percent. This might be related to rapid industrialization and other uses of land. However, during the same period, the harvested rice areas in Java increased by about 1.27 percent a year. This was an indication of an increased degree of intensive land-use practices on paddies. http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20070111.E03 & irec=2 Australia:37) MELBOURNE'S historic elm trees, which have lined the banks of the Yarra River for more than 100 years, are dead or dying. Six of the stately trees on Alexandra Ave have died and will be chopped down within three weeks after falling victim to drought. And experts say 38 more trees along the Yarra, which were controversially moved when CityLink was built 10 years ago, will struggle to survive. As Melbourne's status as a renowned garden city dries up: ABOUT 2000 elm, oak and gum trees, many of which are heritage-listed, have been identified as being at risk from the drought. There are 55,000 trees in the City of Melbourne and more than 500ha of parks. The council has been forced to set watering program priorities. Trees on Collins and Swanston streets are left to fend for themselves. And all sports fields will go brown as the council uses what water it has to keep precious trees green. Drip-watering is being used to save trees on the city's famous boulevards, including St Kilda Rd, and memorial trees at the Shrine will continue to be watered. But all other trees outside the nine Melbourne parks will go without. Heritage trees in the Carlton Gardens, Fitzroy Gardens, Alexandra Gardens, Queen Victoria Gardens, Treasury Gardens, Shrine Reserve, Flagstaff Gardens and Domain Parklands will get water in line with tight restrictions agreed by the council and water authorities. The city is heading into an early autumn as normally green trees shed their leaves to survive. Dr Moore said the next eight weeks would be critical for the city's trees. He said about 100 of the 2000 landmark trees under threat were likely to die even if it rained. " Things are going to be really tough over the next two months, " Dr Moore said. " The number of trees under stress will go up. " http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21039726-661,00.html 38) NSW - Tamworth council say its application to improve the roads between the Nundle State Forest and the new McVicar Saw Mill at Quirindi, which is due to open next month, appears to have been unsuccessful. Critics say local roads are not suited to deal with the increased load and that logging trucks should not pass the Jenkins Street school in Nundle. However, State Forest's regional manager, Ken Fusell, says the logging trucks will only use this street until upgrade works are carried out on an alternative route through town. But Mr Fussel is unable to say if the refurbishment works will finished by the time the saw mill opens. " I can't guarantee that whether the first truck goes through ... trucks move through Nundle now, but look I can't guarantee that, " Mr Fussel said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/items/200701/1824844.htm?newengland39) The Wilderness Society claims the resumption of logging in Tasmania's Upper Florentine Valley in south-west Tasmania could be illegal. The society says logging of a coupe containing threatened and rare species, including wedge-tailed eagles and grey goshawks, resumed this week. A recent Federal Court decision that stopped logging in the Wielangta Forest raised questions about the legality of logging in areas inhabited by threatened species. Vica Bayley of the Wilderness Society believes the ruling means loggers must get approval from the federal Environment Minister before proceeding. He says no such approval has been granted for the Upper Florentine, as far as he knows. " That decision ruled that the [Regional Forestry Agreement] was not protecting threatened species and as a result for logging to abide by the [Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation] Act, the federal law that protects threatened species, the federal Environment Minister must sign off and approve any logging operations that are occurring within threatened species' habitat, " he said. A spokesman for federal Forestry Minister Senator Eric Abetz says the Federal Court decision only prevents logging in the Wielangta Forest. He says the implications for other sites are yet to be determined and the Government is still seeking legal advice. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200701/s1823999.htm40) Pulp-mill technology expert Dr Warwick Raverty says Long Reach on the Tamar estuary near Bell Bay is an " atrocious location " for an industrial project where bad smells and noxious gases are big environmental obstacles to its approval. Dr Raverty (a former member of the assesment panel for Gunns' enormous project) tried to convince Gunns to relocate its pulp mill from the Tamar estuary to rural Hampshire. He points to problems of temperature inversions and high levels of particles in the air already experienced by residents of Launceston and the Tamar Valley. It is estimated that there are at least 20 days a year when air quality in Launceston is " below acceptable safety levels " and that " as many as eight people die prematurely each year because of issues associated with poor air quality. " " Frankly, Gunns chose the most sensitive site in Tasmania they could have... " says Dr Raverty, who stresses he voices his own opinions and not his employer - the CSIRO. The problem for Gunns, says Dr Raverty, is that not only is the proposed pulp mill in an estuary with poor air quality already but it is near a major city - Launceston. If it proceeds the mill will eventually consume around 4 million tonnes of logs every year. The resignation of the assessment panellists could undermine the future of the $1.4 billion project. Ex-Chair Julian Green accused the State Government-driven Pulp Mill Task Force of " undermining the integrity of the assessment panel. " Mr Green said his resignation was been brought on by the activities of the taskforce. The current pulp-mill dramas follow the recent groundbreaking Federal Court decision that logging in the Tasmanian Wielangta Forest has been illegal. The Federal Court found the state agency Forestry Tasmania, which supervises logging on public land, failed to take account of its effect on three endangered species in the Wielangta forest. http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/01/135825.php41) Local Landcare president Frank George said the situation has escalated over the last two months, since its members first noticed the destruction in front of a beachfront development. Mr George said he believes the motive behind the destruction was for some residents of the development to obtain better views. Frank says the beach sheoaks which have been ringbarked are more than 20 years old. " They provide the front line protection from the salt laden and sand laden winds that blow onto the beach there, " Mr george said. " The problem is that if the sheoaks are removed the dunes are unprotected. " He says there is serious risk of erosion and further vegetation destruction if the trees die. A spokesman for developer, CKG Properties, says they are not aware of any illegal action being undertaken on the sand dunes. He says there was an incident more than six months ago where trees were pruned by residents but that situation was quickly addressed. http://www.abc.net.au/widebay/stories/s1825490.htm?backyard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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