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Rainforest on the island of Borneo
Section 1:
TROPICAL RAINFORESTS OF THE WORLD
Tropical rainforests are a world
like none other; and their importance to the global ecosystem and human
existence is paramount. Unparalleled in terms of their biological diversity,
tropical rainforests are a natural reservoir of genetic diversity which
offers a rich source of medicinal plants, high-yield foods,
and a myriad of other useful forest products. They are an important
habitat for migratory animals and sustain as much as 50 percent of the species on Earth, as well as a number of
diverse and unique indigenous cultures. Tropical rainforests play an
elemental role in regulating global weather in addition to maintaining
regular rainfall, while buffering against floods, droughts, and erosion.
They store vast quantities of carbon, while producing a significant
amount of the world's oxygen.
Despite their monumental role, tropical forests are restricted to the
small land area between the latitudes 22.5° North and 22.5° South
of the equator, or in other words between the Tropic of Capricorn
and the Tropic of Cancer. Since the majority of Earth's land is located
north of the tropics, rainforests are naturally limited to a relatively
small area.
Tropical rainforests, like so many other natural places, are a scarce
resource in the 21st century. The vast swaths of
forest, swamp, desert, and savanna that carpeted Earth's land surface
a mere five generations ago have been reduced to scattered fragments;
today, more than two-thirds of the world's tropical rainforests exist
as fragmented remnants. Just a few thousand years ago, tropical rainforests
covered as much as 12 percent of the Earth's land surface, or about 6 million square miles (15.5 million square km),
but today less than 5 percent of Earth's land is covered with
these forests (about 2.41 million square miles or 625 million hectares).
The largest unbroken stretch of rainforest is found in the Amazon river
basin of South America. Over half of this forest lies in Brazil, which
holds about one-third of the world's remaining tropical rainforests.
Another 20 percent of the world's remaining rainforest exists
in Indonesia and Congo Basin, while the balance of the world's rainforests
are scattered around the globe in tropical regions.
The global distribution of tropical rainforests can be broken up into
four biogeographical realms based roughly on four forested continental
regions: the Ethiopian or Afrotropical, the Australiasian or Australian,
the Oriental or Indomalayan/Asian, and the Neotropical.
Important safeguards to protect rainforests lacking in REDD negotiating text
(11/06/2009) Important safeguards to protect natural forests are still lacking in negotiating text on REDD, a proposed mechanism for mitigating climate change by paying developing countries to keep trees standing, reports an alliance of activist groups.
World's first video of the elusive and endangered bay cat
(11/05/2009) Rare, elusive, and endangered by habitat loss, the bay cat is one of the world's least studied wild cats. Several specimens of the cat were collected in the 19th and 20th Century, but a living cat wasn't even photographed until 1998. Now, researchers in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, have managed to capture the first film of the bay cat (Catopuma badia). Lasting seven seconds, the video shows the distinctly reddish-brown cat in its habitat.
Photos: Palm oil threatens Borneo's rarest cats
(11/04/2009) Oil palm expansion is threatening Borneo's rarest wild cats, reports a new study based on three years of fieldwork and more than 17,000 camera trap nights. Studying cats in five locations—each with different environments—in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, researchers found that four of five cat species are threatened by habitat loss due to palm oil plantations. "No other place has a higher percentage of threatened wild cats!" Jim Sanderson, an expert on the world's small cats, told Mongabay.com. Pointing out that 80 percent of Borneo's cats face extinction, Sanderson said that "not one of these wild cats poses a direct threat to humans."
Conservation and Carbon in Borneo’s Heart and Ours
(11/04/2009) My friend Rezal Kusumaatmadja contacted me in July to ask if I could join him and some of his associates for a couple of days in the village Mendawai, located along the Katingan River in south central Kalimantan. The purpose of the gathering was to bring everyone in the group up to date on progress and challenges related to the Katingan Peat Conservation Project, as well as to give the group an opportunity to meet one another. The Katingan Project aims to create a forest-based carbon containment facility defined and guided by REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Destruction in the developing world) principles and methodology. Currently, nearly 25% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are caused by felling, burning and converting the world’s remaining primary forests. While areas surrounding the Katingan peat forest vividly express this statistic, Katingan is part of a growing strategy to reverse the trend. The Katingan project endeavors to transform conservation into a product that might offer strong competition against illegal logging and expansion of industrial agricultural plantations - whose practices cause enormous emissions of greenhouse gasses, as well as destroying biodiversity, depleting and polluting watersheds and corroding native cultures.
Non-Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil producers pledge not to develop peatlands for plantations
(11/04/2009) Palm oil producers outside of Malaysia and Indonesia pledged to stop developing new plantations on peatlands, circumventing an impasse that developed between palm oil producers and environmental groups meeting this week at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in Kuala Lumpur. The factions deadlocked over plans to account for emissions from plantation development, delaying the criteria for a year.
