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Countries Appendix
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AUSTRALIA (0.1% rainforest cover) Australia has two small areas of rainforest on the Cape York Peninsula in the extreme northeast of Australia and along the coastal plains and mountain ranges north of Townsville. This small (about 4000 square miles-10,300 sq. km) unprotected rainforest is very diverse: over 95 plant families, 1000 plant species, and 70 families of trees are contained in the 50,000 acre (20,000 hectare) forest. The forest provides a habitat for 30% of the marsupials of Australia, 30% of the frogs, 23% of the reptiles, 62% of the butterflies, and 18% of the birds. However this area is highly threatened by a subdivision development, a proposed electrical power grid which would lead the way to massive development, pastures for livestock, and exploitation for mining. The Cow Bay subdivision consists of 750 blocks which make up 60% of the lowland area and about 33% of the remaining forest. The development of the Daintree, as this region is known, has erupted into a controversy between political groups, residents, and outsiders. Pro-environment factions, along with the Queensland government are planning to spend almost $30 million to purchase 775,000 hectares of the eastern coast of the peninsula. The federal government contributed $11.5 million to buy back some 300 blocks of subdivision, although has only succeeded in obtaining 5% of its goal. Anti-environment groups include landowners of the subdivision who do not want to sell their land. Others want to develop the Daintree region for tourism. The anti-environmentalists have taken to killing wildlife and destroying forest on their property to show their feelings on the issue. At this writing, it is unclear which side will prevail. . . . . . For current information I highly recommend trying the CIA and FAO links below. 
Forgotten species: the wild jungle cattle called banteng(01/31/2012) The word "cattle," for most of us, is the antithesis of exotic; it's familiar like a family member one's happy enough to ignore, but doesn't really mind having around. Think for a moment of the names: cattle, cow, bovine...likely they make many of us think more of the animals' byproducts than the creatures themselves—i.e. milk, butter, ice cream or steak—as if they were an automated food factory and not living beings. But if we expand our minds a bit further, "cattle" may bring up thoughts of cowboys, Texas, herds pounding the dust, or merely grazing dully in the pasture. But none of these titles, no matter how far we pursue them, conjure up images of steamy tropical rainforest or gravely imperiled species. A cow may be beautiful in its own domesticated sort-of-way, but there is nothing wild in it, nothing enchanting. However like most generalizations, this idea of cattle falls to pieces when one encounters, whether in literature or life, the banteng. BeyoncĂ© honored with new horse fly named after her (01/16/2012) Musical artists, and dancer extraordinare, BeyoncĂ© has been awarded a new honor this week: entomologists in Australia have named a new horse fly after the American singer. The new horse fly, dubbed Scaptia beyonceae, is found in Queensland's Atherton Tablelands. Climate change may make lizards smarter, if they don't go extinct first (01/12/2012) A new study in Biology Letters has found that warmer temperatures may make lizards smarter, even as past studies have linked a global decline in lizards to climate change. 
Sober up: world running out of time to keep planet from over-heating(10/24/2011) If governments are to keep the pledge they made in Copenhagen to limit global warming within the 'safe range' of two degrees Celsius, they are running out of time, according to two sobering papers from Nature. One of the studies finds that if the world is to have a 66 percent chance of staying below a rise of two degrees Celsius, greenhouse gas emissions would need to peak in less than a decade and fall quickly thereafter. The other study predicts that pats of Europe, Asia, North Africa and Canada could see a rise beyond two degrees Celsius within just twenty years. New study: price carbon at the point of fossil fuel extraction (10/17/2011) Global carbon emissions are a complicated matter. Currently, officials estimate national fossil fuel-related emissions by what is burned (known as production) within a nation, but this approach underestimates the emissions contributions from countries that extract oil and oil for export. Is there a better way to account for a country's total climate change footprint? |
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