Chinese walker

Gir National Park hangs on the southern tip of western India`s Kathiawar peninsula, in the state of Gujarat. It is best known as the last refuge of the highly endangered Asiatic lion; all of the world`s remaining 350 lions live in the park. On March 6, reports emerged that three of the beasts had been found mutilated. Poachers had killed the animals deep in the park, but left their pelts behind. They had removed the claws, bones and skulls, all of which are highly prized as ingredients in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

Such tales of wild animal poaching would normally seem far removed from the streets of Britain`s capital. But they appear closer on a visit to the south London office of the Wildlife Crime Unit, where a vast haul of contraband – from stuffed leopards to jars of bear gall bladders – crowds every available surface. Here, the clandestine world that links criminals in India, China and London suddenly becomes all the more apparent.

“People make comparisons between this and the drugs trade,” says Andy Fisher, head of the unit. He indicates a black rhinoceros horn that was seized in a raid on a Chinese medicine shop in the capital. In 1970, over 100,000 black rhinos were thought to roam Africa. But poaching, driven by the demand for the horns – which are regarded as a fever-reducer in TCM – has reduced the population to around 2,600.

Fisher acknowledges that some similarities exist between the narcotics industry and the illegal traffic in endangered species, but continues, “There`s a basic difference, and that is that you can manufacture drugs, so you can control the supply.”

It`s a bleak picture of an increasingly globalised trade. “As rhinos become rarer, so the price of the horn goes up, which makes it more attractive to more poachers to kill more rhinos,” says Fisher. “The only way that you can stop that happening is to attack the demand for it, and the demand is generally in countries where you don`t get rhinos.”

And it is combating this demand that motivates Operation Charm, a project re-launched in November last year as a partnership between the Wildlife Crime Unit, the Greater London Authority and five international wildlife NGOs.

The initiative aims to tackle the trade in the world`s rarest animals – protected under the international CITES agreement – at the point of sale. It has principally targeted the selling of tiger, bear, rhinoceros and musk deer in London, and attempts to combine traditional law enforcement methods with partnerships in the TCM community and awareness-raising among consumers. One project, established with the support of the Federation of Chinese Medicine, encourages legal traders to advertise on their shop windows that they do not sell products made from threatened wildlife.

Operation Charm has targeted recent growth in London`s TCM industry, but where does this rise in sales come from – who buys medicines made from endangered species?

Not just members of the city`s Chinese community, says Fisher. In the past 15 years, the number of Chinese medicine shops in the capital has increased from around a dozen to almost 2,000, as a greater number of Britons seek alternative health products – outside of what some perceive as the empty materialism of western biomedicine. Fisher puts it succinctly: “Traditional Chinese Medicine has become trendy.”

This is in evidence where I live in east London; a handful of well-stocked Chinese medicine shops are within a five-minute walk of my home. I found no evidence that these establishments are selling any products made from rare species. And the majority of businesses do not. But with such a big increase in the overall market, concerns have been raised that the minority of businesses may sell such products may also be growing.

The message for the city`s consumers is a simple one: buyer beware. “The majority of people don`t think there`s an endangered species problem in this country,” says Fisher. “They think it`s all in Africa or Asia. But it`s here too%26hellip;there are people in London who buy endangered species products without realising.”

In December last year, an Operation Charm investigation led to the prosecution of a southeast London man who had sold products containing bear, seahorse, saiga antelope and musk deer. Other investigations have led to the seizure of tiger bone wine, wild orchids and products containing deer. And it`s a problem that shows no sign of decreasing, as booming customer demand drives illegal procurement overseas.

Luxury markets

Every year around this time, many cities and regions of China hold a tree-planting month. Employers in the cities often fund tree-planting outings for their staff. In counties, towns and villages, farmers are given support for tree-planting projects, which they hope will bring in some extra earnings. A renewed enthusiasm for greening the country seems to take hold of everyone.

The Chinese government has committed itself to achieving a target of 20% forest cover by 2010. And as a result, the State Forestry Administration has been promoting greater integration between forestry and the paper industry, as well as promoting tree-planting initiatives, especially of fast-growing, high-yield trees. However, just as these measures are being enthusiastically put into place, something very worrying is happening to China’s forests – they are becoming empty. So, how are these “empty forests” being created?

Golf courses

1%26deg; warmer

Nebraska isn`t at the top of most tourists` to-do lists. However, this dreary expanse of impossibly flat plains sits in the middle of one of the most productive agricultural systems on Earth. Beef and corn dominate the economy, and the Sand Hills region — where low, grassy hillocks rise up from the flatlands — has some of the best cattle ranching in the whole United States. But scratch beneath the grass and you will find, as the name suggests, not soil but sand. These innocuous-looking hills were once desert, part of an immense system of sand dunes that spread across the Great Plains from Texas in the south to the Canadian prairies in the north. Six-thousand years ago, when temperatures were about 1%26deg; C warmer than today in the US, these deserts may have looked much as the Sahara does today. As global warming bites, the western US could once again be plagued by perennial drought — devastating agriculture and driving out human inhabitants on a scale far larger than the 1930s “Dust Bowl” exodus.

On the other side of the Atlantic, today`s hottest desert could be seeing a wetter future in the one-degree world. At the same time as sand dunes were blowing across the western US, the central Sahara was a veritable Garden of Eden as rock paintings of elephants, giraffes and buffalo, also dating from 6,000 years ago, attest. On the borders of what is today Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon, the prehistoric Lake Mega-Chad spread over an area only slightly smaller than the Caspian Sea does now. Could a resurgent north African monsoon drive rainfall back into the Sahara in a one-degree world? Models suggest it could.

Also in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro will be losing the last of its snow and ice as temperatures rise, leaving the entire continent ice-free for the first time in at least 11,000 years.

The Alps, too, will be melting, releasing deadly giant landslides in Europe as thawing permafrost removes the “glue” that holds the peaks together. In the Arctic, temperatures will rise far higher than the one-degree global average, continuing the rapid decline in sea ice that scientists have already observed. This spells bad news for polar bears, walruses and ringed seals — species that are effectively pushed off the top of the planet as warming shrinks cold areas closer and closer to the pole.

Indeed, it is the ecological effects of warming that may be most apparent at one degree. Critically, this temperature rise may wipe out the majority of the world`s tropical coral reefs, devastating marine biodiversity. Most of Australia`s Great Barrier Reef will be dead.

2%26deg; warmer

The leaders of the G8 group of most industrialised nations have backed a study of the economic value of biological diversity at this week’s summit in Germany. This could be a major milestone that changes public and political opinion about the often-ignored links between natural resources and human well-being.

Or it could sink like a stone, wasting a precious opportunity to focus attention on the degradation of our environment that lies at the core of so many of the world’s problems. To mirror the success of the recent Stern Review on the economics of climate change, there are a few things the G8 study must do – and some that it must avoid.

Climate change is complex but biodiversity is more so, not least because it is harder to define, harder to measure and harder to put a price-tag on. The study’s authors will not find it easy to explain trade-offs between losing species and retaining ecological integrity in a way that policymakers, businesses and the public can understand.

Learn from Stern

Biodiversity, most simply put, is the variety of life – everything from genes, to species, to entire ecosystems. It provides humanity with many important goods and services, from climate-regulation to crop pollination, from food and fuel to medicines. Poor people are most directly dependent on biodiversity and most affected by its loss. But the value of biodiversity is rarely included in policymaking.

The G8 must therefore ensure that its study is not just a technical report that is divorced from decision-making processes. A key part of the Stern Review’s success was its backing by a comprehensive communications strategy. Stern was given a platform to present his findings to the media and in many public and private meetings in key countries.

And he made the political implications clear because he focused his message to challenge the status quo. It will be hard to find an economist of such intellectual stature as Sir Nicholas Stern who also has his exceptional skills in communicating complex issues in a clear and simple manner.

Scientific limitations

The central message of the Stern Review was that addressing climate change now would cost less than paying to fix its future impacts. It concluded that climate change could shrink the global economy by up to 20% but that acting now to face the threat would cost just 1% of global GDP. To make these projections it drew on a substantial body of knowledge on the links between greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and impacts on economic activities.

This clarity may not be possible for biodiversity as the scientific base to make such linkages is less well developed. Economic valuation of biodiversity relies heavily on the notion of “existence values” – that people value biodiversity for its own sake rather than for any use they may derive from it. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment made an important step in unpacking the indirect use values of biodiversity by highlighting the ecosystem services that it provides to society.

But we still know far too little about how different ecological conditions add to or detract from human wellbeing. Or about the social and economic benefits and costs that arise from keeping natural areas pristine or from using them for a range of different human activities. In the absence of scientific data on how changes in land use alter what people gain from nature, the G8 should not expect too much from economics alone.

This points to the need for a broader approach, especially in the developing countries that are home to most of the world’s biodiversity. The G8 would do well to enhance the scientific capacity of such nations to gather the information they need to make their development sustainable and to base policies on sound evidence. The G8 should also explore how institutional and market incentives can encourage a shift in production patterns to reduce adverse impacts on biodiversity.

Beyond dollarisation

The planned study is global in scope. But it must look beyond global “public good” values of biodiversity – such as the way forests mitigate climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – and focus also on the many local values of biodiversity.

These include contributions to local soil fertility and water supplies; the resilience that crop diversity and wild species bring to people in areas prone to droughts or pest outbreaks; and the cultural importance of species and wild places.

At the same time, the study must also look beyond the mere “dollarisation” of biodiversity. Who can put a price tag on the cultural value of the Amazon rainforest to the people who live within it, or the importance of “keystone” species whose loss could lead to the collapse of ecosystems? Or of the future contributions to human well-being of species that await discovery – if they do not first go extinct?

Rights and equity

The G8 study must frame its analysis in terms of real development for the world’s poorest people, who often are the unofficial and unacknowledged custodians of natural resources and have traditional knowledge about wild species that could benefit people worldwide.

In developing countries, biological resources such as timber, fisheries, and productive land make up a large proportion of the national “wealth” on which economic development can be built. Such resources and local knowledge are at risk from expropriation by powerful elites, who return few benefits, as can happen when “bio-prospectors” seek new drugs from among rainforest plants.

The G8′s analysis must explore how the benefits from biological wealth can be shared fairly with the country of origin and with local people. Central to this will be recommendations that promote local rights to control access to biodiversity and its use.

Beyond biodiversity

Two years ago, the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) warned that 15 out of 24 key services provided by ecosystems to humanity were being used unsustainably. The G8 study must build on this work rather than repeat it. It should go further and examine the costs and benefits of different land uses and how these affect the services that ecosystems provide to humanity. In particular, it should include an extensive analysis of the costs and benefits of conservation versus various alternative land uses.

The MEA identified only a few valuation studies that rigorously compared ecosystem services in an unaltered state with different land-use resource management regimes. These highlighted the economic consequences of biodiversity loss. But to a make a compelling economic case for biodiversity conservation at the global level, many more rigorous valuation studies will be needed.

A real challenge will be to identify ways to integrate payments for environmental protection that bring benefits to local people, help tackle other issues such as climate change, and preserve services that ecosystems provide. It is clear that climate change will affect biodiversity, probably in damaging ways. Maintaining a broad range of diversity will be central to our hopes for effective adaptation to the challenges climate change will bring. Thus, it is ever more important that we maintain and improve the health of our ecosystems.

The study’s official remit is to analyse the global economic benefit of biological diversity, and compare the costs of effective conservation with the costs of biodiversity loss. If the study equates effective conservation with protected areas that exclude local people, or preservation of a selected range of, often endangered, species and habitats it will give misleading results. Its greatest potential is to show how the sustainable use of natural resources can contribute to a range of pressing challenges from tackling climate change to ensuring food security, from fighting poverty to fostering democracy.

But to do this, it must ensure that it is pro-poor, not blinded by western interests, and that its findings are communicated appropriately and widely, as everyone on the planet has a stake in them. It must also be prepared to ask some hard questions, such as how much biodiversity can we afford to lose and how much do we need to keep?

Camilla Toulmin is director of the International Institute for Environment and Development

Homepage photo by Martin Sharman

Sitting in his snug log cabin next to the swirling Bystraya river, Alexander explained when he went fishing.

“Sometimes we do in the day. Sometimes we do it at night. There’s no set time,” he admitted, passing round a tub of mouth-wateringly delicious wild salmon and a chunk of brown bread.

“In the winter we dig holes in the ice and fish. We also shoot geese,” he said, showing photos of himself cradling his rifle in a large snow hole, next to his floppy-eared retriever Bzhik.

Alexander is a poacher. Not a solitary amateur, but part of a professional gang, equipped with boats and a four-wheel-drive jeep. In an outbuilding, poachers in green fatigues were carefully repairing their nets. His workplace is Kamchatka, a remote volcanic peninsula on Russia`s Pacific coast, 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometres) and nine time zones east of Moscow.

Kamchatka is home to a quarter of the world’s salmon. Every July and August, millions of the fish struggle up its rivers and lakes to spawn. But, increasingly, most of them don’t make it.

“We catch so many fish that the different salmon species no longer return. Once we’ve exhausted one species we move on to the next,” Alexander said, offering me a spoonful of orange salmon caviar and a cup of tea.

Poaching in Kamchatka is on such a large scale that, like the sturgeon, the Pacific salmon is at risk of disappearing altogether. The 750-mile (1,200-kilometre) peninsula is one of the world’s last truly great wildernesses, home to the rare Steller`s sea eagle, puffins and brown bears, who roam around its geysers and snow-covered calderas, or collapsed volcanoes. Kamchatka has more than 300 volcanoes, 29 still smoulderingly active.

As the main food source rapidly disappears, however, conservationists fear that Kamchatka is on the brink of ecological meltdown. Laura Williams, director of WWF’s Kamchatka office, said: “When you fly over Kamchatka, you are in awe of the wilderness below you. There are no roads and no settlements. I think right now the threats are relatively localised — with the exception of salmon, which is very widely over-fished.”

In Soviet times, the Kamchatka peninsula was a strategic military base, off-limits to foreigners. Poaching was severely punished. But with the collapse of communism, and Russia’s transition to a market economy, the law has ceased to exist. Instead, poachers pay off the officials tasked with protecting the fish. Asked whether politicians, the police or ordinary Russians were involved in this trade, Valery Vorobyev, the director of one of Kamchatka’s largest fishing firms, Akros, said: “Everybody.”

The result of this ubiquitous criminal enterprise, according to Mr Vorobyev, is that the region’s once-abundant marine life is vanishing. Out in the Sea of Okhotsk, a slate-grey expanse of frozen water that stretches from Kamchatka’s western coast to the gulag town of Magadan, the crabs have all but gone.

“In 1992 we caught 35,000 tonnes of king crab. Last year it was 3,400 tonnes. We need to stop fishing crab now if the species is to survive,” Mr Vorobyev said. A further threat to the salmon came from the recent discovery of oil on the peninsula’s western shelf.

In the Bering Sea, on the east coast near the foggy town of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, illegal Japanese trawlers have cleaned out the pollack.

Kamchatka has about 12,000 salmon-eating bears — the largest population in Eurasia. But they, too, are in trouble. In April and May, American hunters using helicopters and snowmobiles shot 300 bears — a perfectly legal pursuit costing $10,000 (%26pound;5,000) per dead bear. Illegal hunting accounted for another 600.

Local guides say the hunters eat the bears` grilled paws and tongue while discussing the Iraq war and drinking vodka. They leave the rest.

Hungry bears are now encroaching on towns, rummaging in bins and scoffing the remains discarded by fish factories.

Kamchatka has also been hit by geological misfortune. On June 3, 2007, a giant mudslide engulfed the Valley of the Geysers, a lush area of hot springs and water spouts, and one of Russia’s most famous tourist attractions. Nobody was hurt. But most of the geysers have now disappeared under a large, soup-like lake. Geologists are insouciant, calling it a natural phenomenon. But the mudslide is a blow to Kamchatka’s small tourist industry, which relies on well-heeled and adventurous Germans who splash out on costly helicopter flights.

Kamchatka’s local administration has failed to get to grips with the endemic poaching. Although it has established a poaching committee, officials admit they are powerless to stop illegal fishing.

“That’s an interesting question,” said Alexander Krengel, head of the fishing department, when asked to put a figure on how many salmon gets stolen. The poaching was a “consequence” of Kamchatka’s depressed economic state, he said, adding: “We need to eliminate the reason for it.”

Observers believe more than 100,000 tonnes of salmon a year are illegally fished. They are mostly taken for their caviar, which sells for 1,000 roubles (%26pound;20, or $40) a kilo (2.2 pounds). The fish are thrown away. The problem is made worse by the region’s stunning remoteness — a nine-hour plane journey from Moscow, the world’s longest domestic flight.

The Kremlin said developing Russia’s sparsely populated far east is a priority, given the economic success of neighbouring China. But Vladimir Putin visits Kamchatka rarely. On his last trip, the Russian president skied down a volcano, the 2,741-metre-high (9,000 feet) Mount Avachinskaya.

The poachers admit that the salmon could have disappeared completely in a few years, but they claim they have no choice. “There are no jobs here. There is nothing,” said Alexander, who declined to give his second name. “Look at how Moscow lives. Look at how we live.”

Another poacher, Igor, added indignantly: “Moscow is in no position to give us lectures about fishing quotas.”

Ust-Bolsheretsk is certainly grim, despite its wonderful setting. Most of its 2,500 residents live in Soviet-era tower blocks. The Sea of Okhotsk is a short drive away through a green and watery landscape that smells of rotting fish.

On the coast, other poachers are busy emptying crates of fish under a grey sky. Nearby is a rusting Soviet tank. Environmentalists say the locals are poaching nerka — one of 11 species.

Alexander is sanguine about the bears and the fish. There are plenty left, he said. “You see bears here all the time. There are three or four bears 40 minutes from here. As for the salmon, let’s see.”

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/

The greening of China began with the founding of the People`s Republic, and it has not stopped since. The massive tree-planting programmes of the past century mean that China now has a greater area of man-made forests than any other country. In 2003 artificial forests covered over 1% of China`s total land mass for the first time. By 2006 artificial forest coverage had reached 520,000 square kilometres.

When the infamous plant hunter Ernest Henry Wilson trekked across China`s western mountains in 1904, he reported a profusion of pure white Magnolias growing amid the scrub, moist woodland and open fields. Yet a century on, the voluptuous pendant flowers and medicinal bark of Wilson`s White Magnolia (Magnolia wilsonii) are rarely seen even by the most adept local, highlighting the ecological and healthcare issues facing the region.

“The main problem we have is finding the tree nowadays,” says Wen Xiang Ling, a traditional healer from Yunnan Province, “when I was a girl this grew plentifully near our village, but each year we have to go higher into the mountains to find it.” The bark, harvested from the branches, leaves and roots, is an important part of traditional local medicine and has been demonstrated to have powerful anti-anxiety and anti-angiogenic properties, as well as being useful in reducing allergic and asthmatic reactions.

Clear-cut logging, the spread of intensive farming and the continuing over-harvesting for the bark itself, have taken their toll on these trees, which are now confined to a few small scattered populations in the provinces of Sichuan, northern Yunnan and Guizhou. However, clinging to the steepest slopes of the mountains of western China, new hope is emerging for Wilson`s White Magnolia.

Coming in the face of what scientists are calling a “burgeoning ecological crisis”, this year China is launching a radical new “National Strategy for Plant Conservation”. Representing the country`s first ever coordinated, country-level response, the strategy aims to halt China`s continuing loss of plant diversity, helping safeguard the future of some 5,000 threatened plant species.

The launch of this plan couldn`t be more timely,” said Sara Oldfield, secretary general of charity Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), who proved key in initiating the strategy. “With the number of threatened Chinese plant species leaping an astonishing tenfold in the 12 years between 1992 and 2004, and some 20% of China`s flora now considered at risk, now is the time to act to save plants like Wilson`s White Magnolia.”

With the repercussions of this ecological crisis increasingly visible on China`s landscape, this strategy is far more than just political “green-wash.” Its ambitious plan reflects a deep, multi-million dollar commitment to the importance of the country`s rich native flora – one of the top three most biodiverse on earth. The mammoth project tackles the root causes of the nation`s species loss, using a combination of tough legislation, massive investment in practical plant conservation measures and the development of a state-wide environmental education scheme.

The plan offers hope to China`s thousands of threatened plant species like Wilson`s White Magnolia. It calls for a complete halt to logging over vast stretches of forest in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and Yellow River, where the last remnant populations of the tree are found. In one step, this could relieve the single greatest pressure facing the Magnolia`s survival. And the plan will be backed up by strict enforcement measures, which will include an “aggressive crackdown on illegal logging and plant harvesting nationwide.”

China has also announced a ban on “all potentially polluting development projects near key areas of biodiversity,” as well as plans to revert nearly 15 million hectares of farmland to forest in the next three years, an area of land bigger than the whole of England. Interestingly, many of the species used in these reforestation schemes are expected to include native and threatened trees, such as Magnolia wilsonii, expanding their native range across huge swathes of the country.

Recognising the importance and potentially lucrative income to be gained from the country’s native medicinal plants, China is also setting up large medicinal plant cultivation projects. In addition to taking pressure off wild populations of plants such as Wilson`s White Magnolia, the projects will also act as “gene banks” to regenerate genetic diversity in these species, and research their applications in modern medicine.

The strategy also calls for stepping up investment in botanic gardens, an important refuge for the genetic diversity of Magnolia wilsonii. Just 14 of China’s botanic gardens already contain specimens of two-thirds of the country’s total flora.

These goals will bring China into line with the internationally-agreed targets of the “Global Strategy for Plant Conservation”, adopted by over 180 countries that are signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity, but they are said to be adapted to the particular Chinese context.

Says Oldfield: “China`s great enthusiasm and commitment in developing this strategy is extremely positive news for plant conservation efforts globally. We are delighted to have been involved in this historic move and, with our garden members, will be working hard to support China`s Strategy for Plant Conservation.”

Homepage photo by autan

James Wong is a Kew-trained ethnobotanist and works for Botanic Gardens Conservation International, the world`s largest plant conservation network. He has written for a number of publications, from the BBC to the Kitchen Gardener Magazine, on a wide range of botanical topics.

Before the 1980s, 3,500 Chinese sturgeon returned annually to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River to spawn. Today that figure is less than 500. Estimates put the breeding population at less than 1,000.

At Shanghai`s Sturgeon Rescue Centre, a Chinese sturgeon over three metres long is laid out on a table. It has been brought here for treatment. Covered in scars, it is still more fortunate than its kin, killed by fishing nets or ship propellers.

The fish was accidentally caught in a fisherman`s net on July 17. Its struggles left it with serious scrapes and grazes. Fortunately, specialists from the centre were soon on the scene, taking in the huge fish for expert treatment.

But this is no isolated case. This year there have been frequent reports of injury or death to Chinese sturgeons – contemporaries of the dinosaurs, and a protected species under Chinese law – in its most important habitat, the lower reaches and mouth of the Yangtze River.

A Chinese sturgeon known as “Shengsheng” was recently returned to the wild after treatment. Brought into the centre on a specially-designed stretcher, it was close to death. The base of its pectoral fin was bleeding heavily, there were serious injuries to its fins and tail and 27 wounds on its stomach, some gangrenous. Its breathing and signs of life were weak. But five months later, the specialists` painstaking care and attention meant the fish was getting stronger every day.

Shengsheng was released on June 17. Its name means “life”, given to it by local primary school pupils in the hope that the species will survive. However, that very day, news came from Ningbo, in eastern China, that two more adult Chinese sturgeon had died. You cannot help but wonder if Shengsheng will live up to its name.

Incomplete statistics show that between last November and the present, 13 large Chinese sturgeon were wounded or killed along the Yangtze River. Only two survived. Since January, there have been eight cases of protected species meeting similar fates at the mouth of the river: five Chinese sturgeon, two black finless porpoises and one sperm whale. Most worrying is the size of the sturgeon that were wounded and killed; at an average of over three metres in length, and weighing 200 kilograms, they were all mature adults of at least 20 years, and at their most fertile. The loss of these fish has had a huge impact on the Chinese sturgeon`s chances of survival as a species.

But should this series of incidents be ascribed to natural causes? Or was it the work of humans?

The adult fish swim up the Yangtze River to breed, and on that 1,000-kilometre journey they constantly run a gauntlet of nets and ship propellers, enduring polluted water all the while. China`s Ministry of Agriculture once explicitly banned fishing on the river, but it proved too difficult to enforce. The small profit to be made is still enough motivation for many to spread their nets in the 576-square-kilometre sturgeon protection zone at the river mouth, posing a serious threat to the rare fish.

There are 106 major bridges on the Yangtze River, numerous dams and any number of water control gates, breaking the river into sections, which disrupts the upriver migration of wildlife and changes the river environment.

The draining of lake and riverside wetlands to create fields has also deprived many species of grounds to lay their eggs and raise their young. Migrating fish have far fewer places to stop and regain their energy. In May, an adult Chinese sturgeon was found sliced in two by a ship`s propeller. Astonishingly, an autopsy found that its stomach was empty. Experts believe that its feeding grounds had been destroyed, and it could only keep swimming until death from exhaustion or starvation – or in this case, a ship`s blade.

There is no solid scientific evidence explaining why so many large, endangered aquatic species are dying, but the experts each have their own hypotheses. Shen Xinqiang, from the East China Sea Fisheries Research Institute, says that the dredging of large channels for shipping has resulted in the loss of the routes the fish normally take. “Originally there were lots of channels to choose from, but now they have been combined into one, leaving no choice for the fish. They run aground, get lost and even die.”

His colleague Jia Hua thinks noise pollution is part of the problem. “Animals such as whales and dolphins use sounds waves to find and choose their way.” The noises from construction and machinery on the river banks can confuse them, leaving them disorientated.

The Yangtze River Tunnel Project is also giving experts cause for concern. A preliminary report on the expected impact of construction on the migration of the Chinese sturgeon found that piers used to build large bridges are slowing the river, putting the fish at greater risk of injury.

Perhaps those 13 dead and injured Chinese sturgeon are just a coincidence, and the scientists` ideas are nothing more than speculation. But these events throw light on the importance of protecting rare aquatic life – and warn us, at least, of the Yangtze River`s ecological crisis.

Kan Zhe is a Shanghai-based reporter for chinadialogue.

Long before you reach the site, the jungle changes. Birds and insects fall quiet, streams turn inky and trees become stunted, their leaves blackened and scrunched up, like fists.

The trail turns wider and muddier, for vehicles come here, and there is an unfamiliar sound, a sort of whooshing, followed by crackling.

And then you see it: fire dancing over the tree tops. The flames seem to lick the canopy in great billowing tongues, as if the Amazon were burning.

It is a trick of perspective. As you get closer, you see that the blaze comes from a 15-metre metal tower in the middle of a clearing and that it shoots the flames skyward in controlled bursts. It is a technique to burn waste gas, one of countless flares dotted across the forests of eastern Ecuador, and it is a stark display of the extraction of oil from the lush heart of South America.

Oil has been pumped from here for almost four decades and the result, say environmentalists, is 1,700 square miles (4,400 square kilometers) of industrial contamination, with rivers poisoned, wildlife wiped out and humans falling sick.

But now, mindful of the environmental and political cost, the state has made a startling proposal: if wealthy nations pay Ecuador $350 million a year — half of the estimated revenue from extraction — it will leave the oil in the ground.

Supporters say it is an idea whose time has come, a logical step forward from carbon offsetting, in which rich polluters in developed countries compensate for environmental damage caused by their consumer habits.

Since the proposal was first floated in June, there have been promising signals, said Alberto Acosta, a former mining minister and close ally of president Rafael Correa. The German and Norwegian governments have expressed interest, as have parliamentarians from Italy, Spain and the European Union. “This could be a historic accommodation,” he said. Donors could pay in cash, debt relief or other indirect ways.

Some greens champion the proposal as a way to protect biodiversity and combat global warming while allowing a poor country to develop. “It`s not utopian, it`s realistic,” said Esperanza Mart%26iacute;nez, of the Quito-based organisation Acci%26oacute;n Ecol%26oacute;gica (Ecological Action).

But others are sceptical. They predict that rich countries will not stump up the money and that Ecuador`s government will ultimately find its oil bounty too tempting to pass up. The government and oil companies already are eyeing another chunk of Amazonian rainforest, the Yasun%26iacute; national park, a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve. Beneath part of the 982,000-hectare park lie the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oilfields, with an estimated one billion barrels of heavy crude. For the cash-strapped government, this is a tempting bounty potentially worth up to $700 million a year.

“It’s a ploy; we don`t trust the government on this,” said Anita Rivas, the mayor of Coca, a town on the edge of the park. Like many in the Amazon, she scorned the notion that oil revenues would ease poverty, a mantra of successive governments worn thin by decades of stolen or wasted revenues. “Where are the benefits?” said Ms Rivas.

Even Acosta said: “We don’t want to develop it because we know there will be damage. But if we have no other choice then, lamentably, we will do it.”

The costs of Ecuador`s oil industry are all too visible in those parts of the jungle where crude has been drilled, spilled, pumped and dumped — a vision of what might be in store for Yasun%26iacute; park.

Between Coca and Lago Agrio, bleak oil-rush settlements carved out of the bush, oil is never far away. It is in the 300-mile (480-kilometre) pipeline stretching through valleys and mountains. It is in the air in the form of rain and waste gas burnt by flares. It is in 1,000 or so waste pits of black sludge that leak into the water supply. It is in the soil in the form of congealed tar that stunts trees.

It is in the bodies of residents, according to several scientific studies, in the form of tuberculosis and other diseases that make hamlets such as San Carlos, adjacent to a refining plant, zoom off the medical charts. “Two-thirds of my patients have contamination-related illnesses,” said Rosa Moreno, a nurse at a small clinic.

Oil is even in the name Lago Agrio. It means Sour Lake and is taken from the Texas hometown of Texaco, the United States oil giant that drilled in the region from 1972 to 1992 and operated as a mini-state.

Chevron, the even-bigger giant that subsequently bought Texaco, is now embroiled in a $6 billion class-action lawsuit brought by 30,000 indigenous people and settlers. They claim that Texaco poisoned the region by dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste-water and want the company to clean it up. It is one of the world`s biggest environmental cases and has been dragging on for 14 years. “What happened here, we can`t let happen anywhere else, least of all Yasun%26iacute;,” said the plaintiffs` lawyer, Pablo Fajardo.

Chevron says Texaco broke no law, performed a $40 million clean-up in 1995 and that any contamination must be the fault of other companies that have operated there since then. “Ours was a beautiful operation, very clean. This lawsuit is a farce,” said Rodrigo Perez, a company lawyer.

Regardless of blame, there is no doubt that oil has devastated much of Ecuador`s forests. The question is whether Yasun%26iacute; — which is said to have more tree species in an average hectare than there are the US and Canada combined — will be next.

For the indigenous tribes who call the region home, the untapped wealth far beneath the jungle floor is a threat.

“We wish it weren`t here,” said Wiyame Irumenga, an indigenous leader and forest ranger, tapping a bare foot against the earth. “We wish people would just forget about it.”

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/

Hainan Island, the biologically diverse tropical province off China`s southern coast, in 1999 announced its bid to become the country`s first ecological province. After almost a decade, I went to see what had been achieved, and found many risks to the island`s environment still remain. In particular, one of the most important aspects of this effort – protecting the island`s biodiversity – still faces numerous threats.

Gibbon on the brink

The felling of tropical forests, the trade in endangered animals and commercial hunting are all factors responsible for the 29% of all species of apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates that are now facing extinction, according to a report published by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), International Primatological Society and Conservation International and launched at the International Primate Conference on October 25. Entitled “Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates-2006-2008″, the report was compiled by 60 experts from 21 countries, and warns that if measures are not taken to slow climate change, primate extinctions may soon occur.

Hainan gibbon. Photo by Xiao Shibai

One of the listed species is the Hainan gibbon, which is found only on Hainan Island. In the 1950s, there were an estimated 2,000 of the species living across 866,000 acres (3,505 square kilometres) of tropical forest. By 1989, there were only 21, surviving only in the Bawangling Reserve. A report in 1998 found only 17 surviving gibbons. After a programme to protect the gibbon was put into place in 2003, a survey found two separate populations and two independent males, 13 animals in total. Another survey, in 2001-2002, found four populations and estimated there were between 12 and 19 gibbons remaining. Three newborns and an independent male were recently identified, and the estimate has again risen to 17 gibbons.

The Hainan gibbon was at one time threatened by extensive hunting, as its flesh was believed to cure illness. Today, the main danger is from the destruction of the gibbon`s habitat to plant “commercial forests”. Since the 1950s, efforts to increase agricultural land have seen natural forests increasingly felled in favour of rubber plantations. Rubber plantations currently cover 6 million mu (4,000 square kilometres) of Hainan Island. A deal was reached with Indonesian company Asia Pulp %26amp; Paper (APP) in 1994 to plant 3.5 million mu (2,333 square kilometres) of eucalyptus trees for paper manufacturing. To date, compulsory orders have seen 2.6 million mu (1,733 square kilometres) planted. The vast majority of these commercial plantations require the felling of natural forests, bringing huge threats to the animals that inhabit them.

Model ecological zone

One area in the prefecture of Sanya, in the southeast of Hainan Island, was named a “model ecological zone” by China`s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). The whole of Sanya is now competing to win this same honour. But a road between Sanya and Nanshan, a popular destination for eco-tourists, is lined with locals selling birds they have caught. The skill with which they handle the birds as they call out the prices suggests they are old hands at the trade.

The city authorities have been trying to stamp out this trade for some time. Restaurants in the city even sell a dish known as the “bird castle”, made of the meat of a number of different birds. “The people selling birds are mostly women and children from local villages,” said Wang Chundong, head of the provincial forestry bureau`s animal and plant protection centre, “as soon as we close in on them they disappear back home. We have come up with ways to deal with the problem over the years, but we have yet to eradicate it. The next step might be to work with the local Party committees. The wild animal protection centre can`t do much. We don`t have enough staff or money.”

Although the trapping of wild animals is less of a problem than it used to be, it is still a major threat. A great number still end up on restaurant tables in Guangdong province, which is known for its “exotic” tastes in food. During my visit, a shipment of snakes was seized at the harbour.

Fruit trees

The felling of natural forests on Hainan Island continues to raise concerns. The rate is now increasing again after a brief drop caused by a crackdown. The provincial government in May carried out an aerial survey of coastal forests, which the island relies on to prevent flooding. Forty percent remains intact, the survey said, but the rest has been damaged or even destroyed entirely.

Hainan is not a large island, and its economy is expanding rapidly. Industry, agriculture, cities and roads all look to the forests for room to expand. They sometimes even clash over who gets this land. In one case several years ago, the provincial poverty alleviation bureau provided rubber tree seedlings to poor households. Since there was nowhere to plant them, the recipients cleared bushes and grass from the natural forests to plant them between the trees. Now the rubber trees are mature, and the old-growth trees have been felled to make room for the rubber trees.

Fiercer conflicts arise in the case of commercial plantations. Staple food crops will no longer bring a large income for Hainan`s farmers, who are switching to fruit trees for the sake of a reliable cash flow. The tropical fruit industry is booming on the island, mangos, lychees, longans, bananas, pineapples, oranges and betel nut are all exported to mainland provinces. As a result, natural forests are not only being felled for rubber and paper manufacture, but also increasingly to plant commercial fruit trees. “It appears to be a very low-level change,” said one local expert, “and it doesn`t really attract much attention. But if you look on an island-wide scale, all of Hainan`s farmers are [planting fruit trees], and the damage to the ecology is worse than that caused by the industrial planting.”

With today`s environmental situation worsening all the time, Hainan`s path will affect us all. Becoming an “ecological province” should be more than a mere slogan. Balancing the environment and the economy is a challenge for all of China`s provinces – and for all of us.

Yongfeng Feng is a Beijing-based environmental journalist