'Boom and bust' of deforestation

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

The Amazon forest may be worth more alive than dead, researchers say

Cutting down Amazon forest for cattle and soy does not bring long-term economic progress, researchers say.

A study of 286 Amazon municipalities found that deforestation brought quick benefits that were soon reversed.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say the deforestation cycle helps neither people nor nature.

They suggest that mechanisms to reward people in poorer countries for conserving rainforest could change this "lose-lose-lose" situation.

Jumbled paths

Reversing this pattern will hinge on capturing the values of intact forests Andrew Balmford, Cambridge University Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

The Brazilian government has long had a twin-track approach to the Amazon, which contains about 40% of the world's remaining rainforest.

While the land development agency Incra settles people in the region as a way of giving them land and livelihoods - a policy that dates from the 1970s - the environment ministry is trying to reduce the rate of deforestation.

Last year the environment ministry named Incra as the country's worst illegal logger.

The Science study suggests that the settlement and expansion policy is not producing real benefits for people.

Ana Rodrigues and colleagues assessed the development status of people in 286 municipalities using the UN's Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measures of standard of living, literacy and life expectancy.

Some of the municipalities were in areas of virgin forest.

Others had already lost all their trees, and some were in the process of being deforested.

Soy plantations did not provide long-term benefits in this study

Areas in the initial stage of deforestation yielded HDI scores above the average for the region.

But once the period of deforestation had passed, scores returned to the values seen in areas that had not yet been logged.

"It is generally assumed that replacing the forest with crops and pastureland is the best approach for fulfilling the region's legitimate aspirations to development," said Dr Rodrigues

"We found although the deforestation frontier does bring initial improvements in income, life expectancy, and literacy, such gains are not sustained."

The "boom and bust" pattern was the same for each of the three aspects of the HDI, showing that even a straight economic benefit was not maintained.

REDD dawn

As the study emerged, UN climate negotiators are meeting in Bonn to discuss aspects of a follow-on treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which is suppposed to be finalised by the end of the year.

One of the aspects of the new treaty will be a mechanism that rewards local communities for keeping carbon-absorbing forests intact - a mechanism known as REDD (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and forest Degradation).

Andrew Balmford, a co-author of the new study, said REDD and other proposals could change the current situation, which he described as disastrous for local people, wildlife and the global climate.

Bumpy road to sustainability The Amazon in graphics

"Reversing this pattern will hinge on capturing the values of intact forests... so that local people's livelihoods are better when the forest is left standing than when it is cleared," said the Cambridge professor of conservation science.

"Discussions being held in the run-up to this December's crucial climate change meeting in Copenhagen... offer some promise that this lose-lose-lose situation could be tackled, to the benefit of everyone - local Brazilians included."

The research was possible only because Brazil has good data on human development and on deforestation, which these days is measured by satellites.

But Ana Rodrigues believes the conclusions probably hold true for other countries stocked with tropical forests in southeast Asia or west Africa.

"I would be very surprised if we didn't see this boom and bust pattern emerging in these areas as well," she told BBC News.

President Lula is currently debating whether to ratify a bill that would grant legal status to illegal settlers and loggers in the Amazon region.

Environmentalists say the bill would increase the rate of land-grabs, with a knock-on rise in illegal logging likely.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Net injury 'disables' minke whale

Matt Walker Editor, Earth News

The researchers compared healthy minkes with the injured whale (Video by B. Kot)

An injured minke whale has provided a unique insight into the dangers posed to marine animals by fishing gear.

The minke whale was spotted off the coast of Quebec, Canada, with a huge scar around its throat thought to be caused by floating rope.

What's more, it fed in a way never before recorded for minke whales, probably in response to its injury.

The sighting is one of the first to detail the handicaps that can be caused to animals that become entangled.

Earth News reports the development as part of a series of articles highlighting the dangers fishing nets pose to marine animals.

Previously, we described how fishing nets are strangling dolphins to death in the Adriatic.

Now marine biologist Brian Kot of the University of California and colleagues working for the Mingan Island Cetacean Study non-profit research organisation have published details in Marine Mammal Science of a minke whale that has been badly scarred by fishing gear.

Spotted of the coast of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, Quebec, in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the minke whale had a deep laceration running the circumference of its feeding pouch, from near its throat up both sides of its head close to each eye.

The cut ran through the whale's skin and into its blubber, in parts exposing the muscle underneath.

"The width of the laceration was very similar to the ropes from crab pots that are set by fishermen in my study area," says Kot.

The scar around the feeding pouch is clearly visible

Crab pots set on the seafloor are baited and held by a rope leading up to the surface, which is attached to a buoy. Often a series of cages are connected by floating ropes that are thought to entangle whales.

Kot and his team observed and videoed the injured minke feeding on schools of capelin for over 80 minutes.

An analysis of the video showed that the minke, which lunged into the fish schools 50 times, had no problem accelerating into each lunge.

But the whale often breached in a way never before recorded among minkes.

On 18 of the 50 lunges, the whale breached at an angle of 30 to 45 degrees to the surface, feeding on its right side only, as can be seen in the picture above.

It would then rotate in the air to land upright on its chin. The researchers never saw the whale breach from its left side, or spin in mid air to land on its left. The whale was also unable to distend its feeding pouch as far as other healthy whales.

"The injury seemed to affect the expansion of the ventral pouch and I noticed a unique lunge-feeding behaviour that has not been previously described in the scientific literature," says Kot.

Despite often seeing the same whales repeatedly in his study area in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Kot has not seen the injured minke whale again, so he doesn't know what long-term impact the wounds had.

The whale lunges for capelin

"We really don't know what happened to it. Perhaps the injured animal left the area and survived or perished some time in the future."

However, the sighting of the minke whale is valuable as it's "one of the first to show the effect of an entanglement-like injury in a live animal," says Kot.

By some estimates, fishing gear poses the greatest threat to whales.

Yet little is actually known about the impact fishing that gear has on the survival of these ocean giants.

In particular, almost nothing is known about the non-lethal impact caused by entanglement injuries.

"Cetacean entanglements involving various kinds of fishing gear have been a global concern for many years," says Kot.

"However, with the steadily increasing demand for food, fishing pressure in the world's oceans has increased the amount of gear that whales can potentially encounter."

And many coastal fisheries operate exactly where the smaller and more vulnerable species of whale and dolphin range.

"Some of the largest whales, such as blue or fin, can sometimes free themselves from entanglements due to their size and strength," Kot explains. "Smaller whales like minke likely don't have this ability."

And most small whales that do get trapped probably drown and sink, never to be found by anyone, including the fishermen who own the net, he says.