Tag archives for trees
EPA Makes Historic Announcement: First Greenhouse Gas Rule for New Power Plants
Posted by Tim Profeta of Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University on March 29, 2012 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released long-awaited greenhouse gas rules for new power plants this week. Using the Clean Air Act, the agency standard would set the first national limits on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions new power plants can emit. The EPA proposed the rule after delaying it several times since July 2011. Power plants are the largest…
Posted by The cherry trees are blooming in Washington. Tuesday, March 27, 2012, marks 100 years since First Lady Helen Taft and the Japanese ambassador’s wife, Viscountess Iwa Chinda, planted the first two trees. No photographs of the event exist, and newspaper accounts were sketchy. But historical records offer a picture of what happened that day and how it came about.
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Although trees perform many valuable ecological services, not every tree is a “good tree.” Some can be downright problematic, especially when they are invasive, crowding out native species and hogging resources like water and growing space. This is especially true in South Africa, where invasive plants like imported eucalyptus trees cover about 10% (19-million…
A country like Sweden can and ought to lead on issues like sustainable forestry. But is it doing so? Freelance photojournalist Erik Hoffner visited the Scandinavian country to find out.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President Obama, and other world leaders today paid tribute to Professor Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and one of Africa’s foremost environmental campaigners, who died on Sunday. She was 71.
Cherry trees are a cherished landmark of Washington, D.C. Admired by thousands of visitors at this time of year, when they are in flower, the trees represent an enduring bond between the U.S. and Japan. But few people know of the woman behind Japan’s gift of the trees to America–a pioneering National Geographic editor who famously reported for the magazine on the earthquake wave that devastated Japan in 1896, and introduced the word tsunami to the English language. Meet Eliza Scidmore.
Thirty million flowers, half a million plants, dozens of character topiaries and 1,000 butterflies add up to the 18th annual Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival, now blooming at Walt Disney World Resort, Florida.
This entry by Rane Cortez, a forest carbon development adviser at The Nature Conservancy, highlights Rane’s recent 10-day trip into São Félix do Xingu, a large municipality in the heart of the Amazon in northern Brazil. She is working with local communities and experts on potential strategies that reduce carbon emissions from these forests while…
By Jeff Wells From pulp mill workers in Manitoba to indigenous hunters in the Amazon, hundreds of millions of people around the world rely directly on the forested expanses of our planet. All the rest of us depend on the ecological services forests provide. This year, 2011, has been officially declared the International Year of…
The ongoing deluge has wreaked severe damage and hardship in Australia. (Photos: Unprecedented, “Biblical” Floods Inundate Australia.) But when the waters subside, writes Deborah Tabart, the Chief Executive Officer of the Brisbane-based Australian Koala Foundation, the thirsty continent’s water table will be replenished, the trees will have had their fill, and Australia will be beautiful…
The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement was signed a few months ago by 21 forest companies and 9 leading environmental organizations. Components of the three-year agreement include the suspension of logging on parts of Boreal Forest equal to the size of Nevada and representing almost all Boreal caribou habitat within company tenures, to allow for intensive caribou protection planning…
For Armenians who lost their homes in political upheaval an innovative tree-planting scheme to restore orchards and forests is a way to earn some money while helping their country create a more comfortable environment, reports a volunteer for the Armenia Tree Project. Nat Geo News Watch profiled the project last year: How trees are restoring hope to…
Asian oil interests wanting access to western Canada’s tar sands, the second largest known oil reserves in the world, have prompted a focus on the Great Bear Rainforest by the world’s most celebrated and talented nature photographers, the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) said this week. Home to white spirit bears, ancient forests, and…
Investigators pretending to be customers have covertly filmed Indonesian timber traders allegedly talking about how they exported a protected hardwood to China, where environmentalists say it is turned into furniture and building products for use worldwide, including Europe and the U.S. The names and video have been made public. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telapak today…
It’s a case of the protection of one species being good for the protection of another. The Russian government has introduced measures to protect the Korean pine, a key species found in Amur tiger (Siberian tiger) habitat in the Russian Far East, WWF and TRAFFIC said today. “Rising global demand for Korean pine has led…
Scientists have produced the first map that details the height of the world’s forests, NASA said today. “Although there are other local- and regional-scale forest canopy maps, the new map is the first that spans the entire globe based on one uniform method,” the space agency said in a news statement accompanying the release of…
Illegal mahogany loggers are plundering uncontacted Indians’ land in the depths of the Peruvian Amazon, according to a new report by the Upper Amazon Conservancy (UAC). UAC is a non-profit organization that works to protect the biological and cultural diversity of the headwaters of the Amazon River in Southern Peru. Recently-contacted Murunahua man, south-east Peru.…
By Mason Inman If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise? We could ask the same about trees cut down illegally around the world. If governments, watchdog groups, and journalists aren’t there to hear it–that is, to track what’s happening–then it seems it…
Mark Spalding, a marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy, has spent decades researching mangroves, the rare and critically important forests that grow at the intersection of land and sea. He is also lead author of the World Atlas of Mangroves, the first in-depth look in over a decade of mangroves. (‘Atlas of Mangroves’ highlights global…
Mangroves are the trees and shrubs that flourish at the saline interface between ocean and land. They nurture a multitude of species of land, sea, and air and also provide humans with numerous resources, ranging from coastal shock absorbers from tsunamis and hurricanes to natural hatcheries for replenishment of fisheries. Mostly because of coastal development, Earth has already lost…
A single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest in 2005 killed half a billion trees, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Tulane University said today. AGU, a Washington, D.C.-based international nonprofit scientific association, and Tulane University, in New Orleans, released the findings of an investigation into a 124-mile-wide (200 kilometers) storm…
On World Environment Day–June 5, 2010– EARTH University and its global network of alumni and supporters will plant hundreds of thousands of trees in 26 countries as part of its 20th anniversary commemoration. They’re inviting the rest of us to take part in the event–either by planting a tree, donating U.S.$5 to buy one for…
Political and social chaos and a lack of international protections have put several species of rosewood trees in Madagascar in danger of becoming extinct from illegal logging, according to a policy forum paper in the latest issue of Science. “Forty-seven of Madagascar’s 48 species of rosewood (Dalbergia) are found nowhere else in the world,” said…
The global benefits of Canada’s logging moratorium
Posted by Stuart Pimm on May 18, 2010 A huge swath of Canada’s boreal forest was protected today. Stuart Pimm, a member of the International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, explains why that’s important for biodiversity and for slowing global warming. By Stuart Pimm Today, 20 companies of the Forest Products Association of Canada and 9 leading environmental organizations agreed to protect 72 million hectares (more…
Biscayne National Park, Florida–After 24 straight hours of exploration and documentation, the Biscayne bioblitz provided a snapshot of the many land and water species that live in Biscayne National Park, the National Geographic Society said today. “Led by more than 200 scientists from around the country, thousands of amateur explorers, families and schoolchildren from south…
