Apr 03 2014

H&M, Zara commit to cutting rainforest destruction out of clothing production

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H&M and Zara/Inditex, two of the world's largest clothing companies, today pledged to eliminate old-growth forest destruction from their products. The commitment lends support to a new front on efforts to cut deforestation from supply chains of global brands.
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Mar 26 2014

Grocery giant commits to zero-deforestation policy for palm oil sourcing

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Safeway has become the latest company to establish a policy that excludes deforestation-linked palm oil from its products. Safeway Inc. (NYSE: SWY), the second biggest U.S. grocery chain, made the commitment in response to a shareholder proposal by the New York State Common Retirement Fund.
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Feb 16 2014

Microsoft Buys Madagascar Carbon Credits

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Technology giant Microsoft has bought the first carbon credits generated under a rainforest conservation project in Madagascar, reports Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which organized and backed the initiative. The deal, which WCS says represents the first sale of government-owned REDD+ credits in Africa, will help finance conservation efforts in Makira Natural Park, an area of rainforest in northeastern Madagascar that is renowned for its biodiversity but has been hard hit by illegal logging and poaching.
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Sep 29 2013

Borneo Tribesmen Block Road as Controversial Rainforest Dam Impoundment Begins

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Indigenous leaders have set up roadblocks in Malaysian Borneo to protest Sarawak's newest dam, report environmental activists who oppose the project.
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Sep 26 2013

Sonar

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An oil company's use of a high-frequency mapping sonar system was responsible for a mass whale stranding in northwest Madagascar in 2008, finds a new report.
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Sep 19 2013

Leaping Legless Lizards!

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Four previously unknown species of legless lizard have been described in California, report researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Cal State-Fullerton. The species, all members of the Anniella genus, were hiding in plain site, living in marginal habitats that included "a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley, on the margins of the Mojave desert, and at the end of one of the runways at LAX", according to a statement from UC Berkeley.
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Jul 30 2013

Climate change has the potential for significant impacts on coffee

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An inconvenient truth is not what most people want to hear before they’ve had their first cup of coffee in the morning. Our coffee break is “me time,” and we want to enjoy it. If the temperature is too high, put some ice in your cup. But for some 26 million people around the world who make it their business to produce our coffee, change is impossible to ignore.
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Jul 25 2013

Oil palm genome mapped, could boost yields, reduce pressure on rainforests

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A team of Malaysian and American researchers have mapped the genome of the oil palm, the oilseed that is widely used as a cooking oil and in cosmetics, cleaning products, and processed foods. The genome sequencing, which was published today in the journal Nature, identified the gene responsible for regulating the crop's oil yield. The results could be used to boost palm oil yields, thus potentially reducing the need to clear wildlife-rich rainforests and carbon-dense peat swamps for plantations. The gene, dubbed the "Shell gene", controls "how the thickness of its shell correlates to fruit size and oil yield," according to Rajinder Singh, first author of the paper and a scientist at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), a government agency.
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Jul 18 2013

Scientists build app to automatically identify species based on their calls

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New technology makes it possible to automatically identify species by their vocalizations. The software and hardware system, detailed in the current issue of the journal PeerJ, has been used at sites in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica to identify frogs, insects, birds, and monkeys. Many of the animals identified by the system are typically difficult to spot in their natural environment, but audio recordings of their calls reveal not only their presence but also their activity patterns. The platform, which is called the Automated Remote Biodiversity Monitoring Network (ARBIMON), could potentially allow scientists to monitor species in remote sites without having a physical presence on the ground, according to the study's lead author Mitchell Aide of the University of Puerto Rico.
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Jul 18 2013

80% of Rainforests in Malaysian Borneo Logged

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0 percent of the rainforests in Malaysian Borneo have been heavily impacted by logging, finds a comprehensive study that offers the first assessment of the spread of industrial logging and logging roads across areas that were considered some of Earth's wildest lands less than 30 years ago. The research, conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Tasmania, University of Papua New Guinea, and the Carnegie Institution for Science, is based on analysis of satellite data using Carnegie Landsat Analysis System-lite (CLASlite), a freely available platform for measuring deforestation and forest degradation. It estimated the state of the region's forests as of 2009.
Categories: News
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