It is time to end US old-growth logging, most of which exists in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Please urge the federal government to see the salmon and ecosystems through the dwindling old-growth trees for timber, and shift the focus from logging to an ecological protection economy in Earth’s largest temperate rainforest. With only 0.5% of Tongass’s old-growth remaining – the last areas still containing very large 300-800 year old trees – it is unconscionable that the United States of America continues with proposals to log these last tiny patches. If proposals to further log Tongass’ last old forests advance, it further clearly illustrates the United States has zero international credibility on issues of primary forest protection, climate change, and policy to achieve global ecological sustainability.
In a global tragedy, an entire important orangutan habitat was intentionally set ablaze in past weeks with nearly 100 fires. These ongoing rainforest peat fires and land clearing by palm oil firms - in an important rainforest habitat in western Indonesia - could extirpate the entire local population, killing off some 200 orangutans. The Tripa swamp rainforest in Aceh, Indonesia – home to one of the most densely populated remaining groups of wild orangutans in the world – is ablaze as palm oil companies rush to clear forests before a court case stops their plantation expansion. Up to 100 of an already much diminished population may have been killed in recent months, and unless the land grabs and rainforest burning are immediately stopped, the local population of critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) may soon go locally extinct, and the whole species soon thereafter.
The Congo Basin – home to some of Earth’s last large, ecologically intact, biodiversity rich rainforests – may soon be decimated by oil rigs, pipelines, deforestation, and oil spills. SOCO International – a London-listed oil company – has announced oil exploration plans in Virunga National Park - Africa’s oldest national park. Virunga is an UNESCO World Heritage site, home to a large population of wild gorillas, and many other important wildlife species, primary rainforest ecosystems, and local forest-dependent communities. Oil exploration in these globally vital rainforest ecosystems will further set a dangerous precedent that nowhere – whether protected, or ecologically and socially important - is immune from oil industry destruction. Given record oil prices and growing global demand, it appears every last bit of Earth's large, wild and intact ecosystems will be sacrificed to industrial development – to extend our dependence upon fossil fuel, and delay transition now to renewable energy sources – while ensuring abrupt run-away climate change and global ecosystem collapse. Further rainforest ecocide for oil must end if we are to sustain global ecology. And standing old forests offer hope for advancement to the world’s forest dependent peoples.
More than 6,000 Asian elephants and hundreds of tigers still roam wild in South India, but rampant development and rapidly growing villages in the Sigur region of the Nilgiri foothills are choking off critical access corridors utilized by elephants to travel between still viable habitat areas. Following a 2006 national government declaration to protect elephant corridors (which Ecological Internet and YOU played a critical role in achieving), the Madras High Court of Tamil Nadu in 2010 issued an order to declare the Sigur Region an Elephant Corridor to regulate development and other activities affecting elephant habitat. Nevertheless, vested interests are vigorously opposing the order, causing the Government of India's Ministry of Environment and Forests to delay action.
The European Commission – the executive branch of the European Union (EU) – has voted inconclusively whether to designate Canada’s tar sands as being “highly polluting”. This is unfortunate given tar sands’ terrible ecological impacts upon our shared global atmosphere – and Canadian boreal forests, water, and indigenous peoples - the answer should have been painfully obvious, and a resounding YES. The matter is not dead, it has been referred to committee, so a designation would be a significant setback for tar sands growth. Yet given the power of the ecocidal oil oligarchy which rules Canada and much of the world, empowered global citizens need to let the EU know the world expects, indeed demands, the EU do the right thing in condemning tar sands – in order to establish a level playing field for a renewable, efficient, and conservation based energy future.
Brazil's industrial agriculture lobby has forced through their Congress changes to the forest code, the primary legal instrument related to Amazon rainforest protections. It has been done without any scientific inputs, and in a way that will greatly expand industrial agriculture by reducing ecological protections. Newly elected President Dilma Rousseff must be encouraged to veto the bill, something she promised to do during the election. Efforts to address forest code deficiencies must recommence in a manner that incorporates the latest agro-ecological science regarding sustainable agriculture and the importance of large, connected and intact rainforest ecosystems within agricultural landscapes. Without a veto, recent progress in Amazon rainforest protection is at stake just as Brazil is to host the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012.
The New York State government is set to end its fracking ban – a dangerous natural gas drilling method – placing its citizens, water and ecology at great risk. Fracking blasts water mixed with toxics at high pressure into the ground to shatter deep bedrock – releasing toxic methane, chemicals and other contamination – while destroying crucial water resources and destabilizing the land. Tell Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo that fracking will never be environmentally acceptable, much less sustainable, and that it needs to be permanently banned. Failure to do so makes him personally responsible for vast water contamination that will forever poison New York citizens he has sworn to serve and protect.
The proposed Canadian Enbridge Northern Gateway tar sands pipelines seek to export filthy oil to Asia. The delay of the Keystone pipeline – largely due to people power protest – makes this route all the more vital to Canada, if tar sands production and transport to the international marketplace are to grow. Ecosystems will be placed at risk from Alberta's massive clearcut mining of boreal forest, Western Canada's intricate waterways, to British Columbia’s precious and fragile temperate rainforests and coastal waters, endangering the First Nations' salmon economy. The vital First Nations salmon economy will be devastated. To keep the anti-tar sand campaign momentum, this pipeline must be delayed and eventually stopped too! With stalwart indigenous opposition, and the magnitude of vital and sensitive ecosystems to be traversed, our chances are good. This alert was first launched and hundreds of thousands of protest emails sent a year ago, and has now been updated. NOTE you will receive an emailed response from the review panel on how to lodge official comments, this is different than this protest.
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