Study: Almost half the world’s plants close to extinction

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Researchers say the percentage of the world’s plants threatened with extinction is much larger than commonly believed and could be as high as 47 per cent if tropical species are included.

The study, published in the November issue of Science, challenges earlier research that estimated the number of species in danger of extinction was about 13 per cent.

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Web Site Called Secret Weapon in Battle for Conservation

Photo project aims for entire coast

By Paul Rogers
San Jose Mercury News

Some people go to the beach and come back with a snapshot. Ken Adelman has come back with 7,000 of them. And he isn’t finished yet.

In an unprecedented marriage of high technology and environmental activism, Adelman, a 39-year-old computer programmer from Santa Cruz County, has taken 7,000 aerial photographs of the California coastline—one roughly every 500 feet. His quest, which could spell trouble for developers building illegal seawalls or blocking public beach access, is to photograph every inch of the state’s 1,100-mile shoreline from Oregon to Mexico.

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The Riches of Talamanca, Costa Rica

Association of Small Producers of Talamanca Newsletter
Issue #1, March/April 2002

Talamanca is an area rich in biodiversity. It contains 9 of the 12 life zones of Costa Rica (Holdridge 1967) and within its forests we find 60% of the diversity of Costa Rican fauna including between 35,000 and 100,000 species of insects, as many as 84 species of mammals, 141 of reptiles, 361 of birds, 220 of butterflies and 227 of fish and marine organisms. There is also a great variety of plants, many of which are found only in this zone.

This richness, combined with the ethnic and cultural richness, has developed forms of production in which ancestral culture is combined with the natural riches. For years the Bribri and the Cabcar tribes have planted diverse crops together. Crops such as corn, yam, yucca, tiquisque and beans are grown together with bananas and plantains under the shade of fruit trees, pejibaye palms and lumber trees. Crops are often combined with the care of domestic animals. This form of production, for someone looking from outside, perhaps does not have the “order” of a traditional monoculture system, but this difference is precisely its richness: it is an integrated system that permits living and producing sustainably. In this system the family achieves production of a variety of fresh foods for its own consumption, at the same time producing bananas, plantains, and cacao for sale. At the end of the year, the family receives income from these, as well as wood and other products for its own use.

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New Map Shows Human “Footprint” Covers Most of Earth

A team of scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) has produced a new, comprehensive map of the world, showing how human beings directly influence more than three quarters of the earth’s landmass. Published in the latest issue of the scientific journal BioScience, the map should serve as a wake-up call that humans are stewards of the natural world, whether we like it or not – something that should be viewed as an opportunity, the authors say.

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Audubon WatchList 2002 Details Declining U.S. Birds

By Cat Lazaroff
Environment News Service

NEW YORK, New York, October 22, 2002 (ENS) – More than one-quarter of native U.S. birds are declining or in trouble, warns a new report from the National Audubon Society. The conservation group has identified more than 200 species that face shrinking numbers, restricted habitat or other threats, in a report aimed at helping environmental agencies understand where their limited resources can best be used to help America’s birds.

In 1996, Audubon released its first WatchList, an inventory of birds facing decline and habitat loss, designed to keep common birds common. Now, six years later, Audubon has released its WatchList 2002, a comprehensive Web site devoted to assessing the conservation status of the 201 bird species in the United States that have the greatest conservation needs, out of the 800 species that occur there.

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U.N. Holds World Poverty Day

By NEELESH MISRA, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS, (AP) – Poor people from India to Fiji to Kenya are using local initiatives to break free from an unending cycle of economic hardship, but the world is barely halfway home in its battle to defeat poverty, the United Nations says.

The world body marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Thursday by focusing on key goals adopted by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000: to halve the number of extremely poor people in the world, provide an elementary school education for every child and halt the AIDS epidemic by 2015.

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The Melting Snows of Kilimanjaro

Studies Find Mountains Ancient Snows Will Be Gone in 20 Years

By Paul Recer
The Associated Press

Oct. 17 The snow cap of Mount Kilimanjaro, famed in literature and beloved by tourists, first formed some 11,000 years ago, but will be gone in two decades, according to researchers who say the ice fields on Africa’s highest mountain shrank by 80 percent in the past century.

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Small Organic Farmers Pull Up Stakes

By SAMUEL FROMARTZ
New York Times

Monday, 14 October, 2002

WASHINGTON — A curious thing happened on the way to a national organic standard: the small farmer, once at the heart of the organic movement, got left behind.

Talk to those who have farmed organically for years and you will find a surprising number who have decided not to call their produce organic any longer. The costs ? administrative, monetary and philosophical ? of using the government-defined label are too great. Only farms certified under the United States Department of Agriculture’s regime can legally call their produce organic after Oct. 21. (Farms with annual revenues under $5,000 can forgo formal certification, though they are expected to follow the rules.)

At local farmers’ markets around the country, you’ll find many farmers who say their vegetables are “grown without chemicals” or that their meat is “free of antibiotics,” but many won’t use the “O” word. Others are wondering if they will continue to.

Why are these organic farmers opting out?

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