Apparently the girl had wandered away from her Awá tribe village, which consists of around 60 members who all live in complete isolation with the modern world, when she was captured by illegal loggers. Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, said to Brazilian news sources that the loggers had tied the girl to a tree and then burned her alive. According to Guajajaras this was meant to be a warning to other indigenous tribes who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão.

“She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death,” Guajajaras said.

News and evidence of this story are unfortunately few and limited. But this is understandable considering where the murder took place. But a third party, the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) which is a Catholic group, have said that they have seen footage of the girl’s charred remains.

Survival International, an organization which works for indigenous people’s rights around the world, reports that large areas of the Awá tribe’s territories have been destroyed by illegal logging. Members from the Awá tribe have been attacked by loggers before.

“The Awá rely on their forest to survive, but vast numbers of loggers are illegally invading their land, which now suffers one of the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon. More than 30% of one of the Awá’s territories has already been destroyed. […]The Awá have recently suffered a series of brutal attacks, and loggers have warned that the Indians will be killed if they go into their forest.”

FUNAI, a Brazilian government agency that is responsible for mapping out and protecting lands traditionally inhabited by indigenous people, have said that they are seeking more information about the reported murder. But I would expect it’ll be hard to find any substantial evidence in the Amazon forest two or even three months later.

But this is not an isolated case. CIMI reports that around 450 indigenous people have been killed by loggers between 2003 and 2010, and these are numbers that are acknowledged by FIMI. For example, last year the famous Amazon rainforest activist José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva was killed in an ambush near his home in Brazil. But it’s not just in Brazil that loggers are attacking people. In 2008, peaceful activists who were protecting an old-growth forest in Tasmania, Australia, was violently attacked by timber workers.

Nevertheless, Hubbell maintained although species extinction caused by habitat loss is not as dire a problem as initially believed, the global extinction crisis is still a real threat.

“We are not in quite as serious trouble right now as people had thought,” Hubbell told Smithsonian Science on May 18. “But that is no reason for complacency. I don’t want this research to be misconstrued as saying we don’t have anything to worry about.” He maintained, “Nothing is further from the truth.”

While there were predictions in the early 1980s that as many as half the species on Earth would be lost by the year 2000, Hubbell explained, “Nothing like that has happened. However, the next mass extinction may be upon us or just around the corner. There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth, and we could be entering the sixth mass extinction.”

Probably the most authoritative global assessment of species status is the Red List of Threatened Species, which is published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Jean Christophe Vie, IUCN’s species program deputy director, responded it was good that this was a clear effort to “get the science right,” but had reservations about how people would interpret it. He acknowledged to BBC News that he was worried about how the report could be used by those who were reluctant to take environmental issues seriously.

“We have explicit details in our guidelines that to estimate extinction is not something we should do,” said Vie. “For example, we know that species are not evenly distributed in ecosystems; habitat loss is not the only threat.” He added that the actual concern was “the rate of decline in populations.”

Addressing the issue, Hubbell cited a comparison: When a meteor struck the Earth some 65 million years ago, the Earth’s tree life was incinerated, and it took about 10 million years to fully recover and redevelop into continuous, flourishing forests. Hubbell said that the extinctions humans cause might be equally catastrophic, though in different ways.

“We need much better data on the distribution of life on Earth,” Hubbell said. “We need to rapidly increase our understanding of where species are on the planet. We need citizens to record their local biodiversity; there are not enough scientists to gather the information. We also need much deeper thought about how we can estimate the extinction rate properly to improve the science behind conservation planning.”

“If you don’t know what you have,” Hubbell concludes, “it’s hard to conserve it.”

This article was first published in People’s World on May 23, 2011.
Author: Blake Deppe.

Six months after predicting his own murder, a leading rainforest defender has reportedly been gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, are said to have been killed in an ambush near their home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá. According to a local newspaper, Diário do Pará, the couple had not had police protection despite getting frequent death threats because of their battle against illegal loggers and ranchers.

Da Silva said in a speech at TEDxAmazonia in November last year that he was afraid loggers would try to kill him:

“I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment … because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers, and that is why they think I cannot exist. [People] ask me, ‘are you afraid?’ Yes, I’m a human being, of course I am afraid. But my fear does not silence me. As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest.”

Al Jazeera correspondent Gabriel Elizondo is, one of the few journalist, at the scene covering the murder of rainforest defender Da Silva. You can follow his reporting on Twitter under the hashtag #ZeClaudio. You can also watch his report below:

Watch the speech he gave at TEDxAmazonia last year:

Zé Cláudio Ribeiro lives in the Maraba, in Para, producing nuts in a sustainable way and resisting the construction boom in the Amazon, and the pressure to bring down these impressive trees. He has received several death threats.

Related: Environmental activists violently attacked by timber workers and Greenpeace activist violently attacked by bluefin tuna fishermen

“The Baltic nation of Latvia is blessed with some of the most beautiful forests in the world, millions of square kilometres of pristine woodland that support a complex biodiversity of rare species of animals and plants. [...] As the UK aims to become one of the greenest countries in Europe, we expose its role in the deforestation of Latvia.”

The clear cutting, which is a total loss not only for biological diversity but also for social and economic reasons, is the result of the current economic crisis in Latvia. It is being fueled by the demand from overseas markets, particularly the UK which has been Latvia’s main export market for over 300 years. Al Jazeera shows how corporations and the Latvian government ignores EU habitat directives, laws and nature reserves to be able to satisfy the market demand for timber. They also question the validation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate which is said to only label timber that is sustainable produced.

“Many of the products of the trade from furniture to wood pulp and paper are sold in the UK under a labelling scheme run by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international NGO that certifies timber is being sustainably produced. Is that really true?”

This episode shows not just the world’s ecological unequal exchange but also how unattainable sustainability is in today’s capitalistic system which is based on a never-ending growth rate.

“The legislation follows lobbying by animal welfare groups, which have long argued that the clubbing of seal pups by hunters is barbaric.

Canada kills about 300,000 seals annually off its east coast – the biggest such hunt in the world.”

Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for the Environment, welcomed the new ban and said that the new legislation “addresses EU citizens’ concerns with regard to the cruel hunting methods of seals.”

Caroline Lucas, MEP for the Greens in the UK, said that “today, nearly one million seals are slaughtered annually in commercial seal kills around the world”, and that this new legislation will help end “one of the most vile examples of animal cruelty.”

The new ban will come with exceptions for Inuit communities and other indigenous peoples from Canada and Greenland which will be allowed to continue their traditional hunts. But they are not allowed to participate in any large-scale trade of seal products within EU.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) applauded the new legislation and said it was a major victory in the organizations 40 year campaign to end Canada’s commercial seal hunt.

“The Parliament has hammered the final nail in the coffin of the sealing industry’s market in the EU,” said Lesley O’Donnell, Director of IFAW EU. “MEPs clearly heeded the tens of thousands of emails, postcards and messages sent by IFAW supporters from across Europe.”

“From Mexico City to Milan and all the way to Moscow, the world is uniting in opposition to commercial seal hunts,” continued O’Donnell. “A complete collapse of Canada’s commercial seal hunt may now be inevitable.”

Canada and Norway have warned that they will take the European Union and its 27 member nations to the World Trade Organization if they agreed on a ban on seal product imports.

It is feared that the new EU ban will overshadow any other topics during the EU-Canada summit in Prague this week. The summit is meant to launch negotiations for a new economic and free trade agreement between Europe and Canada as well as strengthening efforts to build a low-carbon global economy.

The annual seal massacre in Canada has started. This year the Canadian government has set a target of over 280000 baby seals to be clubbed to death and skinned to provide coats, hats, handbags and other accessories for the fashion market.

This seal hunt is the largest commercial hunt for marine mammals in the world and has been met with protests from around the world for years now. And this year is no different. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) says the hunt should be stopped because it’s cruel, unsustainable and lacks proper monitoring from federal agencies. The European Union is currently being pushed to introduce a ban on commercial trading with seal skin in a few weeks. And just recently Russia decided to close down their seal hunt in the White Sea indefinitely.

“It’s preposterous that the Canadian government insists on moving forward with this hunt.” said Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with IFAW. “In the midst of intense European and Canadian opposition, dwindling markets and low pelt prices, it’s apparent the government’s insistence on continuing this slaughter is based solely on politics not reason.”

“The world will be intensely watching this year’s hunt and I am confident that once again the evidence will speak for itself. The cruelty of Canada’s commercial seal hunt is undeniable.” added Fink.

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans have reported that the first two days of the seal hunt has resulted in over 17,200 harp seals killed. But as the team of observers from the IFAW notes, many of the killed seals never get counted in the official statistic.

“We witnessed today a classic example of the cruelty associated with this hunt. An injured, bleeding seal escaped into the water before a sealer could get to it. The sealer tried to pull the seal out by the hind flippers but it slipped underwater anyway,” said Cheryl Jacobson, hunt observer with IFAW. “This wounded seal will most likely die underwater and unbelievably, that kill won’t even be counted in the official catch number.”

“I’m confident we will gather enough footage to provide European policy makers with the cold hard facts about Canada’s commercial seal hunt – that it’s unacceptably cruel,” said Sheryl Fink, a senior researcher with IFAW. “Sealers rush to club as many seals as possible in a short period of time, combine this with slippery ice conditions and we quickly see animal welfare fall to the wayside in the blind pursuit of profit,” added Fink.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare has released this video showing hunters killing seals in Canada’s annual commercial seal hunt this year.

Take Action: End the Seal Hunt: Support the Harb Seal Bill!

Photo credit: pixie_bebe

If the ice continues to shrink (due to man-made climate change) at its current pace the Emperor Penguins will become extinct within 100 years, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts warns.

“Emperor Penguins are one of only two open-sea Antarctic penguin species and depend on the sea ice for survival. After breeding, Emperor Penguins feed among the coastal pack ice where stretches of water are exposed. As a result of disappearing ice, the Emperor Penguins are being forced to retreat inward and could easily become displaced by other animals, losing out on nesting space.

After examining data from the Terre Adelie penguin colony, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts found the Emperor Penguin population is facing a quasi-extinction, equal to a 95 percent or more population drop by the year 2100. The population is expected to decline from 6000 breeding pairs to only 400 pairs in the next 100 years if sea ice continues to shrink at the rate projected by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) models.”

It seems that the penguins can’t adapt to changing conditions and climate, by altering the timing of their breeding cycle for example. “Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don’t catch on so quickly,” Stephanie Jenouvrier said. “They are long-lived organisms, so they adapt slowly. This is a problem because the climate is changing very fast.”

I also love central Pennsylvania, being a Penn State girl.  But the hills and valleys feel somehow wrong to me. My eyes crave the flat land, as it reaches toward a low and long horizon.

And I truly feel starved for the horizon that is a Great Lake. For those of you who have never seen a Great Lake, it is no simple lake. It would look like the ocean to you. No land in sight. Rolling waves.

Lake Erie is one of the most treacherous places you can sail because of how shallow and large it is.  Quick changes in the weather can be life-threatening.

I also love knowing that this chair I am sitting in, this house sitting behind me, all of it used to be under water. The lake came up to here so many thousands of years ago.  It’s shore was very close to my front street. Evidence of this lies in my soil.  Pieces of shell, fossils, certain rocks — it all tells a deep and long story.

Every place is this unique. You just have to dig a bit.

And digging can lead to roots which can give you a sense of grounding that can be easily lost in this world that can seem precariously virtual, too fast, and too transient.

Getting to know your bioregion can lead to a feeling of ownership and then to good stewardship.  A worthy quest, indeed.

So here’s a list of questions and suggestions and actions to get you going on this quest:

1.  Point north from where you are reading this.

2.  From which directions do storms come in each season?

3.  Name 3 native, edible plants and when they are able to be harvested.

4.  What native people originally lived in your area?

5.  Name 5 resident and 5 migratory birds.

6.  Can you recognize the calls of three resident birds?

7.  What are the earliest and latest times for the sunrise and the sunset over the course of the year?

8.  In which watershed do you reside?  What about your sub-watershed?

9.  How many days until the next full moon?  (Bonus points if you know what one of the names for this full moon is.)

10.  Name five trees in your neighborhood.  Which of them are native?

11.  What primary geological events or processes shaped the land upon which you live?

12.  Were the stars out last night?

13.  What are the names of your human neighbors?

14.  What immigrant populations are currently predominant in your area?

15.  What languages other than English might you hear at the local grocery store?

16.  When are strawberries and peaches available to you locally?

17.  When was the last time you bought a locally produced product other than food?

18.  Where does your electricity come from and how is it generated?

19.  When did you last pick a fresh pea or tomato from your own yard or a neighbor’s yard?

20.  How far do you commute to work? If over ten miles, why don’t you live closer to your job?

21.  How old is your neighborhood?

22.  When did you last use a form of public transportation?

23.  If you could only “vacation” within a thirty mile radius, what would you do with your time off?

24.  How many times have you moved in the last five years?  The last ten?

25.  When did you last attend a locally produced art/music/theatre/dance event?

26.  Name one local published author.  (Trust me, there are more.)

Let me know if you find out anything startling, interesting, mind-boggling.

And do something with this information:  absorb it and live it and share it.

“We’ve raised concerns for years about primates being in peril, but now we have solid data to show the situation is far more severe than we imagined,” said Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International (CI) and the longtime chairman of the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. “Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact. In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction.”

The new analysis reveals that:

• Over 70% of Asian primates are threatened with extinction, and at least two dozen taxa are Critically Endangered.
• Virtually all gibbons are threatened with extinction — and one of the rarest subspecies, the Yunnan white-handed gibbon, may already be extinct.
• All great apes — all gorillas, all chimpanzees, all orangutans, all bonobos — are either Endangered or Critically Endangered.
• Across all primate taxa, a full 48% are threatened — nearly half of all primates, in harm’s way and likely to go extinct in our own lifetime.

And just in time for the release of this depressing report the Associated Press reports that President George Bush is “proposing changes that would allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether subdivisions, dams, highways and other projects have the potential to harm endangered animals and plants.”

It wasn’t long ago since the Caribbean monk seal was officially listed as extinct by the US Government. And now the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, reports that the Northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is “on the brink of extinction“.

According to older reports the only remaining population of Northern white rhino is restricted in the wild to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The population was 30 in April 2003 but was reduced due to poaching to only four confirmed animals by August 2006. Now in 2008 the IUCN haven’t been able to find any Northern white rhinos at all.

Dr Martin Brooks, Chair of the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group says:

“Worryingly, recent fieldwork has so far failed to find any presence of these four remaining rhinos. Unless animals are found during the intensive surveys that are planned under the direction of the African Parks Foundation, the subspecies may be doomed to extinction.”

Although the future seems very dark for the Northern white rhino the population of the African black rhino (Diceros bicornis) has had a small boost from 2005. The population has increased from 3730 in 2005 to 4180 in 2007. But the African black rhino still remains as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

Dr Richard Emslie, Scientific Officer of the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group, says that:

“This is fantastic news for the African black rhino. However, these magnificent creatures are not out of the woods yet. They are still classed as Critically Endangered and face increasing threats of poaching and civil unrest. There is no room for complacency.”

The report concludes that poaching still remains as the biggest threat for rhinos in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe.

“Even though protection from poaching is critical, effective rhino conservation must also include intensive monitoring and biological management to ensure annual growth rates of at least 5 % per year so that surplus rhinos are made available to create new populations,” Dr Martin Brooks said.