Forests.org

Phnom Penh Post: Illegal logging of staggering proportions abetted by military personnel is decimating stocks of luxury rosewood in the Central Cardamom Protected Forest, while the conservation group tasked with protecting the area and its government counterparts deny the trade is even happening. In a period of several hours beginning late on Sunday night, the Post witnessed at least nine industrial transport trucks, seven pick-up trucks and one Land Rover packed with timber drive out of Koh Kong province’s Thma...

Radio Australia: One of the world's leading tropical biologists says clear felling of forests on Papua New Guinea's controversial Special Agricultural and Business leases is likely to have profound impact on PNG's environment. As you heard earlier in the program, logging on SABLs has pushed PNG's log exports into record territory. In 2011, 650,000 cubic metres of logs were exported from SABLs. A prominent scientist in tropical biology says the environmental impact of this sort of logging is very significant....

Scotland Herald: The first firm evidence that the grass snake is now living in the wild north of the Border has been uncovered by a naturalist, upsetting decades of conventional wisdom. It was believed the grass snake, a non-poisonous creature native to England, has never colonised Scotland. A few kept as pets had escaped, but there was no proof that any lived here in the wild, or had spread north naturally. But now Chris Cathrine, a member of the Clyde Amphibian and Reptile Group and director of the Caledonian...

Halifax Courier: THE council is ready to endorse an ambitious £366 million scheme to create 450 jobs, slash energy costs and help save the planet. If the Energy Future Strategy works properly, it should pay for itself and slash Calderdale’s carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2020. Senior Lib Lab councillors have already given the strategy the green light and Calderdale Council as a whole will be asked to back the plan at its meeting on February 15. Economy and environment spokesman Barry Collins (Lab, Illingworth...

Boston Globe: As Wednesday’s public hearing on the joint Quincy-Boston plan to build a nearly 400-foot wind turbine on Quincy’s Moon Island draws near, some Quincy residents are questioning the value of the project to their city and the cost in intangibles they may have to pay for it. Quincy Planning Board member William Geary said his panel doesn’t have a good idea of how big the turbine will appear from the city’s Squantum neighborhood, complaining at an information session last month that the simulation...

Philadelphia Inquirer: When Bob Keares proposed building Pennsylvania's largest solar farm in the heart of Chester County, he expected a warm reception, certainly from environmentalists. With 35,000 panels arrayed on a steep slope in Caln Township, the farm would generate 10 megawatts of energy, pollution-free. It could power 2,000 homes, he asserted, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 200,000 tons over 40 years - equivalent to planting eight million trees. Keares' green dream did not end there. He envisioned...

MetroWest Daily News: Power plants throughout eastern Massachusetts are the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change in the state, according to new data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The information comes from a website the EPA unveiled in January, publicly detailing for the first time emissions reported by the largest producers of carbon dioxide and related greenhouse gases in nine major industries. All the top 10 sources of carbon dioxide emissions...

Daily News and Analysis: "It should be called Joke Falls, not Jog Falls,' says a disgusted Yoav Masiach. The 31-year-old Israeli tourist had visited India's largest waterfall in the Western Ghats around the same time in the mid 90s and was enthralled by the four waterfalls -- Raja, Roarer, Rocket and Lady. This year, he brought his 22-year-old girlfriend Dianne Solares all the way from Goa on a motorcycle, but they were shocked to see what had become of one of the top ten falls in the world. Locals like Siddhaiah Gowda,...

Living on Earth: Congressman John Mica(FL-R)(in shirt sleeves) chairs the House Transportation Committee.(Courtesy of the House Transportation Committee) The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has proposed a sweeping, new transportation bill. The legislation would encourage private companies to build their own toll roads and pay for infrastructure with money from oil companies. The author of the 800 page-long bill, Congressmen John Mica, highlights some of the bill's biggest proposals...

Living on Earth: The House transportation bill currently on the table cuts bicycling and walking infrastructure. Democrat Congressman Earl Blumenauer is an avid cyclist. He tells host Bruce Gellerman why he believes the bill is an assault on twenty years of progress. Transcript GELLERMAN: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Somerville, MA, it's Living on Earth, I'm Bruce Gellerman. [MUSIC: THEME to LEAVE IT TO BEAVER] GELLERMAN: The "Hi Mom, hi Dad, hi Beaver,' era wasn't all that long ago......

LA Times: Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the "power tower" emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket. Clustered nearby are hangar-sized assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 acres of public land. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors -- each the size of a garage door -- are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will become six square miles...

Agence France-Presse: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is emerging as a hot issue in preparations for June's Rio conference, styled as a once-in-a-generation chance to restore a sick planet to good health. The US is fighting a proposal, backed according to France by least 100 countries, for transforming UNEP from a poorly noticed, second-string unit into a planetary super-agency. Environmentalists have long complained that Nairobi-based UNEP, set up in 1972 as an office of the UN and with a membership of only...

BBC: A suitable climate and the easy availability of food make the Hokersar wetland reserve in Indian-administered Kashmir a favourite destination for nearly a million migratory birds every winter. This year, however, heavy snowfall and below freezing temperatures have frozen the water in some parts of the reserve, making it difficult for the birds to feed. Mehvish Hussain reports.

Cap Times: What happened to “climate change” and “global warming”? The Earth is still getting hotter, but those terms have nearly disappeared from political vocabulary. Instead, they have been replaced by less charged and more consumer-friendly expressions for the warming planet. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was a prime example of this shift. The president said “climate change” just once -- compared with zero mentions in the 2011 address and two in 2010. When he did utter the phrase,...

New York Times: Seven officials in southern China have been removed from their jobs in the wake of a toxic heavy metal spill that fouled drinking water supplies for tens of millions of people, the state news media reported Friday. The spill, which affected 200 miles of the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was caused by two companies that accidentally released tons of cadmium into the river last month. The contamination was not reported for at least two weeks, during which people continued...

Independent: The coldest night of winter so far left the majority of Britain blanketed in snow as temperatures dropped to -12C. Drivers were warned to take extra care and planes were grounded, including at London Heathrow where one-in-three flights scheduled for today are expected to be cancelled. A host of sporting fixtures were also postponed. The evening match at Manchester City had to pause temporarily so the pitch markings could be made clear. In Beeston, Nottinghamshire, there were more serious...

allAfrica: ONE of the country's largest natural forest reserve, Masito-Ugalla in Kigoma rural district which is threatened by charcoal and timber traders exporting to neighbouring countries, is not legally protected and now Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism is seeking to gazette it. The 70,000 hectares natural reserve which spans across Kigoma and Rukwa regions is one of the several others which are not protected by law hence allowing loggers and corrupt forestry officials to cut down natural trees,...

Climate Central: A massive crack extending for 19 miles across the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica was discovered last October by NASA scientists working in the area. The crack is 260 feet wide, 195 feet deep and will eventually extend all the way across the glacier, calving a giant iceberg that will cover about 350 square miles. This image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft on Nov. 13, 2011.

Independent: The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence. A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week. The death toll from Arctic blast has been particularly severe in the Ukraine, where many of the dead have been people...

Reuters: Bitterly cold weather that has claimed hundreds of lives in eastern Europe swept westwards over the continent on Saturday, blanketing Rome's Colosseum with snow for the first time in three decades and disrupting air and rail traffic. Russian gas exporter Gazprom said it was unable to meet increased European demand as it battles its own deep freeze, and had reduced supplies "for a few days" before returning them to normal levels. In Belgrade, soldiers were deployed to clear the central boulevard....