From: Glen Barry
Subject: BIOD: American Habitats on Edge
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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
American Habitats on the Edge
***********************************************
Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
http://forests.org/
3/15/98
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The long-term sustainability of the American economic model is
justifiably questioned when the effects upon habitat and the ability
of ecosystems to continue providing life-support functions are
considered. Economic growth based upon the liquidation of ecological
systems is illusory and ultimately degrading to quality, and the very
possibility, of life. Following is an good synopsis that provides
detail regarding just how much has been lost in America, and is
threatened worldwide, in order to fuel unsustainable material gains.
The danger lies in this model's embrace by the rest of the World.
g.b.
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Factoids: Habitat on the edge
Source: Environmental News Network
Status: Copyrighted 1998, contact source to reprint
Date: March 13, 1998
In the past 200 years, the United States has lost 50 percent of its
wetlands, 90 percent of its northwestern old-growth forests, 99
percent of its tallgrass prairie, and up to 490 species of native
plants and animals.
Nine square miles of rural land is turned over to development each day
in the United States.
Experts have predicted that 17,500 species will be lost to extinction
each year. Some scientists forecast that total losses may reach one
million by the year 2000.
Some experts estimate that one species goes extinct each hour.
According to the National Wildlife Federation, nearly two-thirds of
all large mammal species are threatened or endangered in the lower 48
states, along with 14 percent of all bird species, 12 percent of all
plant species and 10 percent of all fish species.
Less than 10 percent of all endangered and threatened species for
which the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is responsible are improving;
nearly 40 percent are in decline. For endangered and threatened
species found only on private property, ten species are in decline for
every one species showing improvement.
Seventy-nine percent of the top 150 pharmaceuticals prescribed in 1995
were derived from natural sources.
Old-growth forests, a hot campaign issue with Rainforest Action
Network, are quickly dwindling; today less than 5 percent of the
United States' ancient forests remain.
More than two square miles of the oldest and largest trees are clear-
cut each week in the Pacific Northwest.
Since 1982 the Forest Service has spent an average of $55 million a
year to subsidize clear-cutting in the Tongass National Forest. Only
$550,000 annually has been returned to the U.S. Treasury in timber
receipts, a return of less than 2 cents on the dollar.
Replacing the carbon storage function of all tropical forests would
cost an estimated $3.7 trillion -- equal to the gross national product
of Japan.
Of 3.5 million miles of rivers in the United States, 600,000 miles (17
percent) are dammed, causing enormous and permanent ecological damage.
In 1986 alone, 64 million gallons of toxic drilling waste were
discharged directly onto the tundra by North Slope operations. The
Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil.
Less than 4 percent of the original U.S. wilderness remains. The
Arctic refuge's coastal plain is virtually the last stretch of
arctic coastline of Alaska not open for development. The Wilderness
Society would like to keep it that way.
Less than 450,000 acres of California's original 5 million acres
of wetlands remain.
The annual global income lost due to desertification is estimated to
be $42 billion.
Loss of vital organic matter and soil nutrients to erosion costs U.S.
and Canadian farmers more than $2 billion yearly in lost production.
According to EarthAction International, throughout the world's dry
zones, 500,000 hectares of irrigated lands become desertified every
year through salination and waterlogging -- roughly equal to the area
newly irrigated every year.
The U.N. Environment Programme estimates that the lives of 900 million
people are at risk because their land is in danger of turning into
desert. As much as a quarter of the Earth's land surface may be
threatened.
Of the world's 5,200 million hectares of dryland used for agriculture,
69 percent is degraded or subject to desertification. In Africa, 73
percent of all agriculturally used drylands are degraded; the figure
for Asia is 70 percent.
Farmers report that by incorporating conservation till methods, they
can reduce soil erosion by up to 70 percent.
EPA data documents that U.S. farmers applied a record 1.25 billion
pounds of pesticides to crops in 1995 -- twice as much as was applied
30 years ago. Farmers paid $10.4 billion for the chemicals, including
toxins, carcinogens, and chemicals believed to disrupt the human
hormone system.
The use of methyl bromide is increasing in California, according to
the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Seventeen million
pounds of the toxic fumigant and ozone depleter were applied in 1994,
a 15 percent increase from 1993.
###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###
This document is a PHOTOCOPY for educational, personal and non-
commercial use only. Recipients should seek permission from the
source for reprinting. All efforts are made to provide accurate,
timely pieces; though ultimate responsibility for verifying all
information rests with the reader. Check out our Gaia Forest
Conservation Archives at URL= http://forests.org/
Networked by Ecological Enterprises, grbarry@students.wisc.edu
Subject: PNG & BIOD: PNG Tax Breaks
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The following was sent to me and I am sending it on as received...
The PNG Forest Authority is poised to give significant breaks to the
PNG timber industry. This amid allegations that attempts were made by
the industry to bribe the Prime Minister.
Have an opinion regarding giving the PNG timber industry tax breaks?
Email the forest authority at: pngfa@datec.com.pg
Or fax them at: 675 327 7926 or 675 325 9943
Forest Authority leaning towards lower log tax
Post Courier
March 16, 1998
THE Government may have to lower log export taxes and give loggers
relief from royalties and levies in order to save the nation's
forestry industry, according to a highly placed Forest Authority
official.
The official told the Post-Coutier last week that the industry was
important to the national economy and could not be allowed to suffer.
Some relief measures were necessary, and that meant reducing the tax
and allowing other concessions for "an interim period".
He did not say by how much the tax should be lowered.
He said the Forest Authority board had been thinking seriously about
the future of the industry, in the light of the current problems in
Asian markets and pressure from the logging companies which have said
they are operating at a loss and have threatened to pull out unless
they get some relief.
Major investors could not cope with falling log prices, and this posed
a major threat to all other services including employment, health and
education.
Recently the Forest Authority has been assuring the public, through
paid newspaper advertisements, that there will be no reduction in log
export tax and no exemptions on any royalties or levies.
On Thursday Greenpeace Pacific and other non-government organisation
protesters picketed Forest Authority headquarters at Hohola demanding
that the authority and the Government resist pressure to lower taxes
and defer other payments.
The official said: "Why would they (NGOs) be opposing such a move?
What we are trying to do is give some relief to the industry and make
the environment more conducive to our investors.
The measure is only for the interim period and when the market picks
up we can go back."
He said what the NGOs were saying was that the authority should let
the investors suffer and close down.
"To close down the industry would mean a loss of 3000 jobs,
infrastructure, health, education, and royalty payments to
landowners," the official said.
With log prices down to $US65 a cubic metre, loggers could no longer
operate.
The Post-Courier understands that the National Executive Council has
called for a meeting of representatives from the Finance and Prime
Minister's departments, the Forest Authority, loggers, and World Bank.
Greenpeace representative Brian Brunton said the authority was simply
caving in to pressure from the logging companies.
"Giving in to the logging companies will do absolutely nothing to look
after the forests or the economy of Papua New Guinea," he said.
"If the Forest Authority and the World Bank really had the interests
of the forests and the economy at heart they would not be recommending
this."
*****
PRIME Minister Bill Skate says he was offered three bribes in the past
six months the biggest being for K40 million.
Post Courier
March 16, 1998
PRIME Minister Bill Skate says he was offered three bribes in the past
six months the biggest being for K40 million.
But, he said on the Nine Network's 60 Minutes television program,
broadcast in Australia and by EMTV last night, that he had declined
the bribes and had never offered one himself.
Mr Skate rejected corruption allegations stemming from secretly filmed
videotapes shown by the ABC last year.
The tapes showed him allegedly authorising bribes, and bragging that
he was the godfather of PNG's notorious raskol gangs and had ordered
an execution
Asked if he had ever given a bribe, Mr Skate said: ``Never.''
Asked if he had ever been offered a bribe, he replied: ``Sometimes, by
some people, and I declined.'' He said he had been offered three
bribes in the past six months, the largest worth K40 million.
Asked who offered him that bribe, he said: ``It was proposed by
(former Skate adviser) Mujo Sefa.''
Mr Sefa was the man who recorded the secret videotapes.
The Nine Network said the bribe offer stemmed from Malaysian loggers
who wanted the tax laws changed in order to save them $A100 million,
but Mr Sefa denied offering the bribe.
``It's a complete lie,'' Mr Sefa told 60 Minutes. ``It never happened
like that. There was no suggestion there would be any money made from
any transaction that I was involved with.''
He said that as far as he was concerned, Mr Skate was ``corrupt''.
He had been forced to pay bribes on Mr Skate's behalf for fear of his
life, he added.
I had no choice but to toe the line, and I got out very quickly,'' he
said.
But Mr Skate said the tapes did not show he was corrupt.
``I am not a killer,'' he said, referring to the ``godfather''
reference in the Sefa videotapes.
He added: ``You have got to sometimes live in a world of fantasy to be
accepted in this society. That was drinking talk. I thought I was in
among my friends, sitting with my friends.
"But it has taught me one lesson: to be very careful with what you say
and who you deal with.''
Subject: BIOD: American Habitats on Edge
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Status: R
***********************************************
WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
American Habitats on the Edge
***********************************************
Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
http://forests.org/
3/15/98
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The long-term sustainability of the American economic model is
justifiably questioned when the effects upon habitat and the ability
of ecosystems to continue providing life-support functions are
considered. Economic growth based upon the liquidation of ecological
systems is illusory and ultimately degrading to quality, and the very
possibility, of life. Following is an good synopsis that provides
detail regarding just how much has been lost in America, and is
threatened worldwide, in order to fuel unsustainable material gains.
The danger lies in this model's embrace by the rest of the World.
g.b.
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Factoids: Habitat on the edge
Source: Environmental News Network
Status: Copyrighted 1998, contact source to reprint
Date: March 13, 1998
In the past 200 years, the United States has lost 50 percent of its
wetlands, 90 percent of its northwestern old-growth forests, 99
percent of its tallgrass prairie, and up to 490 species of native
plants and animals.
Nine square miles of rural land is turned over to development each day
in the United States.
Experts have predicted that 17,500 species will be lost to extinction
each year. Some scientists forecast that total losses may reach one
million by the year 2000.
Some experts estimate that one species goes extinct each hour.
According to the National Wildlife Federation, nearly two-thirds of
all large mammal species are threatened or endangered in the lower 48
states, along with 14 percent of all bird species, 12 percent of all
plant species and 10 percent of all fish species.
Less than 10 percent of all endangered and threatened species for
which the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is responsible are improving;
nearly 40 percent are in decline. For endangered and threatened
species found only on private property, ten species are in decline for
every one species showing improvement.
Seventy-nine percent of the top 150 pharmaceuticals prescribed in 1995
were derived from natural sources.
Old-growth forests, a hot campaign issue with Rainforest Action
Network, are quickly dwindling; today less than 5 percent of the
United States' ancient forests remain.
More than two square miles of the oldest and largest trees are clear-
cut each week in the Pacific Northwest.
Since 1982 the Forest Service has spent an average of $55 million a
year to subsidize clear-cutting in the Tongass National Forest. Only
$550,000 annually has been returned to the U.S. Treasury in timber
receipts, a return of less than 2 cents on the dollar.
Replacing the carbon storage function of all tropical forests would
cost an estimated $3.7 trillion -- equal to the gross national product
of Japan.
Of 3.5 million miles of rivers in the United States, 600,000 miles (17
percent) are dammed, causing enormous and permanent ecological damage.
In 1986 alone, 64 million gallons of toxic drilling waste were
discharged directly onto the tundra by North Slope operations. The
Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil.
Less than 4 percent of the original U.S. wilderness remains. The
Arctic refuge's coastal plain is virtually the last stretch of
arctic coastline of Alaska not open for development. The Wilderness
Society would like to keep it that way.
Less than 450,000 acres of California's original 5 million acres
of wetlands remain.
The annual global income lost due to desertification is estimated to
be $42 billion.
Loss of vital organic matter and soil nutrients to erosion costs U.S.
and Canadian farmers more than $2 billion yearly in lost production.
According to EarthAction International, throughout the world's dry
zones, 500,000 hectares of irrigated lands become desertified every
year through salination and waterlogging -- roughly equal to the area
newly irrigated every year.
The U.N. Environment Programme estimates that the lives of 900 million
people are at risk because their land is in danger of turning into
desert. As much as a quarter of the Earth's land surface may be
threatened.
Of the world's 5,200 million hectares of dryland used for agriculture,
69 percent is degraded or subject to desertification. In Africa, 73
percent of all agriculturally used drylands are degraded; the figure
for Asia is 70 percent.
Farmers report that by incorporating conservation till methods, they
can reduce soil erosion by up to 70 percent.
EPA data documents that U.S. farmers applied a record 1.25 billion
pounds of pesticides to crops in 1995 -- twice as much as was applied
30 years ago. Farmers paid $10.4 billion for the chemicals, including
toxins, carcinogens, and chemicals believed to disrupt the human
hormone system.
The use of methyl bromide is increasing in California, according to
the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Seventeen million
pounds of the toxic fumigant and ozone depleter were applied in 1994,
a 15 percent increase from 1993.
###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###
This document is a PHOTOCOPY for educational, personal and non-
commercial use only. Recipients should seek permission from the
source for reprinting. All efforts are made to provide accurate,
timely pieces; though ultimate responsibility for verifying all
information rests with the reader. Check out our Gaia Forest
Conservation Archives at URL= http://forests.org/
Networked by Ecological Enterprises, grbarry@students.wisc.edu