Dung-sniffing dogs have confirmed that Javan rhinos are indeed still surviving in Vietnam.

The WWF survey of Vietnam’s Javan rhino population is off to a promising start: Two dung piles and recent footprints!

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Two frozen tigers have been seized by environmental authorities near Hanoi.

Hanoi police made a horrifying discovery when they stopped a taxi in the central province of Thanh Hoa: The frozen carcasses of two tigers.

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A comprehensive survey to gather genetic data about the last Javan rhino population in Vietnam kicks off in November 2009.

WWF announced today that a comprehensive survey of Cat Tien’s Javan rhino population will begin next month and continue until April 2010. The purpose of the study is to gather urgently needed genetic data in order to develop a local conservation management strategy for these critically endangered mammals.

It is estimated that there no more than five individuals of this rare Javan rhino subspecies (Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus) still surviving in Vietnam’s Cat Tien National Park.

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Well-funded poaching syndicates are cashing in on Asia’s demand for rhino horn - and jeopardizing decades of rhino conservation efforts in South Africa.

The reason behind the current 15-year high in rhino poaching is no longer a mystery or “baffling” to experts: It is fueled by the insatiable demands of a newly affluent - and increasing - population in Asia.

Commercial rhino poaching has become a well-oiled machine - and the “new Asian wealth” is bankrolling the slaughter.

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Authorities in central Khanh Hoa Province have rescued and released 849 critically endangered hawksbill turtles.

Good news: 849 hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) were rescued last week from a farm in Bich Dam Hamlet in Nha Trang City.

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Vietnamese customs officials found approximately four tons of endangered pangolin scales smuggled into Hai Phong Port from Indonesia.

A suspicious waybill was behind the discovery of four tons of illegal pangolin scales in a container that was marked as dried seaweed. There were also two tons of tortoise shells in another container - supposedly containing dried tuna stomach.

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Conservation experts estimate that the Vietnamese appetite for wildlife is responsible for increasing the country’s endangered species list from 300 to nearly 1,000 animals.

Fortunately, Vietnamese conservationists are stepping in before the country’s vulnerable species are “eaten to extinction.”

And for the first time ever, Vietnam’s Central Committee for Communication and Education (CCCE) held a conference entitled “Protecting Wild Animals to Contribute to the Sustainable Preservation of Natural Resources in Vietnam” at the Ninh Binh Province’s Van Long Wetland Nature Reserve. The event called for enforcement of strict measures against the country’s illegal animal trade, and discussed ways to protect wildlife and sustainably preserve natural resources in the country.

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Unrestricted expansion of rubber tree plantations in South East Asia could lead to “devastating environmental effects”, according to authors Ziegler, Fox and Xu writing in a May, 2009 perspective article in Science.

Throughout the “montane” (foot hill and low mountainous) mainland of South East Asia (inclusive of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and China), rubber plantations are expanding. So far, an estimated half million hectares have been planted, and by 2050, that land mass area could triple. This expansion will come at a cost to broad leaf, evergreen forests and “swidden” areas (with vegetation from older slash and burn efforts).

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Zimbabwe is currently home to the world’s fourth largest population of critically endangered Black Rhino. Although rhino killings in Zimbabwe have more than doubled in the past year, poachers continue to walk away without punishment for their crimes.

In a recent IRF press release, rhino conservation experts called upon international agencies and the Zimbabwe government to take immediate action against poaching of endangered species and to crack down on trade in wildlife products.

Tackling the situation in Zimbabwe is especially challenging because the rhino poaching in this area is planned and carried out by organized gangs. The attacks have become increasingly brazen - not only are rhinos being slaughtered, but the criminals have begun firing at the people protecting them.

Earlier this year, Raoul du Toit warned that Zimbabwe’s rhino poachers were not villagers desperate for food, but organized criminal gangs - people with “cars, cell phones, and expensive lawyers.”

And when poachers are apprehended, they are not punished.

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In yet another shocking example of the large-scale illegal wildlife trade throughout Asia, the frozen carcass of a baby tiger was found in the trunk of a taxi cab on its way to a buyer in Hanoi.

It was reported that two men were arrested for attempting to transport the baby tiger carcass - along with the bones of at least two tigers - and that the “case showed the possibility of larger-scale tiger trafficking in the country.” The baby tiger was between four and five months old.

Driven by the demand in long-standing illegal wildlife markets throughout Asia, the tiger population in Vietnam is nearly gone. It is estimated that fewer than 200 tigers remain in the Truong Son Mountain Range.

Tigers are often hunted by locals living in poverty in Truong Son areas. In major cities, where illegal wildlife trade is active, tiger parts, meat, skin, and bones command high prices.

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Inside Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam, a rare subspecies of the critically endangered Javan Rhino still survives. Once thought to be extinct, it is estimated that there are only 3 - 5 of these delicate creatures left in the world. The Cat Tien rhinos have endured ruthless slaughter for their horns and annihilation of their habitat. Now there is yet another threat to their tenuous chances of continued survival.

Plans to build a power plant at the edge of the rhinos’ habitat have been approved by the Lam Dong administration. The plant’s dam will be slightly less than two miles from the Javan Rhino reserve. An estimated 1,000 tons of explosives will be used for clearing forested areas near the reserve. Construction is expected to take three years. And even clean energy - such as wind turbines - can have adverse affects on surrounding wildlife (and humans), if not properly sited.

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In early December 2004, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo “ordered the military and police to crack down on illegal logging, after flash floods and landslides, triggered by rampant deforestation, killed nearly 340 people,” according to news reports. Fifteen years earlier, in 1989, the government of Thailand announced a nationwide ban on tree cutting following severe flooding and the heavy loss of life in landslides. And in August 1998, following several weeks of record flooding in the Yangtze River basin and a staggering $30 billion worth of damage, the Chinese government banned all tree cutting in the upper reaches of the basin. Each of these governments had belatedly learned a costly lesson, namely that services provided by forests, such as flood control, may be far more valuable to society than the lumber in those forests.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the earth’s forested area was estimated at 5 billion hectares. Since then it has shrunk to just under 4 billion hectares, with the remaining forests rather evenly divided between tropical and subtropical forests in developing countries and temperate/boreal forests in industrial countries. Since 1990, the developing world has lost some 13 million hectares of forest a year. This loss of about 3 percent each decade is an area roughly the size of Greece. Meanwhile, the industrial world is actually gaining an estimated 5.6 million hectares of forestland each year, principally from abandoned cropland returning to forests on its own and from the spread of commercial forestry plantations. Thus, net forest loss worldwide exceeds 7 million hectares per year.

Unfortunately, even these official data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) do not reflect the gravity of the situation. For example, tropical forests that are clearcut or burned off rarely recover. They simply become wasteland or at best scrub forest, yet they still may be counted as “forest” in official forestry numbers. Plantations, too, count as forest area, yet they also are a far cry from the old-growth forest they sometimes replace.

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Due to its many benefits, bamboo has been touted as an environmental miracle crop. It’s a significant carbon sink, it grows fast, is more termite-resistant than timber, and can be used for everything from food to clothing material to scaffolding for building construction.

But are environmentalists being bamboozled? Despite its benefits, increased bamboo production could raise a lot of concerns too.

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Vietnam faces a stark choice. Its farmlands are shrinking as government policy to achieve ‘industrialised nation’ status by 2020 continues. But national food security has always been a focus of Vietnamese political and cultural life. How is it to balance these two competing aims. One answer is through the use of atomic energy.

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The Tibetan plateau has an average height of 14,000 feet above sea level. It is also home to over ten thousand glaciers. This gargantuan network of ice feeds some of the longest rivers in the world: Salween (2820 km) Mekong (4880 km) Yellow (3180 km) Yangtze (6380 km) Indus (3180 km) and Brahmaputra (2900 km).

Seasonal glacial melting provides vast quantities of water to these rivers and their watersheds. It is critical to all life there. An Ohio State University researcher named Lonnie Thompson, who has studied the region, is very concerned global warming could cause the glaciers to shrink below levels that currently support the local ecosystems, and human communities.

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Leather manufacturer ISA Tan Tec will spend $8.7 million on its new, Vietnam-based tannery aimed at producing leather using fewer resources than industry standards. The German/Chinese company was founded by CEO Thomas Schneider, who said that the demand from its clients for ecologically friendly leather is increasing rapidly. The Ho Chi Minh City location, set to open in mid-2009, will have 280 employees churning out two million square meters of leather a year, supplying companies including Timberland, Rockport, New Balance, Simple and Hush Puppies.

The Vietnam facility will employ many of the same resource-saving and energy-cutting procedures in place at its tannery in Guangzhou, China. At that location, in a span of 18 months, the company reduced electricity used for retanning by 76 percent and reduced heavy oil use by 28 percent.

The company’s overall process for making its Low Impact To the Environment, or LITE, leather uses 30 percent less energy and 50 percent less water, and emits 35 percent less carbon dioxide, than industry standards derived from the British Leather Technology Center. The company’s LITE concept calls for continuous monitoring of the company’s energy and water use. The amount of water used is recorded daily and the company analyzes it for where they can make reductions.

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http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2008/Update76.htm

Standing before the United Nations General Assembly in October 1987, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives, made an appeal representing “an endangered nation.” That year for the first time, “unusual high waves” in the Indian Ocean inundated a quarter of the urban area on the capital island of Male’, flooded farms, and washed away reclaimed land. Gayoom cited scientific evidence that human activities were releasing greenhouse gases that warm the planet, ultimately raising global sea level as glaciers melt and warmer water expands. The trouble extended beyond small islands; studies showed that rising seas would wreak havoc on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Netherlands, and the river deltas of Egypt and Bangladesh.

Fast-forward through two decades of swelling seas and more powerful storms and the call has moved from the need to study global warming to the necessity of dramatic action to stabilize climate. With small island nations in peril, these days President Gayoom evokes the vision of a United Nations where “name plates are gone; seats are empty.” He does not speak alone: this fall, some 50 countries, including a number of small island nations along with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the European Union, are planning to put a resolution before the U.N. General Assembly requesting that the U.N. Security Council address “the threat posed by climate change to international peace and security.” As Ambassador Stuart Beck of Palau has asked, “Would any nation facing an invading army not do the same?”

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