Rainforest Woes

The Ugandan government is attempting to give 17,500 acres of rainforest the axe. Literally. They intend to revoke the protected status of a portion of the Mabira Forest and give the land to a sugar cane company for clearing. Only about 15% of Uganda's land is still forested and approximately 2% of those forests are lost each year to clearing for farming and cattle. The forests mean life to the locals, providing firewood, charcoal, herbal medicine, edible fruits and timber. A recent study has shown that nine species of wildlife found only in the Mabira Forest, including a shrub used to treat malaria, would be in danger of extinction.

The rainforest is already disappearing at an alarming rate without government's actually offering up protected areas for deforestation. If only 15% of the entire country is forested, there shouldn't there be plenty of places that are already cleared and suitable for sugar cane?

Green Rebuilding Efforts

A rebuilding project in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward is focusing on green techniques. Global Green USA is the environmental group building the project, which is being largely funded by the Home Depot Foundation. The project consists of five shotgun style homes and an 18-unit housing complex that will utilize 40% less energy than traditional buildings. Project sponsors and supporters hope that this can be seen as a template for other rebuilding efforts.

Living Rivers

You can't fight Mother Nature. For years, people have tried to make nature conform to their needs and desires; often times with disasterous consequences. Nowhere is this mindset more evident than in rivers and streams. People have moved, straightened, widened, deepened and bound waterways for a multitude of reasons, but to prevent flooding has always been near the top of the list. They seem to forget that floodplains were aptly named because rivers need to flood.

Rivers are a living, dynamic system to which flooding is like breath. The rivers may not take a breath as often as we humans do, but without it they too will certainly choke. Flooding releases sediment to the floodplains that would otherwise fill river beds. Flooding also provides nutrients to floodplain soils and replenishes wetlands. A healthy river is considered to be in a state of dynamic stability. It lives in a fairly definable corridor, within which meanders migrate, cutoff and reform as water and sediment are carried downstream.

I wish more people appreciated the natural beauty of a river. From headwaters to outlet, it maintains a delicate balance of flow and sediment and nourishes so many adjacent habitats. The studies of river hydraulics and geomorphology have allowed us to begin to understand the complex interactions of this system. Great researchers in this field, such as Luna B. Leopold and Dave Rosgen, have brought us closer to the goal of living with rivers instead of against them.

Trees Have Monetary Value

Some people have always known that trees have value, but now a dollar value has been put on them.

Now, for the first time, the [New York City] Parks Department can actually translate the value of the city’s trees into real dollars and cents. And as expected, it’s a big number.

Step 1 was a tree census, a two-year process that sent more than 1,000 volunteers to count every tree on every street in the [New York] city. The census results were then fed into a computer program that spit out a dollar value for each of the 592,130 trees counted, a figure that does not include the roughly 4.5 million trees in parks and on private land.

The program, called Stratum, was developed by researchers at the University of California at Davis and the United States Forest Service. It takes into account several factors, including a tree’s impact on local property values, its contribution to cleaning the air by absorbing carbon dioxide, and how much its shade helps reduce energy consumption.

Factoring in the costs associated with planting and upkeep, New York City’s street trees provide an annual benefit of about $122 million, according to the Parks Department. The study concludes that New York receives $5.60 in benefits for every dollar spent on trees.

Considering the enhanced root system of EMI trees absorbs 18x more carbon dioxide than other trees, I'd like to see their benefit / cost ratio.

EMI Sycamore Trees Ready for Planting

Amazon Versus Chevron

Approximately 30,000 Amazonian Indians and settlers are suing Chevron Corp. for failing to clean up billions of gallons of wastewater in Ecuador. Texaco Petroleum Co., which merged with Chevron in 2001, spent 30 years drilling for oil and dumping more than 18 billion gallons of oily wastewater in the rainforest.

The Indians are claiming that the oil company caused 30 times more damage than the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for the lands are now too oily to cultivate and cancer rates are elevated. They claim that when Texaco ceased drilling operations, their cleanup consisted of simply dumping dirt over contaminated soil and ponds. Chevron's lawyers claim that all cleanup efforts complied with Ecuadorean environmental laws.

The case is currently being heard in an Ecuadorean court after 10 years of failure to get Big Oil in a US court. Chevron has flat refused to settle out of court and a decision is not expected before next year.

Longleaf Pine Restoration

The US Army Corps of Engineers at Allatoona Lake has revived a natural ecosystem that was once native to the land surrounding the lake. Due to farming on the land prior to creation of the lake, the Longleaf pine ecosystem was transformed to a forest of more aggressive Loblolly and Virginia pines. Longleaf pine offers more benefits to wildlife and, in fact, offers such diversity that it serves as host to unique communities of plants and wildlife. Corps of Engineers personnel removed the competing pines and recreated the natural ecosystem through replanting and emulating wildfire. This undertaking took place on approximately 60 acres of the Allatoona Wildlife Management Area in Cherokee County near the border of Bartow County and has been so successful that the restoration will be expanded to almost 350 acres.


While this project is great for Allatoona Lake, it will hardly make a dent in the millions of acres of longleaf pine ecosystem that have been lost in the last 50 years. Many other parks and refuges are also planning longleaf pine restorations.

Earth Day 2007

Happy Earth Day!

Did you do anything green today?

Fly Green

Delta Airlines joins the numerous companies that are going green. Delta's Force for Global Good program allows customers to add a donation to any ticket purchase that will fund tree planting projects in managed forests around the world to offset carbon emissions. 100 percent of donations will be disbursed to the Conservation Fund's Carbon Sequestration Program. To date, the Conservation Fund has restored 30,000 acres with 9 million trees.

Shrinking Ice, Shrinking Hunting Grounds

Native villagers in northern Canada and the Arctic are receiving visitors they've never seen before. Warmer temperatures and warmer waters have sent animals such as finches, robins and dolphins into places where they have no name. This warmer atmosphere has also meant ice freezes later and thinner, forcing villagers to travel further to hunting grounds they once accessed by ice.

Hunting has also become more dangerous. Less snow has made it difficult to build igloos for shelter and thinning ice has claimed the lives of seasoned hunters. Knowledge that has been passed down for thousands of years about how to survive in these harsh conditions is no longer functional. Many elders refuse to even go out on the ice.

While Americans are responsible for one-fourth of the emissions that scientists attribute to global warming, these simple people who lived off the land for generations are feeling the affects. Everyone needs to do their part to reverse the effects of global warming.

Wind Power

Durango, Colorado city government has signed a contract to convert from 10% to 100% wind-generated power. Supplying energy from wind turbines will come at a yearly additional cost, which should be offset by energy efficiency credits and customers' agreement to pay an additional $1.25 per 100 kilowatt-hours per month.

Valley Park Restoration

Valley Park, Missouri

This narrow, high velocity stream was experiencing severe erosion. Portions of the bank were lined with riprap for protection.

Other portions of the bank were lined with sandbags filled with air-pruned grasses interspersed with air-pruned trees. The sandbags hold soils in place long enough for the grass and tree root systems to become established. Then, air-pruned root systems hold soils in place and the grasses and trees provide roughness which dissipate energy.

Bank roughness from grasses and trees dissipates energy, which slows velocities and allows sediments to drop out of flow building banks instead of eroding them.

Lights Out for Change

Saturday night was the night that the lights went out in Sydney. At 7:30, homes, businesses and even famous skyline landmarks like the Sydney Opera House went dark for one hour to raise awareness about global warming and the steps that can be taken to help. Australia, with it's 21 million residents, is ranked the world's number 1 greenhouse gas emitter per capita.

Earth Hour was organized by environmentalists as the kick off to a campaign asking Sydney residents to turn off lights, computers and other electrical equipment when not in use which could reduce gas emissions by 5% a year. Scientists estimate that, without change, temperatures in Australia could rise 6.7 degrees by the year 2080, bringing more of the catastrophic weather conditions that have plagued the world in the last decades.

Sydney is not the first city to put the lights out for change. Paris, Rome and Athens have held similar conservation initiatives.

Amphibian Ark

A fungus threatens the world's amphibian populations. The fungus originated in Africa and has been spread around the world by the African clawed frog. Numerous amphibian species from Australia to Costa Rica have already become extinct and some in the US are close. 85% of the mountain yellow-legged frog populations in Yosemite National Park are infected.

Amphibians have been found to produce chemicals that serve biomedical purposes such as pain relievers and potential uses in AIDS prevention.

The group, Amphibian Ark, is trying to prevent the world's ponds and lakes from becoming silent by having zoos, botanical gardens and aquariums take in 500 endangered amphibians to protect them from the fungus. Once the fungus can be eradicated, these amphibians would be reintroduced into the wild.

Lose Carbon, Win Cash

Sir Richard Branson, chairman of the Virgin Group, announced the Virgin Earth Challenge, a $25 million dollar prize to anyone who can develop a method to extract one billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. The world's leading climate scientists have warned that global warming is getting worse, and emissions of carbon dioxide are a major cause.

Contest entries will be judged by Branson, former Vice President Al Gore and numerous climate experts. The contest will stand for 5 years, but if no winner is identified, the contest may be extended. The winner's method must remove one billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for 10 years. $5 million will be awarded at the start and the remaining $20 million at the end of the 10 year period.

The Earth cannot wait forever for a solution to global warming. "We need everybody capable of discovering an answer to put their minds to it today," said Branson.

Longleaf Pine

200 years ago, longleaf pine trees covered 30 to 60 million acres of the southeastern United States Coastal Plains. Today, due to logging and development, less than 5% of those forests remain. Many native species, such as gopher tortoises, Florida mice, gopher frogs and eastern diamond-back rattlesnakes, rely on the longleaf pine ecosystem for survival and the red-cockaded woodpeckers and indigo snakes are now endangered due to the dramatic decline in this habitat.

Restoration of the longleaf pine ecosystem is a major effort with many difficulties. The largest difficulty with restoring longleaf pines is the extended time the plant spends in the grass stage. During the first 3 - 15 years, depending on competition, these plants expend almost all energy growing a long taproot and none on stem elongation. In this stage, the tree stem is only about 2-3" long and looks like a small stand of grass.

EMI is currently looking into procuring some longleaf pine seeds on which to test the air-pruning process. We have every reason to believe that this species will perform to the same standards as other EMI plants, meaning 3-5' of growth in the first seven months. This kind of growth rate could be a huge advantage for restoration projects. Planting a seedling at 3-5' would place the plant out of reach of most predators as well as above the burn height that threatens these trees during wild fires. Other basic air-pruning advantages would also apply; flood and drought resistance, early fruiting, high survivability and an earlier return of habitat for native wildlife.

Plant a Tree for Me

After finding an article that said Michael Dell spends about 2 hours a day reading and answering e-mails, I sent him a message about EMIP and the advantages to using air-pruned plants for their Plant a Tree for Me program. I never expected my message to be read much less to get a response, but I had to eat my words. Mr. Dell forwarded my e-mail to Dell's head of world wide Sustainability initiatives. The gentleman e-mailed me saying he found EMIP intriguing and was sending our information to Carbonfund.org and The Conservation Fund, the two groups responsible for planting and sustaining the trees.

Getting involved with a nationwide restoration program such as this could be just the endorsement and advertisement that EMIP and air-pruning need. It's a very exciting possibility.

Church and Science Join Forces Over Global Warming

Leading scientists and evangelical Christian leaders are joining forces to fight global warming despite their historic differences concerning the creation of the Earth. They have agreed that no matter how the Earth was created, "...the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for today,” said Rich Cizik, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals. The two groups intend to argue that the threat to life is great and an immediate response is needed.

Dell's Environmental Challenge

Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Inc., announced a new program on Tuesday. The "Plant a Tree for Me" campaign allows customers to allocate $2 per laptop purchase and $6 per desktop purchase toward planting trees around the world. The trees will be planted in protected areas by environmental groups such as The Conservation Fund. "We're the first global technology company to offset emissions with the electricity of their computers," Dell said.

Large corporations are coming to realize the need for environmental restoration and the support that these efforts are getting from the public. Enterprise Rent-a-Car has also recently begun a tree planting campaign, 50 Million Trees, where 50 million trees will be planted on restoration sites over the next 50 years.

People seem to finally be acknowledging the problems that global warming is causing in our world and trying to do something about it. Planting trees is becoming increasingly popular because trees do so much for the environment. If all of these programs were planting EMIP trees, they would be producing more oxygen, absorbing more carbon dioxide (the most abundant greenhouse gas) and absorbing more nitrogen, phosphorus and other contaminants. Not to mention that EMIP trees grow faster, increasing survival rates and producing habitat, and fruit sooner, producing more food for wildlife and an increased chance of natural reproduction.

Alaska Drilling Ban Lifted

Tuesday, President Bush lifted a drilling ban that has prevented oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay since the tragic Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. This will open 5.6 million acres of marine habitat and prime fisheries to potential drilling. Leases may be made available as early as 2010 if environmental reviews and public comment do not reverse the decision.

The decision has received mixed reactions. Many see it as an opportunity to create jobs and enhance the local economy which is dominated by fishing. Environmentalists and local fishermen worry about potential damage to the endangered Right Whale habitat and wild salmon runs.

A drilling ban on 8.2 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico was lifted by Congress as one of its last acts of 2006.

Photos

Florida Landscapes

50 Million Trees in 50 Years

To celebrate it's 50th anniversary, Enterprise Rent-a-Car has partnered with the National Arbor Day Foundation to plant 50 million trees over 50 years. Each year, several restoration sites will be identified and the US Forest Service will plant and maintain a total of one million trees. Six projects were identified for restoration in 2006 from British Columbia to Alabama.

New projects for 2007 will be identified in April, giving me 4 months to convince the people in charge of the project that using EMIP trees will increase the success and effectiveness of their restorations.

Can Hurricanes Build Wetlands?

Most studies claim that hurricanes destroy wetlands, but some researchers have claimed that hurricanes Katrina and Rita dropped 130 million tons of sediment along the Louisiana Coast. If these estimates are correct, that would be 200 times the amount the river delivered before the levees prevented overflow. Wetlands need regular sediment deposits to stay healthy, but the origin of these deposits measured after the 2005 hurricane season remains unknown. The simple rearrangement of sediments from one wetland area to another is not exactly a viable restoration method.

Louisiana's coastal wetlands provide a thriving seafood industry, a percentage of the US oil and gas supply and protection to inland areas from storm surges. Despite the numerous benefits that these wetlands provide, they are continuously shrinking. Congress is considering numerous bills involving restoration efforts like diverting water from the Mississippi River and replanting cypress and other trees. Using EMIP trees for these projects would increase the chances of restoration success as air-pruned trees have a higher tolerance to flooding and produce seeds sooner for natural regeneration.

Citrus Leaves a Butterfly Feast

The caterpillar of the lime swallowtail butterfly can strip a citrus tree of every leaf. The insect, originating in Asia, has spread as far as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Puerto Rico and agricultural experts worry that the pest could soon be introduced to the US. An infestation in the Dominican Republic destroyed 3% of a companies nursery stock by stripping the trees down to branches. The orchards' main defense is to simply pick any leaves containing butterfly eggs.

Florida's 9 billion dollar citrus industry is already under stress from the blight. I believe the current remedy for the blight in Florida is to cut down all trees within a 1200' radius of the infected tree. I believe EarthMark could come up with a better remedy. Using the rootstock from our superior trees and a fertilizer called VitaProduct, we could create a blight resistant tree.

The Everglades Pipeline

A pipeline is an interesting restoration idea for the Everglades. The Corps is contemplating burying a 30+ mile pipeline from lake Okeechobee to Miami-Dade County so lakewater can be filtered through the marshes and recharge the groundwater. They wouldn't even have to disturb the environment to bury the pipe as an existing canal is scheduled to be filled providing a perfect trench.

The water in Lake Okeechobee has become polluted from surrounding development with phosphorus, nitrogen and many other undesirables which cannot wind up in the county's drinking water. There is obviously still a lot of study to be done, but this sounds like a restoration project that just might hold water. And, if they used EMI plants in the marshes and wetlands to remove more pollutants, it might actually be clean water.

Tips to Reduce Global Warming

Scientists say that global warming and a return of El Nino may make ’07 the hottest year ever. El Nino will not be as strong as it was in ’98, the current record hot spell, but carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels are continuing to rise creating their own warming effect. Last year, scientists reported the 41 square mile Ayles Ice Shelf, broke free from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic just 500 miles south of the North Pole. These shelves are made of 3000 year old ice and are in danger of disappearing. The five remaining shelves are currently 90% smaller than they were upon discovery 100 years ago and one has cracked in half, threatening to join Ayles as a potential hazard to ships.

10 Tips to Reduce Global Warming

1) Plant a tree, preferably an EMIP tree as they absorb more carbon dioxide
2) Reduce, reuse and recycle
3) Use less heat and air conditioning
4) Replace regular light bulbs with compact florescent light bulbs
5) Drive less and drive smart
6) Buy energy-efficient products
7) Use less hot water
8) Use the “off” switch
9) Get a report card from your utility company
10) Encourage others to conserve

Use It 'til It's Gone - A Destructive Strategy for Resources

"The water hasn't run out, and we are going to keep going until there isn't any more. That's just the way you farm."

That is an actual quote from an Idaho farmer furious over US Fish and Wildlife Service attempts to list a miniscule, warm water snail on the endangered species list because farm irrigation was drawing down the water table and destroying the snail’s habitat. The Bruneau hot springsnail is only found in the desert canyons of Idaho where hot springs abound, or used to. For decades researchers have recorded a steady drop in the aquifer and fewer hot springs are found every year. Many rocks that were once wet, perfect habitat for the algae eating snails, are now dry. Over the last ten years a furious battle has gone on between the US Fish and Wildlife Service, local farmers and politicians in which the snail has been listed, deleted and then restored to the endangered species list. The Fish and Wildlife Service sees the snails as an indicator of a very big problem. The farmers see them as a few specks on a rock in the way of their goals.

Use it ‘til it’s gone. What do they do when the aquifer is completely depleted? Is that when they look for alternate methods of irrigation? Or will they simply move on to the next farm, leaving behind dry creek beds devoid of life and barren fields with no moisture or nutrients to support trees or plants? The Fish and Wildlife Service is not simply trying to save a snail; they’re trying to save an ecosystem. Some people just refuse to see how interconnected things are in nature and will not admit that their actions effect more than the little world in which they live.

Use it ‘til it’s gone. That seems to sum up so many people’s attitude toward any resource be it water or coal or trees. Even renewable resources are only renewable if people put forth some effort. Trees must be replanted and nurtured or face extinction with current logging rates. People have got to realize that when these things are gone, they’re gone and that is not the time to try to decide how we’re going to live without them.

The Disappearing Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest is the most diverse ecosystem in the world covering nearly 60 percent of Brazil. It contains 1/5 of the world's fresh water and about 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species. In the last 40 years, 20 percent of this remarkable forest has been cut down and an estimated additional 20 percent will disappear in the next 2 decades.

The climate changes caused by global warming also threaten to destroy this vast ecosystem. Researchers have outlined a worst case scenario in which global warming will raise temperatures and reduce rainfall. As the rainforest is cut down, the system loses even more rainfall due to the loss of moisture released to the atmosphere. As temperatures rise and conditions become drier, the trees will dry out and die replacing the rainforest with a grassy savannah.

Between climate changes from global warming, slash and burn techniques for farming and illegal logging, the rainforest is in imminent danger of disappearing forever. This rich environment contains thousands of plants with unknown benefits to human health, provides 20% of the world's oxygen and reduces the world's carbon dioxide. Imagine what we lose if we lose the rainforest. Imagine what we could save by using EMI trees to replant what has been lost. Their accelerated growth would make it feasible to reforest and their increased ability to sequestor carbon would help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released by logging.

National Geographic Photos by Alex Webb

Rainforest areas cleared and burned for farming and grazing (top).

Illegal logging in the Amazon (bottom).

Investing in the Environment

Reading through Business 2.0 the other day, I saw article after article about internet businesses. Poeople and companies are investing, and making, millions of dollars with the internet. Obviously, ebusiness is where the interest is and everyone is looking for the next eBay, MySpace or Google. But the internet can't do everything, or at least I have yet to figure out how to use it to replant the rainforest.

Is there anyone out there interested in investing in the environment? Are any of the venture capital companies out there looking for a company to invest in that could make a difference? If anyone knows of any, please let me know.