Forests: An Endangered Resource

[kassy]

Why fruit-eating birds are critical to restoring our dying forests

When birds are restricted, they are not able to spread seeds. This brings a serious decline in the amount of carbon a forest recovers.


A study on the Atlantic Forest region in Brazil reveals that free movement of fruit-eating birds is crucial for restoring tropical forests.

The authors of the study claim that seed dispersal by birds plays a significant role in natural plant regeneration and carbon sequestration, affecting about 70 to 90 percent of tree species.

“Fruit-eating birds such as the Red-Legged Honeycreeper, Palm Tanager, or the Rufous-Bellied Thrush play a vital role in forest ecosystems by consuming, excreting, and spreading seeds as they move throughout a forested landscape,” the researchers note.

However, fragmented landscapes formed within forests because of deforestation, agriculture, poaching, and other human activities restrict the movement of wild birds, reducing their carbon recovery potential to a large extent.

The fragmentation of forests is a big problem. The Atlantic Forest is one of the world’s biggest biodiversity hotspots. It is home to nearly seven percent of all plant species and five percent of all vertebrate species on Earth.

However, it is also one of the most fragmented tropical forests. About 88 percent of its vegetation is lost, and now 12 percent of the original forest is left. The remaining forest is a patchwork of scattered micro-forests, many of which are too far apart from each other to support bird movement.

...


They found that in highly fragmented areas where wild tropical birds can’t move freely, the carbon recovery potential dips by up to a staggering 38 percent. It means that forests in such areas can recover only 62 percent of the sequestered carbon lost due to deforestation, wildfire, and other events causing damage to vegetation and biodiversity.

“We have always known that birds are essential, but it is remarkable to discover the scale of those effects. If we can recover the complexity of life within these forests, their carbon storage potential would increase significantly,” Thomas Crowther, senior study author and a professor of Ecology at ETH Zurich, said.

The data from the study also suggest that two forested areas within the large forest shouldn’t be located more than 133 meters (436 feet) away from each other. Otherwise, birds will find it difficult to move across the forests, adversely affecting seed dispersal and pollination activities. This entails that effective forest regeneration must necessarily also include plating new fruit trees to bridge the gaps between fragmented forests.

Interestingly, the size of birds and the seeds they disperse also affect the carbon recovery in forests. For instance, large birds like Toco toucans disperse seeds from trees that have greater carbon storage potential.
However, the large birds can’t help much with forest recovery in highly fragmented landscapes because they don’t fly there. Smaller birds, on the other side, can effectively distribute seeds in fragmented areas but they pick seeds from trees with less carbon storage potential.

This also means that it is the fruit-eating birds that have the most potential for rain forest regeneration.

...

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/fruit-eating-birds-forest-restoration/

[kassy]

Gone in a puff of smoke: 52,000 sq km of ‘long unburnt’ Australian habitat has vanished in 40 years

Landscapes that have escaped fire for decades or centuries tend to harbour vital structures for wildlife, such as tree hollows and large logs. But these “long unburnt” habitats can be eliminated by a single blaze.

The pattern of fire most commonly experienced within an ecosystem is known as the fire regime. This includes aspects such as fire frequency, season, intensity, size and shape.

Fire regimes are changing across the globe, stoked by climate and land-use change. Recent megafires in Australia, Brazil, Canada and United States epitomise the dire consequences of shifting fire regimes for humanity and biodiversity alike.

We wanted to find out how Australian fire regimes are changing and what this means for biodiversity.

In our new research, we analysed the past four decades of fires across southern Australia. We found fires are becoming more frequent in many of the areas most crucial for protecting threatened wildlife. Long unburnt habitat is disappearing faster than ever.

To address this gap, we compiled maps of bushfires and prescribed burns in southern Australia from 1980 to 2021.

We studied how fire activity has changed across 415 Australian conservation reserves and state forests (‘reserves’ hereafter), a total of 21.5 million hectares. We also studied fire activity within the ranges of 129 fire-threatened species, spanning birds, mammals, reptiles, frogs and invertebrates.

We focused on New South Wales, the Australia Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia because these states and territories have the most complete fire records.

More fire putting wildlife at risk
We found areas of long unburnt vegetation (30 years or more without fire) are shrinking. Meanwhile, areas of recently burnt vegetation (5 years or less since the most recent fire) are growing. And fires are burning more frequently.

On average, the percentage of long unburnt vegetation within reserves declined from 61% to 36% over the four decades we studied. We estimate the total area of long unburnt vegetation decreased by about 52,000 square kilometres, from about 132,000 sq km in 1980 to about 80,000 sq km in 2021. That’s an area almost as large as Tasmania.

At the same time, the mean amount of recently burnt vegetation increased from 20% to 35%. Going from about 42,000 sq km to about 64,000 sq km in total, which is an increase of 22,000 square kilometres.

And the average number of times a reserve burnt within 20 years increased by almost a third.

While the extent of unburnt vegetation has been declining since 1980, increases in fire frequency and the extent of recently burnt vegetation were mainly driven by the record-breaking 2019–20 fire season.

and more:
https://theconversation.com/gone-in-a-puff-of-smoke-52-000-sq-km-of-long-unburnt-australian-habitat-has-vanished-in-40-years-226810

[kassy]

Portugal’s cork forests are major carbon sinks - but they face threats from climate change

Portugal is the world’s leading producer of cork. In 2023, cork exports achieved a record value of €1.2 billion, 75 percent of which came from cork stoppers, according to APCOR, the Portuguese association of cork producers.

...
About 20 years ago, significant concerns emerged that cork might lose market share to synthetic alternatives, which were less expensive and carried no risk of spoiling the wine with 'cork taint'.

However, the industry has succeeded in removing those substances that could harm the wine, including the molecule trichloroanisole (TCA), responsible for the cork taint. Nowadays, cork has a competitive edge over materials like plastic due to its sustainable properties.

"A cork stopper captures almost 400g of CO2. A single cork can offset all the emissions from producing a glass bottle," says António Rios de Amorim, CEO of Amorim. He anticipates an expansion in wine production, which underscores the need to plant more cork oaks - a move that would also aid Portugal's efforts to combat climate change.

Cork is harvested by removing the bark from cork oaks every nine years, after which it slowly regenerates. "We are the only forestry industry where the trees are not cut. Cork oaks, which can live for 150 to 200 years, are a carbon sink. For each kilogram of cork produced, the tree captures 73 kg of CO2," explains António.

Portugal has over 720,000 hectares of cork oaks, which represent a third of the existing forests of this species native to the Mediterranean region. Spain has a high share of forests, while the rest are found in Northern African countries, France and Italy.

Cork forests are threatened by global warming
However, rising temperatures threaten the survival of these trees.

Careful forest management mitigates the risk of wildfires. "These agroforestry systems are managed in such a way that, with small shrubs and patchy areas where herbs and shrubs grow alongside livestock, the amount of vegetation that can burn is significantly reduced," explains Conceição de Silva, secretary general of the Union of Mediterranean Forests, which represents forest landowners in Portugal.

But extreme heat brings other dangers too.

"Plagues and diseases benefit from climate change. They are fighting back very strongly, and there are currently no solutions to diminish these threats. In some areas, trees are dying."

Some landowners have implemented irrigation systems in new plantations to cope with prolonged summer droughts. "Due to climate change, you might plant 400 trees per hectare, and after the first summer, if you don't irrigate, you might only have 100 trees or fewer left," she concludes.

The cork industry faces a lack of labour force
Climate change also affects the cork harvesting season, making it shorter and hotter. Fábio Mendes learned to harvest cork from his father; he is one of the few young harvesters in Coruche, a town 80 km away from Lisbon, known as Portugal’s cork capital.

This craft, which pays around €120 per day, requires skilled expertise because errors can prevent the tree from producing new cork. The industry is struggling with a shortage of harvesters. "If we don’t teach some young people how to harvest cork, it will be more difficult to find the right people for this job," says Fábio.

...

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/portugal-cork-forests-major-carbon-050038034.html

[kassy]

Oil palm plantations are driving massive downstream impact to watershed

The global demand for palm oil -- the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, in everything from instant noodles to lipstick -- is driving worldwide tropical deforestation. While many studies have shown the loss of biodiversity when rainforests are converted to oil palm plantations, researchers at the University of Massachusetts of Amherst are the first to show far-reaching and wide-ranging disturbances to the watersheds in which such plantations occur. Because many Indigenous peoples rely on water downstream from the plantations for their daily needs, the marked decrease in water quality has the potential to exacerbate public health issues in Indigenous communities. The study was published recently in Science of the Total Environment.

To conduct their research, lead author Briantama Asmara, who completed this work as part of his graduate studies at UMass Amherst, and senior author Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst, focused on the Kais River watershed of West Papua, the western half of New Guinea's island, an area of more than 1,000 square miles. Approximately one-quarter of the watershed has been turned into oil palm plantations. The watershed is also one of the oldest continually inhabited homes for different groups of Indigenous Papuans.

"The Kais River watershed, like many of the places where oil palm plantations are situated, is very remote and not particularly well studied," says Randhir.

Asmara adds that, "though the palm oil companies have lots of data about what pesticides they're using, the timing of their irrigation efforts, issues with runoff, etc., that information isn't making it out to the downstream communities. I conducted this research because I wanted to get better, publicly available data to the people whose lives are being most affected."

Asmara and Randhir relied on a powerful improved version of a watershed model known as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT+) that assesses how a region's hydrology responds to different land-use scenarios. They then fed the model data on the Kais watershed's land cover, soils, elevations, stream networks and climate data. The team modeled three different scenarios: the historical baseline, using land-cover data from 2010-15; an altered scenario, representing the contemporary landscape with its large oil-palm plantations as of 2015-21; and a future scenario, forecast from 2024 out to 2034, that assumed a steady rate of plantation expansion and which also included the next 10 years' worth of changing climate data.

Their findings show that the transition from tropical rainforest to contemporary oil-palm plantation has increased precipitation, runoff and soil moisture. Water quality has gotten dramatically worse since the plantations began: sedimentation has increased by 16.9%, nitrogen by 78.1% and phosphorus by 144%.

Though the worst effects on water quality will moderate somewhat according to the team's future scenarios -- the total tonnage of phosphorus carried by the watershed will decrease from 2,418 tons to 2,233.7 -- the water quality will remain far worse, and there will be more runoff than before the rain forest was converted to oil-palm plantation.

"The downstream Indigenous people who rely on the rivers and the streams in the watershed are highly vulnerable," says Randhir. "They are bearing all the environmental and public health costs, while the international palm oil companies are reaping the rewards."

...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240502153115.htm

[morganism]

(illegal logging profits are being laundered thru USA real estate by shell companies with cash. FinCen trying to get legislation passed, and more info on shell company ownership)

 How the US financial system helps shelter profits from environmental organized crime


Environmental organized crime is a massive global enterprise, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars each year — and the U.S. financial system appears to be helping conceal its profits.

Interpol estimates that environmental crime such as poaching and illegal logging generates up to $281 billion a year, making it the third-most lucrative illegal business worldwide.

Although the crimes themselves take place in various parts of the world, America’s financial system makes it ideal for parking and laundering the proceeds due to weaknesses in its anti-money-laundering infrastructure, according to Julia Yansura, program director for environmental crime and illicit finance at the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.

The illicit industries behind these crimes vary widely in scale and level of organization, from the smaller, less organized networks involved in the illegal wildlife trade to large, lucrative industries like illegal logging and illegal gold mining, the latter of which has financial links to other illicit economies like drug trafficking, terrorism and the funding of political corruption.

Money laundering through shell companies and other entities — which often involves moving money between countries — is a critical mechanism in these illicit economies, enabling criminal actors to disguise the illegal origins of their profits.

Susanne Breitkopf, a deputy director of the Environmental Investigation Agency’s Forest Campaign, points to a recent case in which a Florida-based couple smuggled timber harvested in Russia and manufactured as plywood in China, using several different shell companies that both obscured the true supply chain and evaded duties.

The U.S.’s anti-money-laundering infrastructure has two major weaknesses that enable this kind of activity, Yansura said.

Firstly, she said, the country requires “shockingly little” information to register a company, making it easy for actors involved in environmental crime to create a shell company or front. She pointed to research by the coalition indicating that most states require less information from a company than public libraries require to obtain library cards.

“So the problem is, we have all of these companies, we know very little about them, the government knows very little about them, and we don’t really know who owns them,” she said. “That creates a huge loophole that financial criminals and environmental criminals have been exploiting.”

She cited the case of Colombia’s second-biggest gold exporter, which allegedly laundered more than $1 billion through a series of shell companies to conceal that it had been illegally mined, exporting almost all of it to two Miami refineries.

In another case, former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo allegedly accepted more than $1 million in bribes from a Brazilian company involved in deforestation of the Amazon and then bought real estate in Maryland to hide the money.

“Obviously, this is hugely troubling. It’s troubling from an anti-money-laundering perspective. It’s troubling from a national security perspective, [and] it’s troubling to me from an environmental perspective,” Yansura said.

It also flies in the face of the Biden administration’s efforts to lead internationally on climate and environmental issues, she added.

“For all the U.S. is doing to help combat environmental crimes overseas, that’s a bit counterproductive if we’re not cleaning up our own side of the equation and making sure that these proceeds aren’t being laundered and used in the U.S. financial system,” she said.

Many of the country’s current efforts to counter transnational environmental organized crime flow through the 120-year-old Lacey Act, which bans commerce in illegally obtained or transported wildlife and plants.

Although the Lacey Act isn’t a cure-all, Breitkopf said it can be applied in combination with anti-corruption and anti-money-laundering statutes. This strategy, she added, makes interagency cooperation particularly important, to ensure all aspects of this “complex web of criminal activity” are covered.

One bureau within the Treasury Department — the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) — has a mandate within the department to “follow the money,” officials with FinCEN told The Hill. An official added that “we see [environmental crime] as a priority for the agency — we deal with every single type of crime but this is an especially important one.”

However, FinCEN officials noted that the bureau does not have its own criminal investigative authority, instead offering support to other agencies with investigative mandates like the Department of Fish and Wildlife Services and the Justice Department’s Natural Resources Division. “We take action to enable law enforcement to take action,” an official told The Hill.

In February testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki also said the agency’s budget, and attempts to cut it, limit its options in addressing environmental crimes.

“We will of course, meet our congressional obligations in terms of implementation. But what I worry about is actually our ability to dedicate resources to important things like” a recent FinCEN exchange relating to illegal wildlife trafficking, she told Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). “We have record requests to do more and more exchanges focused … around illegal wildlife trafficking [and] environmental crimes. These things, I think, will suffer for lack of funding.”

Yansura said that there are positive signs for efforts to address these loopholes as well, however. For example, she pointed to the move by FinCEN at the beginning of this year to implement a registry of the “beneficial owners” of companies, those who either directly, substantially control a company or own 25 percent of it or more.

“This is really good news. It’s good news from a transparency perspective, anti-money laundering, environmental, you name it,” she said. “From our perspective, we want to see that implementation continue.”

However, she added, real estate transactions can still pose a problem even with this increased transparency, because upfront payments with no mortgage can obscure the actors involved.

“We’ve seen cases where environmental criminals have taken advantage of this loophole to launder the proceeds of environmental crime into the U.S. economy,” she said.

Another step that would help address the problem, Breitkopf said, would be to add illegal deforestation to the predicate offenses covered by the federal money-laundering statute, “which would provide more tools for the authorities here.”

Legislation introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) in 2021 and 2023, the Fostering Overseas Rule of Law and Environmentally Sound Trade, or FOREST, Act, would add deforestation to the predicates, but it died in committee in 2021 and has yet to receive a vote in the Senate Finance Committee since its reintroduction in 2023.

If the step were taken, Breitkopf said, it would help crack down on conspirators in environmental crime organizations, and also “compel companies to trace their commodities back to the origin.”

“We need more financial transparency, but we also need supply chain transparency, and that includes beneficial ownership transparency,” she said. “All these crimes are a product of pervasive corruption, especially in the timber sector, and crimes thrive in the dark. In order to stop it, you need to bring it to light, and that means we need transparency.”

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4646784-how-the-us-financial-system-helps-shelter-profits-from-environmental-organized-crime/

[kassy]

Climate change is moving tree populations away from the soil fungi that sustain them

As our planet warms, many species are shifting to different locations as their historical habitats become inhospitable. Trees are no exception—many species' normal ranges are no longer conducive to their health, but their shift to new areas that could better sustain them has been lagging behind those of other plants and animals.

Now, scientists show that the reason for this lag might be found belowground. A study published in PNAS shows that trees, especially those in the far north, may be relocating to soils that don't have the fungal life to support them.

Most plants form belowground partnerships with mycorrhizal fungi, microscopic, filamentous fungi that grow in the soil and connect with plant roots to supply plants with critical nutrients in exchange for carbon. Most large coniferous trees in northern latitudes form relationships with a kind of mycorrhizal fungi called ectomycorrhizal fungi.

"As we examined the future for these symbiotic relationships, we found that 35% of partnerships between trees and fungi that interact with the tree roots would be negatively impacted by climate change," says lead author Michael Van Nuland, a fungal ecologist at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN).

The trees most at risk of this climate mismatch in North America are those in the pine family, find the authors. Areas of particular concern are the edges of species ranges where trees often face the harshest conditions. Here, the authors discovered that trees with higher survival rate in these locations have more diverse mycorrhizal fungi, a sign that these symbioses may be critical for helping trees withstand the effects of climate change.

"Ectomycorrhizal fungi have a different relationship to climate than ectomycorrhizal trees do," says co-author Clara Qin, a data scientist at SPUN. "We are finding evidence that the trees have to answer for these differences."

The study sheds light on how climate change might be affecting symbioses. "While we expect climate-driven migrations to be limited by abiotic factors like the availability of space at higher latitudes and elevations, we don't usually account for biotic limitations like the availability of symbiotic partners," says Qin.

"It's absolutely vital that we continue to work to understand how climate change is affecting mycorrhizal symbioses," says Van Nuland. "These relationships underpin all life on Earth—it's critical that we understand and protect them."

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-climate-tree-populations-soil-fungi.html

[kassy]

Did B.C. keep its old-growth forest promises?

It’s been four years since a pair of professional foresters hired by the BC NDP government urged the province to take a radically new approach to old-growth forests.

In their strategic review, Garry Merkel and Al Gorley said the government should manage B.C.’s old forests as ecosystems rather than a source of timber. They also called for an immediate deferral of logging in old-growth forests in B.C. at risk of irreversible biodiversity loss.

The report was released as protesters began to flock to Fairy Creek, a largely intact old-growth valley on southwest Vancouver Island, setting the stage for the largest civil disobedience action in Canadian history. Following the arrest of more than 1,100 people, and at the request of Pacheedaht First Nation, the B.C. government deferred just over 1,180 hectares of Fairy Creek old-growth forest from logging.

The Fairy Creek deferrals are included in more than 2.4 million hectares of old-growth forest “temporarily deferred from development” in collaboration with First Nations and industry, according to a May 21 old-growth “update” from the government.

...

Against this backdrop, the old-growth update says the government has made “significant progress” on implementing 14 recommendations made in the foresters’ review of old-growth strategy. Yet it also cautions it “will take years to achieve the full intent of some of the recommendations.” 

Environmental groups and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs were quick to criticize the update, saying it lacks concrete commitments to urgently protect B.C.’s remaining old-growth forests.

“The BC NDP government has objectively taken us farther along than any previous government in bringing the key policy pieces together needed to protect old-growth and endangered ecosystems,” Ken Wu, executive director of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, a national non-profit conservation group, told The Narwhal. But Wu said big policies like ecosystem-based protection targets are still missing, along with sufficient funding “to cover the lost forestry revenues of First Nations should they agree to implement old-growth logging deferrals.”

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How much old-growth forest is left in B.C.?
B.C. once boasted 25 million hectares of old forest but by 2021 only an estimated 11.1 million hectares of old growth remained, according to the province.

Ecologists disagreed with the government’s figures, saying less than three per cent of high productivity old-growth forests — the forests with the biggest trees and the richest biodiversity — were still standing. They found only 35,000 hectares of forest with the largest, most productive old-growth trees —  areas where trees are expected to grow over 25 metres tall in 50 years — remained in B.C.

The definition of old-growth forest varies depending on location. Coastal forests with trees at least 250-years-old are considered old growth, while interior forests with trees at least 140-years-old meet the definition.

...

https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-old-growth-update-2024/

[morganism]

Greener, more effective termite control: Natural compound attracts wood eaters

(this would be fantastic if it attracted wood boring beetles too..)

UC Riverside scientists have discovered a highly effective, nontoxic, and less expensive way to lure hungry termites to their doom.

The method, detailed in the Journal of Economic Entomology, uses a pleasant-smelling chemical released by forest trees called pinene that reminds western drywood termites of their food. They follow the scent to a spot of insecticide injected into wood.

"We saw significant differences in the death rates using insecticide alone versus the insecticide plus pinene," said UCR entomologist Dong-Hwan Choe, who led the discovery. "Without pinene, we got about 70% mortality. When we added it in, it was over 95%."

Native to North America, western drywood termites are environmentally important. They are drawn to dead wood above ground, and consume it with the help of microorganisms in their guts. "They are recyclers," Choe said. "And they're very common."

Unfortunately for humans, the insects are unable to distinguish between dead trees and the wood used to build homes. Of particular concern in California and Florida, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico, no dwelling is immune to them. "It's only a matter of time before termites attack a house, especially in warmer parts of the states," Choe said.

Fumigation is one of the most common drywood termite control techniques. Homes are covered with tents and then bombed with gas that kills the insects. In the U.S., California uses this method more than any other state.

The pest control industry is under pressure to find new methods because the chemical, sulfuryl fluoride, is both a greenhouse gas and is also toxic to humans. Additionally, fumigation is an expensive process that does not provide lasting protection against termites.

"Even though it is very thorough, a home can be infested again soon after fumigation is completed," Choe said. "Some people fumigate every three to five years because it doesn't protect structures from future infestations."

Localized injection is an alternative strategy to control drywood termites that does not involve gas. Technicians drill holes into the infested wood to reach the termite "gallery" or lair, then inject poison into the hole to inundate the bugs.

"This is a more localized treatment, and in theory, it is a better strategy when you want to control drywood termites with fewer chemicals. It's less expensive, and the treated wood may also stay protected from future infestations," Choe said.

The challenge with localized injection is figuring out exactly where the bugs are hiding. Typically, this method uses a contact-based insecticide, meaning the insects must touch the poison for it to work.

Using an attractant like pinene eliminates the need to hunt for the termites. "Even at low concentrations, pinene is good at attracting termites from a distance," Choe said.

"We don't think it's functioning as a pheromone," Choe said. "We think the scent is more associated with their food. Smells nice… dinner time! That's the concept that we had in mind."

The insecticide they used, fipronil, is also used to control ant infestations. It can be toxic to aquatic insects and pollinators if it gets into the environment. In this case, it is injected into the wood, so chances of off-target effects are low.

Choe's laboratory generally studies the chemical communication systems of urban insect pests to develop strategies like this one for western drywood termites.

"Our study shows that if you understand insect behavior better, it's interesting by itself," Choe said. "Then there are also important implications for more effective pest management, so we can use fewer chemicals without compromising efficiency."

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-greener-effective-termite-natural-compound.html


Potential use of pinenes to improve localized insecticide injections targeting the western drywood termite (Blattodea: Kalotermitidae), Journal of Economic Entomology (2024). DOI: 10.1093/jee/toae101

[morganism]

The consequences of bark beetle outbreaks are complex. Despite the loss of trees in the medium term, the aftermath can sometimes boost biodiversity in the long run. Destroyed human-made forests and plantations can naturally regenerate, allowing space for squeezed-out endangered species.

But in some landscapes, such as parts of the Rocky mountains, scientists suspect that bark beetle outbreaks – along with other factors – will permanently convert forests to grasslands as the area becomes too warm for tree cover to return.

Outbreaks are spreading north to parts of the world that had previously been too cold for the insects. Usually, their larvae are killed in freezing conditions, but in some places rising temperatures mean that no longer happens.
California comedown: how illicit cannabis farms have left a wilderness where ‘you’re lucky to see a lizard’
Read more
The end of the great northern forests? The tiny tree-killing beetle wreaking havoc on our ancient giants

Forests across Europe, the US and Canada have been hard hit by drought, fires and bark beetles. Now scientists fear the northern hemisphere’s greatest carbon sink is nearing a tipping point

(...)
Thomas Seth Davis, a bark beetle researcher at Colorado State University, says: “The combined pressure from climate change and bark beetles could result in changes in carbon fixation, which could speed up the rate of climate change.

“You could have this feedback effect, where warming becomes more rapid if we lose the carbon-fixation potential of those boreal forests.”
(snip)
Tomáš Hlásny, a professor at the Czech University of Life Sciences who has led research into the impact of bark beetles in Europe, said the biggest issue was halting carbon emissions, not halting the spread of the insects.

“These outbreaks and wildfires are a manifestation of climate change. People still believe if they take measures, we can carry on as usual. This is wrong,” he says.

“We are basically losing a fight with climate change, not with bark beetles.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/05/collapse-northern-boreal-forests-drought-fire-beetles-climate-crisis-ancient-trees-carbon-sink

[kassy]

Ecoservices:

Ending native forest logging would help Australia’s climate goals much more than planting trees

Australia contains some of the world’s most biologically diverse and carbon-dense native forests. Eucalypts in wet temperate forests are the tallest flowering plants in the world and home to an array of unique tree-dwelling marsupials, rare birds, insects, mosses, fungi and lichen, many of which have not even been catalogued by scientists. Yet our country remains in the top ten list globally for tree cover loss, with almost half of the original forested areas in eastern Australia cleared.

This loss has been devastating for Australia’s native plants and animals and contributes to global warming through vast amounts of carbon emissions. The global biodiversity and climate change crises are inextricably linked – we cannot solve one without the other.

Earth’s ecosystems, such as forests, coastal wetlands and tundra, contain enormous amounts of carbon. But deforestation and degradation by humans is likely to send global warming past 1.5°C, even if we achieve net-zero fossil fuel emissions. Protecting native forests is a critical way to prevent emissions, which must be achieved in parallel with a rapid transition to clean energy.

...

On January 1 this year, both Victoria and Western Australia ended native forest logging in state forests. This is a good start. But the rest of Australia is still logging native forests. Extensive land clearing continues for agriculture and urban development, as well as native forest harvesting on private land.

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Can ending native forest logging help the climate?
We’ll need to go further and ban logging in all native forests in Australia to help meet our net-zero emissions target, while meeting timber demand from better-managed and increased plantations.

Stopping native forest logging avoids the emissions released when forests are cut and burned. It would also allow continued forest growth and regrowth of previously logged areas, which draws down carbon from the atmosphere and increases the amount held in the forest ecosystem.

The natural biodiversity of our native forests makes them more resilient to external disturbances such as climate change. These forests have larger and more stable carbon stocks than logged areas, newly planted forests and plantations.

If we compare forests protected for conservation with those harvested for commodity production in the Victorian Central Highlands, research shows conservation delivers the greatest climate benefits through continued forest growth and accumulating carbon stocks.

There are growing calls to create the Great Forests National Park to the north and east of Melbourne, which would protect a further 355,000 hectares and more than double protected forests in the Central Highlands.

...

https://theconversation.com/ending-native-forest-logging-would-help-australias-climate-goals-much-more-than-planting-trees-229487
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