photo by Christian Ostrosky (Ostrosky Photos on Flickr Creative Commons)

Over a period of only 10 days, more than 500 dead penguins have washed ashore on Brazilian beaches. The penguins’ bodies exhibit signs of death by starvation.

During the past few years Magellanic Penguins have been discovered on of the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state with increasing frequency. For some reason – perhaps due to pollution and/or overfishing – they sometimes become lost while migrating north from Antarctica and Patagonia in search of food. But those penguins – a few hundred per year – are normally alive.

From a BBC report:

Thiago do Nascimento of the Peruibe Aquarium says the cooler than usual temperatures off the coast could have driven away the fish and squid the penguins feed on.

Scientists are researching into why this unfortunate curiosity of penguins on Brazil’s beaches has taken such a grisly turn.

For more on the story see the following CNN report:

Hundreds of penguins wash up on Brazilian coast

Graham Land

Additional resources:

Associated Press – Hundreds of dead penguins dot Brazil’s beaches

Penguins land on Brazil’s beaches

photo by Leonardo F. Freitas (leoffreitas, Flickr Creative Commons)

A proposed reevaluation of forestry codes in Brazilian law could have catastrophic consequences for the Amazon rainforest.

The issue of keeping Brazil’s strict forestry laws intact or legally opening up more forest for economic development pits environmentalists against Ruralistas, who claim that current laws are stifling economic growth and keeping peasants in poverty.

So why is this important? Brazil is a powerhouse for agricultural and commodity exports. However, it is also home to some of the world’s richest areas of biodiversity. Brazil’s future depends on the balancing of these two interests. Environmental legislation is therefore as important to Brazilian development as the World Cup is to Kaka.

–Siân Herbert in the Guardian

Yet much of the Amazon is already deforested illegally. Poor enforcement of existing rules and general lack of rule of law make this possible. A lot of Brazil’s Amazon is a wild frontier, where forestry rules, no matter how strict, are extremely difficult to apply.

On a (partly) positive note, according to this article in the Irish Times, the Brazilian government is finally clamping down on deforestation, partly due to international (European) pressure, which some locals understandably resent:

If I wanted to hide with Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest today I wouldn’t be able to. It is gone. Here half our lands are still forest while you in Europe have already destroyed most of yours. Yet the European Union is paying for environmental groups to come here and demand we reforest our farms. We should demand that Europe reforest its territory and leave us alone.

– Plinio Queiroz Junqueira, rancher

A reformation of existing laws may counteract the recent deforestation clampdown and facilitate non-sustainable industry for short-term gains. The Amazon is a sustainer – it provides so much for both human and non-human ecology and should be treated and respected like the sustainable treasure trove it is, not a free for all as the forests of Europe once were.

According to a piece in the Guardian, this crucial issue of reevaluating forestry laws in Brazil is not receiving adequate attention within the country or elsewhere, but its repercussions may be heavy and far-reaching.

Graham Land

James Cameron at a press conference to stop Belo Monte Dam; photo from International Rivers (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

Plans for the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon have experienced some recent setbacks in the form of back and forth legal action as well as controversy over indigenous rights and environmental issues. As of Friday, however, bids for construction contracts are again set to move forward on the previously planned date of April 20th.

The Belo Monte dam project, set to be located on the Amazon’s Xingu River, will be the world’s third largest hydroelectric plant of its kind. It is part of a Brazilian government initiative to fuel economic expansion and recovery while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

An article in the New York Times states that Brazil uses hydroelectric power for over 80% of its energy needs. The US Energy Information Administration, puts the amount at 36% – a far smaller, but still a significant share.

Critics claim the Belo Monte project will force native Amazonian tribes from their homelands and result in environmental damage to one of the world’s most important ecosystems.

To build Belo Monte, builders would have to excavate two huge channels larger than the Panama Canal to divert water from the main dam to the power plant. The reservoir would flood more than 160 square miles of forest while drying up a 60-mile stretch of the Xingu River, displacing more than 20,000 people, many from indigenous communities, according to non-governmental groups citing government figures.

–New York Times

Celebrities have leant their voices to the cause to stop the construction of the Belo Monte dam. Notably, Sting – a longtime proponent of the rights of the Brazilian Amazon’s indigenous peoples – and more recently, Avatar director James Cameron and actress Sigourney Weaver.

From an article in the Guardian:

Until last month Cameron had never been to the Brazilian Amazon, home to the world’s greatest tropical rainforest. Now, however, he has become the figurehead of an international campaign against Amazon destruction and specifically the multibillion-dollar Belo Monte hydroelectric dam project, which many of the Xingu region’s indigenous residents believe will wreak havoc in communities, flooding land in some places, drying up rivers in others and triggering an influx of workers, prostitution and disease.

Some Brazilian press articles have characterized Cameron’s criticism of the Brazilian government’s plans as ‘colonialist’, which is a bit ironic considering the nature of the hydroelectric project in relation to native Amazonians. Indeed, Cameron likens what is happening now in Brazil to the US government’s treatment of Native Americans in the 1800s – something that inspired him to make the film Avatar.

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

BBC News: Judge allows start of bids on controversial Brazil dam

image from chicoaquarela (Flickr Creative Commons)

At a former farm in the Arab emirate of Qatar, a nearly extinct species of Brazilian parrot is being bred in order to preserve and eventually repopulate the breed in its native habitat over 10,000 kilometers away.

The Spix’s Macaw is a type of parrot native to the state of Bahia in northwest Brazil. The Spix’s has been considered extinct in the wild since 2000, after years of hunting, trapping and habitat destruction.

Al Wabra Wildlife Preserve is privately funded by a Qatari sheik and cares for around 2,000 animals – including a large portion of the world’s remaining Spix’s Macaws – with the goals of endangered species conservation and preservation of biodiversity.

Check out this video on the Spix’s project from Time magazine.

At the Al Wabra Wildlife Preserve in Qatar, funded by a prominent sheik, scientists work to save endangered species — like the Brazilian Spix’s Macaw — from extinction

Can a Desert Sheik Save This Brazilian Macaw?

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation

photo by Bromelia (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

A new report by the Forest Footprint Disclosure initiative discloses how global business is destroying the one of the world’s most valuable resources: its rainforests. A UK government backed project, Forest Footprint Disclosure’s aim is to inform investors and the public about how organizations contribute to deforestation.

The results are not good: the beef, soy, palm oil, biofuels and lumber industries all significantly cause rainforest destruction – and they are all big moneymakers. In the current economic model, cold hard cash is worth a lot more than natural capital. Despite pockets of growing awareness, this model of heedless, irresponsible consumption is only gaining ground. A BBC News report explains how Brazil’s Mato Grosso State was once the most diverse ecosystem in the world, but is now dominated by monocrop farming. The Brazilian rainforest is headed in the same direction:

Further North, thousands of square miles of rainforest natural capital is going up in smoke each year, often illegally, to provide pastureland for just one cow per hectare to supply beef hungry Brazilians or more prosperous mouths in China and India.

–BBC News

What’s good about full disclosure projects like Forest Footprint Disclosure is the pressure they put on companies to clean up their acts. If European, Asian and American consumers know more about where their food is coming from and how its production is affecting rainforests, they are more likely to buy food that is more ethically produced. Investors in multinational companies may similarly wish to put their money in ethical business ventures. Supermarkets in Brazil such as Carrefour, Pão de Açucar, and Walmart have already stated they will abstain from rainforest beef as Nike has similarly claimed it will do regarding leather products.

Xingu River, Amazon – photo by E-GIACOMAZZI (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

To the disappointment of environmental and indigenous rights groups, the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam in the Amazon rainforest has been green-lighted by the Brazilian environmental ministry. The Belo Monte dam project on the Amazon’s Xingu River will be the world’s third largest project of its kind. The hydroelectric dam is part of a government initiative to fuel economic expansion while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Yet many see the Belo Monte project as destructive – both to the fragile and valuable ecosystem of the Amazon rainforest and to its indigenous inhabitants’ way of life.

Roberto Messias, head of Brazil’s environmental agency Ibama, said that around 12,000 people were likely to be affected by the construction but that many of them currently lived in wooden riverside shacks and were likely to benefit from the dam’s constructions.

–Guardian

The Brazilian government claims that no indigenous people will be displaced by the dam’s construction and that there will be no environmental disaster – yet it admits that 500 square kilometers (200 sq miles) of land will be flooded.

Read more on this story in the Guardian.

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

Sydney Morning Herald – Uproar in Brazil over huge Amazon dam plan

Sting still campaigning to save Amazon rainforests

Video report on Brazil’s contrasting environmental practices from ITN and CNN