There exists a wealth of scientific evidence to back my earlier assertion that the impacts of recent natural tsunamis in Asia have been amplified through the negligence of humankind. In particular, mangrove forests are a vital ecosystem in terms of protecting coastlines. This is science, factual, not opinion. Those that disagree do so because it opposes their dogma that humans are meant to command the Earth. Ecological ignorance is the greatest peril facing humanity.

Mangrove forests 'can reduce impact of tsunamis'

Dense mangrove forests growing along the coasts of tropical and sub-tropical countries can help reduce the devastating impact of tsunamis and coastal storms by absorbing some of the waves' energy, say scientists. When the tsunami struck India's southern state of Tamil Nadu on 26 December, for example, areas in Pichavaram and Muthupet with dense mangroves suffered fewer human casualties and less damage to property compared to areas without mangroves.

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Exotic and other over-abundant invasive plant species threaten much of America's lands with ecological collapse. Such species choke off native flora and fauna, and reduce ecosystem services provided by natural plant communities arrayed across landscapes. We have gotten to this situation through widespread fragmentation and over-management of most natural ecosystems, and will only recover through restoration of large and connected natural plant communities across most of the land.

In a chokehold

Southern California's environment is fast approaching the tipping point as an onslaught of foreign plants overwhelms efforts to protect the region's natural landscape.

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We are witnessing the opening salvos in what will be the most anti-forest U.S. administration ever. Logging prevents fires, is required to keep forests healthy, is good for the economy - hell, probably cures cancer too. While I continue to rue the day that the Toxic Texan stole the country's leadership, at some level after the recent election, my reaction is America deserves what it asks for. By the end of this term, America's forests will be severely degraded, water and air futher polluted, and it will likely be to late to turn the tide. As ecological collapse places it numerous suffocating tentacles around each and every American life, I particularly hope it is right wing born again anti-Earth kooks that suffer the most. Because it is their fault the Earth is dying...

Yahoo! News - New Forest Plan Would Lessen Restraints

Managers of the nation's 155 national forests will have more leeway to approve logging and other commercial projects with less formal environmental review under a new Bush administration plan... The long-awaited plan will overhaul application of the landmark 1976 National Forest Management Act, which sets the basic rules for management of nation's 191 million acres of forests and grasslands and protects forest wildlife.

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The huge increase in new emergent infectious disease is symptomatic of global ecological collapse. Teaming masses of consuming humans have decimated natural ecosystems - nowhere is this more advanced than in Asia. Previously natural ecosystems buffered humans from disease agents through biodiversity and other natural patterns and processes. But no more. Humanity has overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth - and these emergent diseases may well be Gaia's means to pull the system back into equilibrium. Immediate strict conservation and restoration measures are humanity's only hopes to ameliorate looming sickness and chaos brought on by ecological overshoot.

Planet Ark : Southeast Asia Fights Bird Flu, Top Health Risk

SINGAPORE - Bird flu, which risks being deadlier than the SARS outbreak, is endemic to Southeast Asia and poses the biggest risk to public health in the region, Singapore officials and international health experts said on Monday. The avian flu virus could trigger a lethal pandemic among humans if not contained...

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The World Bank has lost all credibility in regards to its claim to be a good faith partner in forest conservation. They have become so large, and so entwined with the global growth machine, that they continue to subsidize activities that destroy rainforests. The latest is a massive cattle ranch in the Brazilian "arc of deforestation". There may be no option but to work for the Bank's dismantlement as they have shown they are not trustworthy environmental custodians.

Amazon cattle plan draws fire from environmentalists - Environment - www.smh.com.au

The World Bank is proposing to fund a cattle project in the Brazilian Amazon which environmentalists say will destroy more rainforest.

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At root the global environmental crisis is a result of over-population and excessive wasteful consumption by the rich.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | UN warns of population surge
"The United Nations has published new predictions on the size and age of the world's population 300 years from now... if fertility stays at the current level, the global population could rise to 134 trillion."

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We are witnessing the demise of a sacred and holy ecosystem in the Brazilian Amazon. Through an accident of geography, ecology and history the Brazilian government finds itself the custodian of the most important terrestrial ecosystem on the Earth. And they are failing miserably in their custodial duties. Loss of the Amazon as a large, contiguous whole ecosystem will damn the Earth to an ecological collapse.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Deforestation Inflates Inventory of Gases in Brazil

Brazil is responsible for three percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases, and tropical deforestation is to blame for three-fourths of the country's emissions.

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U.S. Forest Service public comment periods have become something of a farce, as viewpoints considered against their interests are excluded, and clearly rule changes proposed by the environmentally challenged Bush administration are a foregone conclusion. Criminal ecological conduct is the law of the land.

U.S. Workers' Group Says EPA Censors Comments

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency censored warnings that a Bush administration plan to build roads in national forests could harm drinking water, a group representing government workers said Monday.

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The Philippines are being ravaged by massive human-induced floods that have resulted from decades of horrendous forest mismanagement. And now finally, after hundreds of deaths, the Philippine government has suspended logging.

There are reasons that most moist tropical areas including the Philippines were naturally densely forested. Closed canopy forests protected fragile soils from intense downpours. Forests and their soils and root systems acted like a sponge - holding water in times of torrential rains, and releasing water slowly in times of drought. You can attribute this to your God, Gaia and/or evolution. But human greed exhibited through both legal and illegal logging has dramatically impacted life giving rainforests. Tropical logging is murder, now, and in the future.

It is dangerous and unnatural for any tropical nation to depend upon tropical logging as a development strategy. Nations such as Papua New Guinea, the Congo, Brazil and elsewhere are following the Philippines and other nation's lead in peeling their rainforest skins from their lands, at drastic costs to their future ecological well-being and development potential. There will be no human advancement and much misery in all countries - tropical in particular, for the reasons given above - that fail to identify and maintain large and strategically placed natural forest areas adequate to provide ecosystem services such as water regulation.

Deforestation and diminishment of ancient tropical forests is dumb, evil, and ecocidal. It is also unnecessary and preventable. It must be stopped and reversed. Global ecological sustainability depends upon reintegrating natural forest cover into human communities, while maintaining remaining large, connected and intact areas as core ecological preserves free of industrial development and all but local traditional uses. Legal logging (or in essence mining) of ancient forests in most cases differs from illegal logging only in that corrupt government officials benefit even more. In both cases millions of years of evolutionary and ecological brilliance are being mowed for a few bucks and beer money for local peoples, while a few become gluttonously rich.

All tropical nations rich in forest ecosystems must heed the Philippines example and end commercial logging - both legal and illegal - and be assisted by the international community in doing so. If the Philippines and other tropical nations are serious about having a prosperous and civilized future, they will begin restoring their forests and limiting the size of their populations. To do otherwise dooms their citizens and the world to spirally ecological collapse and great suffering. It has begun already.

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Extinctions are one manifestation of collapsing ecosystems. Clearly the human enterprise has surpassed the ability of natural systems to provide services and absorb wastes. Ecological systems are fraying and falling apart. Humanity is oh so naive to believe that loss of animal species does not portend their own demise. America is criminally negligent in failing to protect and restore its human habitat.

Governors Seek Easing of Endangered Species Act

Western governors gathered here Friday to plan with the Bush administration and members of Congress how to change the Endangered Species Act, the 31-year-old law they say has imposed costly hardships on the energy industry, developers, loggers and property owners.

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Birds make for a good indicator of ecological sustainability. As advanced mammals, their decline is evidence of ecosystem declines that will impact human populations as well. Human habitat is threatened as never before - from forest fragmentation, toxics, climate change, and water scarcity. As go the birds will go the humans.

North American birds on the decline | csmonitor.com

In a striking trend that spans North America's key ecosystem regions - grassland, shrubland, forest, wetland, and urban - almost a third of 654 bird species native to North America are in "statistically significant decline," according to a first-ever "State of the Birds" report unveiled last month by the Audubon Society.

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Here comes the expected second round of attacks upon the environment by America's newly annointed plunderer in chief. Things are going to get much, much worse for the Earth before they have even any chance, however slight, of getting better.

Salmon and Steelhead May Lose Protections

The Bush administration on Tuesday proposed dramatically rolling back protections for salmon and steelhead trout streams from Southern California to the Canadian border, saying the rare and endangered fish are sufficiently protected in other ways.

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