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Ear-splitting military sonar is needlessly threatening whales and other marine mammals throughout the world’s oceans. Yet the U.S. Navy has resisted legal requirements to put safeguards in place during peacetime testing and training to protect marine life. In response to this dangerous breach of US bedrock environmental laws, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is waging a campaign of courtroom action and public pressure to compel the Navy to restrict its use of deadly sonar.

High-intensity sonar blasts whales with noise billions of times more intense than levels known to disturb them and can cause their internal organs to hemorrhage. Scientists have linked the use of mid-frequency military sonar to hundreds of whale strandings and deaths around the world, in areas such as North Carolina, the Bahamas, Greece, the Canary Islands and Japan. Such sonar can also interfere with a whale’s hearing, affecting its ability to navigate, avoid predators, find food, care for its young and, ultimately, survive.

In July 2006, NRDC won a victory restricting the Navy’s use of whale-killing, mid-frequency sonar during a massive international military exercise in the waters off Hawaii. After a court order temporarily blocking the Navy’s use of sonar during the month-long exercise was secured, the Navy agreed to create a sonar-free buffer zone around the newly established Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, significantly increase the monitoring of marine mammals during sonar drills, and implement other protective measures.

During the latest court battle, the Secretary of Defense declared the Navy exempt from the Marine Mammal Protection Act for six months. This unprecedented exemption releases the Navy from the mandates of this all-important law, and BioGems Defenders are now flooding the Navy with protests for putting itself above our nation’s law.

For more information and how to take action, go to NRDC web site. 

  Watch video: Lethal Sounds narrated by Pierce Brosnan

 

by Don Henry, The Canberra Times

WANTED: Major political party prepared to stand up for Tasmania’s world-renowned old-growth forests.

Last week, politicians returned their attention to forests.

We had Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull telling a conference in Sydney about the Federal Government’s commitment to protecting forests, stopping deforestation and encouraging sustainable forestry as a way to reduce carbon emissions.

But the forests Turnbull was referring to are not in Australia; they’re in South-East Asia.

Then we had Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd standing in a Tasmanian timber yard and "locking in" Labor’s support behind the Federal Government’s Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement an arrangement that leaves many tens of thousands of hectares of high conservation value forest on public land open to logging.

Australians are left wondering if both major political parties have deserted Tasmania’s spectacular and ecologically important old-growth forests.

The Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, announced by Prime Minister John Howard in May 2005, committed to protect about 135,000ha of forest on public land.

The Tarkine was promised strong protection (consistent with its World Heritage status) and the Styx was partially protected.

But other areas vital for tourism and the environment, like the Florentine, the Weld and the Blue Tier, and the Western Tiers remain open to logging under the current agreement.

Rudd’s announcement, far from securing the future of Tasmania’s forest industry, will entrench division and uncertainty.

In 2004 the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society, in conjunction with other environment groups, put forward a structural reform and development package called Protecting Forests, Growing Jobs. The package proposed a five-year transition to help Tasmania’s timber industry get out of high conservation value and old-growth forests and move to value-adding operations based largely on the available plantations.

Federal Government investment of $50million a year for five years would deliver up to 1190 jobs, more than offsetting the 320 jobs assessed to be directly impacted by forest conservation initiatives.

The problems surrounding forestry in Tasmania have not been addressed in the Community Forest Agreement. The Protecting Forests, Growing Jobs proposal is still relevant.

Adding to the existing, ongoing problems of unsustainable industry practices is the Gunns pulp mill proposal for the Tamar Valley in the north-east of the state.

Pulp mills do not have to be environmentally damaging. Visy’s Tumut pulp mill, which the foundation has not opposed, uses plantation feedstock and non-chlorine processes and employs hundreds of people.

In contrast, Gunns plans to build a mill that will be fed by native forests and run with chlorine-based technology. In the event of a malfunction, toxins could be released to the air and water.

The Australian Medical Association has raised concerns about the health impact increased air pollution from the mill would have on families in Launceston and the wider Tamar Valley a "closed" valley that tends to trap wood smoke from fire places and any industrial emissions.

Scallop fishermen fear their industry could go under if the mill is allowed to discharge toxic effluent into Bass Strait, as is proposed. Grape growers and the tourism industry have also voiced concerns.

Much of the community anger has centred around Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon’s decision in March to introduce a controversial fast-track assessment process for the mill.

After throwing out the Resource Planning and Development Commission’s assessment process, the state Government engaged consultants ITS Global to conduct a review of the social and economic benefits of the proposed pulp mill.

The Australian Conservation Foundation is familiar with ITS Global through the consulting firm’s work in Papua New Guinea. Last year it helped controversial Malaysian timber giant Rimbunan Hijau run a public relations campaign to justify the company’s notorious logging operations in PNG.

The foundation’s 2006 report Bulldozing Progress documents how Rimbunan Hijau’s operations in PNG have been repeatedly linked to serious human rights abuses, and environmental damage, the very activities Turnbull is now trying to address. In the interests of providing maximum protection for the Tasmanian environment, the state Government should have stuck with the Resource Planning and Development Commission process.

The Tasmanian Parliament is expected to vote on the mill proposal at the end of August. But questions remain for federal politicians on both sides of the fence.

Government and Opposition should commit to the highest possible environmental assessment standard for the proposed mill.

The ALP should honour its April national conference commitment to "further protection of identified Tasmanian high conservation value, old-growth forests, rainforests and other ecosystems".

And the Federal Government should tell Australians whether its laudable commitment to reducing deforestation and encouraging sustainable forestry extends to Tasmania’s magnificent old growth forests.

Don Henry is executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation

The rule has changed 

 

Making drinking water out of sea water could lead to the destruction of prized coastal areas, according to a new global report by WWF.

The growing trend in some of the world’s driest countries, like Australia, to build desalination plants as a solution to water shortages, comes under scrutiny in the report released in June.

Potential environmental impacts – like a build up of brine, increased greenhouse gas emissions, degradation of coastal areas, and reduced emphasis on conservation of rivers and wetlands – are identified by WWF as major problems resulting from desalination plants.

To read the full report, click here and you will be taken to the World Wildlife Fund ‘s web site. 

Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest producer of chicken, announced last month that it has begun to produce all of its fresh chicken free of antibiotics and is selling the chicken in grocery stores under a "Raised Without Antibiotics" label. An estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States are regularly added to the feed of livestock and poultry that are not sick—a practice with serious consequences for our health. Bacteria that are constantly exposed to antibiotics develop antibiotic resistance. This means that when humans get sick from resistant bacteria, the antibiotics prescribed by doctors don’t work.

From the Union of Concerned Scientists in the USA  

Ireland’s new coalition government recently revealed plans to make the island free of genetically engineered (GE) plants and animals. The announcement delighted many Irish farmers and food producers who have been campaigning for years to reach this goal. As a geographically isolated island with very low levels of existing GE contamination, Ireland has the best chance among European Union (EU) member states of maintaining a credible GE-free status. The government hopes to make Ireland off-limits to GE seeds, crops, insects, and animals, and to phase out the use of GE ingredients in animal feed. The association of organizations and citizens behind this initiative would like to see Ireland become a GE-free biosafety reserve to protect the food security of all EU countries.

From the USA Union of Concerned Scientists