http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/155810/highway-threatens-killer-worm

Take a look at this article which raises classic planning issues in an unusual form.

What do you think?

 The Census of Marine Life has just announced the publication a new document entitled Scientific Results to Support the Sustainable Use and Conservation of Marine Life. The report can help marine planners, resource managers and policy makers to craft science-based policy. It summarizes the discoveries, tools and technologies from the decade-long Census of Marine Life. Included are examples and data that can inform decisions about ecosystem and species level protection.  It discusses findings about marine habitat degradation and rehabilitation and introduces Census-developed tools to identify biodiversity hotspots and large-scale ecological patterns and analyze distributions of species over time and space. 

Even if you are not a policy-maker or marine planner, the report provides a wonderful view on the majesty and mystery of life in the oceans.  It is well supported by maps and illustrations which help to give a much greater appreciation of marine biodiversity.  

The report is available for download from http://www.coml.org/policy-report. 

Great Barrier Island - symbol of wild New Zealand; image of romance; a wild and beautiful place.  But after visiting the Island, I can't help thinking, it represents a post-peak landscape; a landscape recovering from human devastation; a landscape that will take centuries to return to its full ecological capacity.

In December last year the nations of the world met at Copenhagen to form global strategy and policy on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit predicted global warming.  The meeting, known as the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference ( en.wiipedia.org.wiki/2009_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference) was a disaster, as developed and developing countries faught about fundamentals.

A reconvening of the Copenhagen talks is happening this year, from 29th November to 10 December, known as the 16th session of the conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change.unfccc.int/2860.php  

2010 is the UN Year for biodiversity conservation.  From 18th to 29th October there was a meeting of the countries that have signed the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)  that aims to strengthen international initiatives to conserve the biodiversity of life on the Planet (see http://www.cbd.int/cop10/)

As a lead up to the meeting the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released the results of a study to investigate the status of the world mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes.  Not unexpectedly, the study has found that the decline in the world's biodiversity continues, with, on average, 50 species a year moving closer to extinction (i.e. from a category of lower risk of extinction, to a category of ciritically endangeeree, endangered (threatened) or near threatened.

But I was also heartened to read that conservation efforts ARE making a difference. 

Forests have been one of the most significant biomes in earth history.  They were the original source of the fossil fuels that we now burn as coal, oil and gas, while the tropical forests of the Amazon, West Africa and tropical Asia support the richest biodiversity on earth.  Forests help to reduce or prevent soil erosion and protect water resources.  The Amazon forest appears to have a role in the circulation of earth's atmosphere.  Since the rise of farming some 8 to 10,000 years ago, forests have been cleared for farmland and pasture throughout the northern hemisphere.  And within the last few decades millions of acres of tropical forests have suffered the same fate as  result of timber extraction or clearance for the plantation of tropical crops such as tea, coffee, cocoa or oil palms. 

Native New Zealand has shared the same fate.  85% of New Zealand was forested before the arrival of human beings.  With the arrival of human beings, New Zealand's forest cover has shrunk to 23% of land cover. 

However, the Economist, a well respected international magazine, recently published an interesting and heartening article on forests.  According to the Economist  the relative decline in forest destruction that has flattened in the past few years and there are signs that countries around the world are restoring forests (as in northern hemisphere countries such as Canada, the US, Sweden, Norway and Finland, or reducing the wholesale destruction of forests  (http://www.economist.com/node/17093495?story_id=17093495&fsrc=scn/tw/te/rss/pe ).

A one-off spill of oil as in the Gulf of Mexico, trains the eye of the world on the issue of ocean pollution, and activates a chain of responses and mitigation planning. But what of pollution, perhaps even more insidious, which accumulates almost unseen over time, until it can be termed a "floating continent of debris"?

The New Zealand Herald reports that scientists and conservationists have identified a massive garbage patch in the North Pacific, in which Oceanographers have since suggested that perhaps 100 million tonnes of plastic are held in suspension in those waters. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10659298

A critical assessment of the extent of the problem can be obtained from The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a United States federal agency focused on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html

Although the agency downplays some of the more extreme claims made in relation to the garbage patch, upon reading the supporting information, it becomes clear that slow, accumulating pollution is causing significant harm to ocean ecosystems around the globe, and this type of problem becomes particularly evident in areas such as eddies and convergence zones where debris can accumulate.

The explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon is only the most media noticeable of the environmental destruction due ot our thirst for oil.  In the Niger River delta of Nigeria, more oil is spilled by the Royal Dutch Shell oil operations every year than the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Because the BP spill threatens the beaches and fishing grounds of US citizens, it is a world-wide story.  The same destruction of habitat and livelihoods in Nigeria goes un-noticed.

Largely unnoticed, also, is the destruction of lands in northern Alberta, Canada, as a consequence of extracting tar sands, and the damage to Arctic tundra in Alaska and Canada's north from the extraction of oil and gas. 

The recent debate about farming cows in enclosures has taken another turn with the Minister for the Environment calling in the discharge consents at the heart of this matter.The Beehive website records that  consent applications have been received from Southdown Holdings Ltd, Williamson Holdings Ltd, and Five Rivers Ltd and involve nearly 18,000 cows being housed eight months of the year on farms totalling a land area of 8555 hectares, holding ponds totalling 77 million litres and discharges of 1,743,000 litres of effluent per day.