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Sunday, 22 January 2017

POACHERS IN MALAWI: CAMERA TRAP CATCHES MORE THAN ANIMALS

Ecologist Alison Leslie has collected more than 40,000 photographs of the Majete Wildlife Reserve. This mountain of data comes from camera traps—remote cameras placed throughout the reserve that automatically take and save photos of anything that moves past. While sorting through a batch of photos in search of wildlife—a job often done by Earthwatch volunteers—two of her colleagues found something they did not expect. An image of two men, not wearing park uniforms, carrying makeshift weapons. Poachers.
Poachers in Malawi: Camera Trap Catches More than Animals

TWO POACHERS (WITH FACES BLURRED) CAUGHT ON A CAMERA TRAP TYPICALLY USED TO DETECT ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES.

The Hunt for the Hunters
The camera that “trapped” the poachers faced a remote waterhole in the northwest corner of the park, which Dr. Leslie’s Animals of Malawi in the Majete Wildlife Reserve team had been watching for the previous eight months. While it wasn’t clear what exact animals they targeted or why—maybe for food, or for goods to sell on the black market—Dr. Leslie says, “My guess is that they were actually hunting or checking snares they may have set.” In one photo, one of the men looks directly into the camera without seeming to know what he is seeing.
The researchers passed the photos to African Parks, the organization that manages the reserve. Staff members then began circulating the photos to their connections in local villages to find out the identity of the suspects. Which meant the word was out to any would-be poachers that the Majete Wildlife Reserve was under 24-hour surveillance.
This left Dr. Leslie and her team worried for their expensive equipment. “We figured it would go one of two ways,” she says. “Either they would start trashing our cameras in the park, or they would get such a fright that poaching might be reduced. We haven’t lost any cameras, so we’re hoping that people are now just very scared that there are cameras all over the park.” 
volunteers-malawi-camera-trap

DR. ALISON LESLIE AND A COLLEAGUE SET UP A CAMERA TRAP.

The Questions Behind the Cameras
There are indeed cameras all over the park. Since the poaching incident, Dr. Leslie and her team have, for research purposes, increased their camera trap coverage to include the entire reserve. "Everywhere we put these things, new species are popping up," she says.
Camera traps allow researchers to watch wildlife without actually being present themselves to disrupt the natural behavior of animals. Camera traps also provide widespread, 24-hour coverage of remote areas, which would be nearly impossible to achieve through direct observation.
In Majete, where park management needs to carefully manage animal populations, camera traps have revealed all sorts of surprises to the researchers: more bushpigs than they believed lived there, for example, and species they didn’t know were present at all, such as the caracal and serval (both small, cat-like predators).
Spotted hyenas gave the team one of their biggest jolts. “When we first got to the reserve, we thought there were eight or so hyenas,” Dr. Leslie says. The camera trap images, though, suggested that there were more like “wild guess—30 plus individuals,” each distinguishable by the unique pattern of spots it bears.
Keeping Predators and Prey in Balance
This hyena news could reshape how African Parks manages the reserve. “Having predators that we did not know we had is quite important,” says Dr. Leslie. “We were thinking of bringing in a few more lions at some stage, but we don’t want to put any extra pressure on the ungulate [hoofed mammal] population. We’ve got to be very careful about if we do bring in new predators—what they might be and how many.” To help African Parks develop their management strategy, the Animals of Malawi team has added a new component to their 2014 Earthwatch teams: more in-depth hyena research. “We’re wondering what sort of competition is going to arise between the hyenas and lions—eternal enemies—that are in there,” says Dr. Leslie.
To that end, her team is investigating “how many hyenas there are, how many clans, and where they are in the park.” They are also looking at hyena diet. Already, the researchers believe that the hyenas in the park act more like hunters than like scavengers (as they do in other places)—which means more pressure on prey animals. “This is why it is so important to determine the actual size of the hyena population,” says Dr. Leslie. ”We do not want things out of balance in Majete.”
Poachers Face the Consequences
A village leader eventually identified the two men, and African Parks called in the police to arrest them. Here, they hit a bump—the suspects would not reveal the location of their homemade firearms, which meant the camera trap images were the only evidence against them.
But the photos were evidence enough. In February of 2014, the men were tried and convicted for, according to African Parks’ report, “illegal entry into a protected area and illegally conveying firearms in a protected area.” Their punishment? Either pay a fine of 20,000 Malawi kwacha each (about 50 U.S. dollars) or spend eight months in prison. They have since both paid fines.
African Parks celebrated the conviction, which they called “a landmark decision.” But they weren’t completely satisfied: “We were extremely disappointed with the leniency of the sentence as the Wildlife Act [the 1992 Malawi National Parks and Wildlife Act] sets guidelines for a fine of K100,000 and imprisonment for a term of up to ten years for these offenses.” 
Protecting Majete’s Wildlife, Today and Tomorrow
The camera trap images certainly cracked this case, and they could help cut down on similar crimes, says Dr. Leslie: “People now assume that the cameras automatically send a picture to us, so hopefully they will help with reducing future incidents.”
But her camera traps are really about understanding the animals of the Majete Wildlife Reserve over time, not protecting them from crime. To truly deter poaching, according to the African Parks report, more is needed: “the backing and support of the judiciary is critical in imposing suitable sentences as a deterrent.”

They know what’s at stake. When African Parks first took over the reserve's management in 2003, nearly all of its animals—its lions, its elephants, its zebras—had been hunted into oblivion. Only a few crocodiles and a hippos remained. It took a decade to bring back the thriving wildlife population the reserve has now, and it would be a tragedy to see that work undone.

For further information log on website :
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PALM READING: DEBATING THE FUTURE OF PALM OIL

Palm oil, which comes from the fruit of oil palm trees, shows up on nearly every supermarket shelf. It’s also one of the main reasons for massive rainforest destruction in some of the most wildlife-rich places on Earth. At the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) on May 15th, Earthwatch sponsored an expert panel discussion to address how we can conserve rainforests as the demand for palm oil booms.

Palm Reading: Debating the Future of Palm Oil

LAND CLEARED FOR OIL PALM PLANTATIONS NEAR TANJUNG PUTING NATIONAL PARK IN INDONESIA. © ULET IFANSASTI

A Useful Product that Destroys Rainforests
In tropical rainforests around the world, home to about half of all of Earth’s animal species, people have destroyed millions of acres of forest to cultivate oil palms. Massive deforestation has evicted countless animals. It has also contributed to global warming because trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. A recent New York Times editorial that addressed the link between palm oil and climate change reported that Indonesia, a top palm-oil producing country, has become one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters because it “lost one-fifth of its forested area.”
The rainforests of Borneo, an island of 19 million people off Malaysia’s east coast, face a similar fate. Dr. Glen Reynolds, lead scientist on the Earthwatch expedition Climate and Landscape Change in Borneo’s Rainforest, has studied deforestation in Sabah—a Malaysian state that occupies the northernmost part of Borneo—for more than a decade. He recently wrote in The Guardian that “the major threat now faced in Sabah is around a shift in land use driven by a rapid expansion in the demand for—and the profitability of cultivating—palm oil.”
Finding a Balance between Meeting Demand and Protecting Forests
The “profitability of cultivating” part complicates things: palm oil may cost endangered species like the Bornean orangutan their home and accelerate global warming, but it also provides income and infrastructure in some of the poorest places in the world. And the potential for profit is growing: as The New York Times reported, “Demand is high, especially in the West, and it is likely to triple by 2050.”
At the Earthwatch RGS discussion, Dr. Glen Reynolds acknowledged the necessity of compromise to find a way forward: “No government can maintain all of its natural resources as pristine—it’s not going to happen.” But, he noted, the consequences of rampant uncontrolled development would be catastrophic. “So our research is looking to contribute in a space where you can have your cake and at least eat some of it.”
This balance means, as he wrote in The Guardian, addressing “core questions” about how to make the palm oil industry more sustainable: “Given that palm oil only grows in inherently biodiverse regions, what land (forested or otherwise) can and should be developed? And how can we plan new plantations for better protection of biodiversity, minimising the loss of carbon and other ecological impacts?”
How the Industry is Addressing Tough Questions
Investors and consumers have become more aware of sustainability and increasingly demand higher standards, said Leela Barrock of Sime Darby, a Malaysia-based company that supplies about six percent of the world’s palm oil. That demand has made sustainability an important goal for her company: “We decided six years ago that we would go for 100 percent certification. Today—and this has not been reported—we are 96 percent certified sustainable palm oil.”
What does it mean to be “certified sustainable”? Darrell Webber of the nonprofit Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which set the industry standards for sustainability, explained: producers must cultivate oil palms without destroying any primary (first-growth) forest or clearing the habitat of any rare, endangered, or threatened species. They must also farm legally and with the consent of the local community.
These requirements increase the cost of doing business for producers, and haven’t changed the way the most of the product is made. Barrock reported that about 42 million acres of land, more than the entire size of the state of Florida, are used for oil palm production to produce 60 million tons of palm oil; just 16 percent of that product is classified as RSPO certified.
Some would argue, though, that the industry is worth supporting despite its environmental hazards. Webber made this case at the RGS event: “No government could have brought rural development in a more efficient manner than the palm oil sector,” he said. Owing to the “economic life cycle” of the plant, which is about 25 years, it allows for a more long-term investment than plants that only deliver profits once a year: “You build roads, schools, hospitals, put in electricity. Very different from large-scale agriculture based on annual crops.”
Consumers Face Confusion When Deciding What to Buy 
Currently, it’s hard to even know if palm oil is in a product, much less if it’s produced sustainably. In many countries, it is legal to list palm oil as vegetable oil instead of naming it outright. This will change later this year in the EU, said Webber, but the ingredient list would still not contain a sustainable classification. Many companies do list their sustainability credentials online, he said.
Some environmental organizations argue that buying sustainable isn’t enough. The WWF, which helped found the RSPO in 2005, concluded in a 2013 analysis of RSPO member producers that only “a handful are making adequate progress on the road to 100% RSPO compliance.” In other words, even RSPO certification doesn’t guarantee you’re getting a product that doesn’t harm the environment.
In short, there is no simple answer. The conversation about the costs and benefits of palm oil production is far from over. Dr. Reynolds concluded the RGS discussion by offering a principle for moving forward: governments, industry, and policymakers must “swim behind” science as they make decisions about how to produce and regulate this controversial crop.
Get Involved
Want to help conserve one of the most species-rich rainforests on the planet? Join Climate and Landscape Change in Borneo’s Rainforest.
Earthwatch also empowers businesses to make better decisions for a more sustainable environment. The Royal Geographic Society Earthwatch lecture series is kindly supported by the Mitsubishi Corporation for Europe and Africa.
News Category: Wildlife & Ecosystems

For further information log on website :
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CLIMATE AND LANDSCAPE CHANGE IN BORNEO’S RAINFOREST




































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http://earthwatch.org/expeditions/climate-and-landscape-change-in-borneos-rainforest
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Palm oil-based biofuels and sustainability in southeast Asia: A review of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand

Published Date
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
September 2014, Vol.37:1–12, doi:10.1016/j.rser.2014.05.001

 Author 
  • Ishani Mukherjee a,,
    •  
  • Benjamin K. Sovacool b,c,1,
  • aLee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 469C Bukit Timah Road, 259772, Singapore
  • bCenter for Energy Technologies, AU‐Herning, Aarhus University, Birk Centerpark 15, DK-7400 Herning, Denmark
  • cVermont Law School, Institute for Energy & the Environment, PO Box 96, 164 Chelsea Street, South Royalton, VT 05068-0444, United States

Received 7 February 2014. Revised 22 April 2014. Accepted 1 May 2014. Available online 21 May 2014.

Abstract

 By extensively reviewing the current state of knowledge, this paper explores the sustainability implications of palm oil biodiesel in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Both ecological and environmental vitality as well as socio-economic equity are emphasized in the authors׳ exploration of sustainability in the three country cases. The article observes that the main environmental sustainability considerations of palm oil biodiesel include its capacity to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, its carbon debt and its repercussions on forestry, biodiversity, and soil and water quality. Issues surrounding socio-economic sustainability encompass how palm oil biodiesel affects food security in Southeast Asia, along with the impact of palm oil production on rural livelihoods and land-tenure. The authors firstly explore the origins, drivers and current technologies surrounding palm oil biodiesel development in the region. They then present the three country cases in order to concentrate on the particular policies, challenges and opportunities that uniquely impact the sustainability of biodiesel development in each locale.

 Keywords

    • Palm oil
  • Biodiesel
  • Southeast Asia 
  • Sustainability


    •  Table 1
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    • ⁎ 
      Corresponding author.
    Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
    For further details log on website :
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032114003177
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    Classification of oil palm fresh fruit bunches based on their maturity using portable four-band sensor system

    Published Date
    Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
    March 2012, Vol.82:55–60, doi:10.1016/j.compag.2011.12.010
    • Author 
    • Osama Mohammed Ben Saeed a,
    • Sindhuja Sankaran b
    • Abdul Rashid Mohamed Shariff a,c,,
    • Helmi Zulhaidi Mohd Shafri d
    • Reza Ehsani b
    • Meftah Salem Alfatni a
    • Mohd Hafiz Mohd Hazir a
    • aSpatial and Numerical Modeling Laboratory, Institute of Advanced Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
    • bCitrus Research and Education Center, IFAS, University of Florida, 700 Experiment Station Road, Lake Alfred, FL 33850, USA
    • cDepartment of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
    • dDepartment of Civil Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Received 18 March 2011. Revised 25 November 2011. Accepted 21 December 2011. Available online 21 January 2012. 

    Abstract

     Classification of oil palm fresh fruit bunch (FFB) maturity is a critical factor that dictates the quality of produced palm oil. This study evaluates a multi-band portable, active optical sensor system; comprising of four spectral bands, 570, 670, 750, and 870 nm, to detect oil palm FFB maturity. The in-field spectral reflectance data were collected using the sensor system from a total of 120 fresh fruit bunches. These fruit bunches were categories into unripe, ripe, and overripe classes. Different classifiers were applied to assess the applicability of using the sensor system. Based on the classification accuracies, data analysis on the spectral features (reflectance data and other features extracted from vegetation indices) indicated that the spectral reflectance data could be valuable in predicting the maturity of the fruit bunches. The quadratic discriminant analysis and discriminant analysis with Mahalanobis distance classifiers yielded highest average overall accuracies of greater than 85% in classifying oil palm FFB maturity. Additionally, the average individual class (unripe, ripe, and overripe) classification accuracies were also higher than 80%. Thus, optical sensing using four-band sensor system could be useful for oil palm FFB maturity classification under field condition.

     Highlights

     ► Optical sensor evaluated for maturity classification of oil palm fruit bunches. ► Oil palm fresh fruit bunches maturity determined with 80% accuracy. ► System useful for oil palm FFB maturity classification under field conditions.

     Keywords

    • Visible-near infrared sensor
  • Optical sensing
  • Oil palm fresh fruit bunches
  • Fruit maturity
  • Classification
    • Fig. 1.
    Fig. 2.
    Fig. 3.
     Table 1
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    Fig. 4.
     Table 2
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    Table 3.
    • ⁎ 
      Corresponding author at: Spatial and Numerical Modeling Lab, Institute of Advanced Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 1 23025723/8481141; fax: +60 3 89466425.
    Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

    For further details log on website :
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016816991100322X
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    Expansion of Oil Palm Plantations and Forest Cover Changes in Bungo and Merangin Districts, Jambi Province, Indonesia

    Published Date
    Procedia Environmental Sciences
    2015, Vol.24:199–205, doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2015.03.026
    The 1st International Symposium on LAPAN-IPB Satellite (LISAT) for Food Security and Environmental Monitoring
    Open Access, Creative Commons license
    • Author 
    •  Darma Tarigan a,,
      •  
    • Sunarti b
      •  
    • Susi Widyaliza c
    • aBogor Agriculture University, Darmaga, Bogor 16118, Indonesia
    • bUniversity of Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia
    • cBPDAS Batanghari, Jambi, Indonesia

    Available online 3 April 2015.

     Abstract

     It is often cited that large scale oil palm plantation were responsible for forest cover changes in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Objective of the research was to identify whether oil palm concessions were the direct cause of intact forest cover changes in study area. The study areas are situated at Jambi Province, Indonesia and are experiencing rapid expansion of oil palm plantation. We used Landsat temporal images from year 1988, 1990, 2000, 2007, and 2013 to detect forest cover change. We also made use Carnegie Landsat Analysis System–Lite (CLASlite) fractional cover module to differentiate undisturbed (intact), disturbed (logged) forest and also oil palm growing stages on Landsat images. Our study showed that, there were only 8% of oil palm plantation development occurred by direct clearing of intact forest in the study area in the last 25 years. Oil palm concessions in the last 25 years were mostly developed on logged forest, agroforests, and shrub lands.

     Keywords

    • Forest cover change
  • intact forest clearing
  • landsat images
  • logged forest 
  • oil palm concession


    • References

      • [1]
      • [BPS] Statistical Office of Jambi Province. http://jambi.bps.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id =164:jambi- dalam-angka-2011&catid=5:publikasi-buku&Itemid=30; 2012.
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      • K.M. Carlson, L.M. Curran, D. Ratnasari, A.M. Pittman, B.S. Soares-Filho, G.P. Asner, S. Trigg, D.A. Gaveau, D. Lawrence, H.O. Rodrigues
      • Committed carbon emissions, deforestation, and community land conversion from oil palm plantation expansion in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
      • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 109, Issue 19, 2012, pp. 7559–7564
      • [3]
      • Setiadi B, Diwyanto K, Pujiastuti W, Mahendri IGAP, Tiesnamurti B. Area distribution of oil palm plantation in Indonesia. Jakarta: Center for Research and Development, Ministry of Agriculture Indonesia; 2011. ISBN 978-602-8475-45-7.
      • [4]
      • L.R. Carrasco, C. Larossa, E.J. Milner-Gulland, D.P. Edwards
      • A double-edged sword for tropical forests
      • Science, Volume 346, Issue 38, 2014
      • [6]
      • Gunarso P, Hartoyo ME, Fahmuddin A, Killeen TJ. Oil palm and land use change in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. Reports from the Technical Panels of the 2nd Greenhouse Gas Working Group of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO); 2013.
      • [8]
      • G.P. Asner, D.E. Knapp, A. Balaji, G. Páez-Acosta
      • Automated mapping of tropical deforestation and forest degradation: CLASlite
      • J Appl. Remote Sens, Volume 3, 2009, pp. 533–543
      • [9]
      • Carnegie Institution for Sciences. CLASlite forest monitoring technology version 3.1 user guide. California: Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Global Ecology; 2013.
      • [10]
      • Adnan H, Tadjudin D, Yuliani DE, Komarudin H, Lopulalan D, Siagian DL, Munggoro DW. Belajar dari bungo mengelola sumberdaya alam di era desentralisasi. ISBN 978-979-1412-47-6; 2008.

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      Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the LISAT-FSEM Symposium Committee.
    • ⁎ 
      Corresponding author. Tel.: +62-812-864-6473; fax: +62-251-629-358.
    Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
    For further details log on website :
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878029615000948
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