Blogs / 80beats

Trees continue to fall due to illegal logging operations in the the Amazon rainforest, and Brazil’s environmental officials have discovered that those logging companies hired not just lumberjacks to get the job done, but also hackers. The hackers went to work in the Brazilian state of Pará, where the local government has launched an online system for issuing permits to logging companies. The system tracks their total output and simply refuses to issues more permits, which are checked when the wood is hauled out in trucks [Ars Technica].

But instead of abiding by the limits on the amount of timber they could haul out of the rainforest, more than 107 companies allegedly hired hackers to access the government records and increase their timber allocations. Andre Muggiati, a Greenpeace official in Brazil, said that “by hacking into the permit system, these companies have made their timber shipments appear legal and compliant with the forest management plans” [Wired News]. The Brazilian government has already arrested more than 30 people involved in the scandal.

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In the wake of a distressing report about accelerating deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian government has vowed to reduce the rate of land-clearing by 70 percent over the next decade. The government was called upon to take drastic steps after a report declared that deforestation increased this year for the first time since 2004 as surging prices for cattle and soybeans led ranchers to seek farm land in the forest. The world’s largest rainforest lost 11,968 square kilometers (4,600 square miles), an area about 10 times as large as New York City, in the 12 months through July 2008 [Bloomberg].

Tasso Azevedo, head of the Brazilian government’s forestry service said: “We can now adopt targets because we now have the instruments to implement them.” He was referring to a new Amazon fund, where foreign nations are being encouraged by Brazil to contribute financially to the conservation of the vast Amazon region [BBC News]. Norway has already agreed to contribute $1 billion to the fund over the next seven years on the condition that deforestation rates continue to drop during that time; however, Norway’s pledge is hoped to be just the beginning. The Brazilian government wants to raise $21 billion in donations to finance conservation and sustainable development projects, arguing that since the whole world receives climate benefits from an intact Amazon rainforest, the whole world should subsidize it.

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A newly discovered tree fungus could be on its way to the gas station. The fungus, Gliocladium roseum, is able to turn plant matter into gaseous hydrocarbons that are almost chemically identical to diesel fuel. “This is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel substances,” said researcher Gary Strobel from Montana State University. “The fungus can even make these diesel compounds from cellulose, which would make it a better source of biofuel than anything we use at the moment” [LiveScience].

The fungus grows inside trees in the rainforests of Patagonia, in the southern part of Argentina and Chile. After discovering the new fungus wedged between cells in a stem from an Ulmo tree (Eucryphia cordifolia), Strobel and colleagues cultured the organism, collected the gaseous compounds it produced, and ran the compounds through a mass spectrometer to identify them. When he saw the printout, Strobel says, “every hair on my body stood up.” The list included octane, 1-octene, heptane, 2-methyl, and hexadecane–all common components of diesel fuels [ScienceNOW]. The gaseous compound, dubbed “myco-diesel,” is thought to be used by G. roseum to poison other fungi.

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Global warming isn’t just a threat to polar bears in the rapidly warming Arctic, a new study says: Species in the tropics are beginning to feel the effects as well, and it will only get worse. Researchers surveyed more than 1,900 species of plants, insects, and fungi in a Costa Rica rainforest and came to the troubling conclusion that if world temperatures continue to rise as predicted over the next 50 years, half of those species will have to move to completely new territory to find an appropriate habitat.

The situation is complicated for tropical species, says lead researcher Robert Colwell; shifting north or south doesn’t bring significantly lower temperatures, so species will have to take up residence at higher altitudes to survive. In the absence of mountainsides to serve as a cool refuge, those plants and insects that cannot face higher temperatures may disappear as it would require migrations of hundreds or even thousands of miles to find a suitable cooler climate—crossing habitats utterly changed by human impacts. “For lowland tropical species whose geographical range lies far from mountains, for example in the middle of the Amazon,” Colwell says, “the prospect for extinction cannot be dismissed” [Scientific American].

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A newly discovered ant from the Amazon rainforest is so strange that researchers have named it “the ant from Mars.” Found in Brazil, the ant has a pale body and no eyes, says [lead researcher] Christian Rabeling…. Its mouthparts stick out like sharp forceps and are longer than the rest of its head. Its DNA may be even more interesting. Genetic analysis puts the new ant so far from other species that it deserves its own subfamily [Science News].

Researchers named the subterranean ant Martialis heureka, which translates to “eureka ant from Mars,” because of the new species‘ odd morphology and because of their own excitement over finding it. Researchers say that a DNA analysis suggests that the M. heureka evolved earlier than any other living ant, and that it has changed little over 50 million years. “This discovery lends support to the idea that blind, subterranean predator ants arose at the dawn of ant evolution,” Rabeling said [LiveScience].

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In a cluster of coal mines in eastern Illinois, researchers have discovered the fossilized remains of ancient rainforests that date from the Carboniferous era, including one forest that stretched for 39 square miles. Researchers say the forests date from both before and after an episode of intense global warming that occurred about 306 million years ago, and may shed light on the ecosystem’s reaction to the drastic climate shift.

Researchers published a report on the first fossilized rainforest last year, but announced this week at the British Association’s Festival of Science that they have since come across five more patches of ancient woods. Says paleontologist Howard Falcon-Lang: “Three of the forests predate global warming and the rest follow it, so we can compare the ecology of those rain forests to see what the effect of global warming was.” During that period the Earth’s climate flipped from being covered with large polar icecaps to a greenhouse state that was completely ice-free, he added [National Geographic News].

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Anthropologists have uncovered the remnants of a sophisticated network of settlements in the Amazon rainforest that date back to pre-Columbian days, and which challenge notions of what a complex and organized society can look like. The 28 towns and villages found thus far were tucked away in the forest and linked by roads, and may have supported as many as 50,000 people across an area slightly smaller than New Jersey. Says lead researcher Mike Heckenberger: “These are not cities, but this is urbanism, built around towns…. If we look at your average medieval town or your average Greek polis, most are about the scale of those we find in this part of the Amazon” [Reuters].

Researchers believe that these settlements were first occupied about 1,500 years ago, and say that indicates that the rainforest has been shaped by human habitation much more profoundly than previously realized. [T]he Western Amazon forest is not, strictly speaking, what could be called “virgin” forest. It is what took over after local cultures were wiped out by European settlers and their diseases and their towns and villages were left untended [New Scientist].

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Researchers have discovered that tiny mammals called the pen-tailed tree shrews spend hours each night sipping fermented palm nectar, but show no sign of intoxication–in other words, they don’t fall down after a nighttime binge.

The creatures live deep in the Malaysian rainforest, and have one favorite food source: the bertam palm, whose flowers have a very strong and distinctive smell. “They smell like a brewery,” [researcher Frank] Weins says. In fact, the flower buds function as brewing chambers — they have been invaded by previously unknown species of yeast, which ferment the nectar into frothy alcohol. “The maximum alcohol concentration that we recorded was 3.8 percent,” Weins says. “That’s in the range of a beer” [NPR].

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Orangutans, which some scientists believe are second only to humans in intelligence, could be the first great ape to go extinct if swift action isn’t taken to conserve their rainforest habitat and protect them from poachers, according to a new survey.

The orange-furred primates live in the wild on only two islands, Sumatra and Borneo. The survey, which was conducted by the Great Ape Trust and will be published this month in the journal Oryx [subscription required], alarmed researchers because it showed that orangutan populations have plummeted in just the last few years. It found that the number of orang-utans on Sumatra island in Indonesia has fallen by 14 per cent since 2004 to only 6,600 animals…. In Malaysia’s Borneo island, the largest home of the species, numbers fell by 10 per cent in the same period to 49,600 apes [Telegraph].

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You may not spend much time contemplating the benefits bestowed on the planet by Papua New Guinea’s vast tropical rain forest — in fact, you may be only vaguely aware of the island nation’s existence. But it’s down there in the Pacific Ocean, just above Australia, quietly hosting an estimated 6 percent of the world’s species in an area that accounts for less than .5 percent of the Earth’s land.

Now, a thoroughly alarming study shows that 15 percent of the rain forest had been cleared by 2002. Researchers say that if deforestation continues at the present rate, half of the forest could vanish by 2021. And if the trees go, so will many of the unique species found in this biodiversity hotspot.

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