MONUMENTAL GEOLOGICAL UPHEAVALS: 93% Of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Suffering From Coral Bleaching - Expert Says "WE'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS SCALE OF BLEACHING BEFORE"!

A turtle swims over bleached coral at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef.AFP-JIJI

April 21, 2016 - AUSTRALIA - Australia's Great Barrier Reef is suffering its worst coral bleaching in recorded history with 93 percent of the World Heritage site affected, scientists said Wednesday, as they revealed the phenomenon is also hitting the other side of the country.

After extensive aerial and underwater surveys, researchers at James Cook University said only 7 percent of the huge reef had escaped the whitening triggered by warmer water temperatures. "We've never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before," said Terry Hughes, convenor of the National Coral Bleaching Task Force.

The damage ranges from minor in the southern areas — which are expected to recover soon — to very severe in the northern and most pristine reaches of the 2,300-km-long (1,430-mile-long) site off the east coast.

Hughes said of the 911 individual reefs surveyed, only 68 (or 7 percent) had escaped the massive bleaching event which has also spread south to Sydney Harbor for the first time and across to the west.

Researcher Verena Schoepf, from the University of Western Australia, said coral is already dying at a site she had recently visited off the state's far north coast.

"Some of the sites that I work at had really very severe bleaching, up to 80 to 90 percent of the coral bleached," she said. "So it's pretty bad out there."

Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt said it is "absolutely clear that there is a severe coral bleaching event occurring not just in the Great Barrier Reef but throughout many parts of the Pacific."


WATCH: Aerial survey of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching.

Hughes said the bleaching began in Hawaii late last year and has already affected several Pacific islands.

"Right now, New Caledonia, the Coral Sea, the northern half of the Barrier Reef and New South Wales are bleaching severely, and Western Australia is quickly catching up," he said.

Bleaching occurs when abnormal environmental conditions, such as warmer sea temperatures, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, draining them of their color.

Corals can recover if the water temperature drops and the algae are able to recolonize them, but scientists warned last year that the warming effects of an El Nino weather pattern could result in a mass global bleaching event.

Hughes said while bleaching has been linked to El Ninos, which generally occur every four to six years, "it wasn't until 1998 that one finally caused a bleaching event to happen" on the Great Barrier Reef. "So the issue is global warming," Hughes said, saying the link between water temperature and the severity of the bleaching is clear.

Hughes said the impact on the Great Barrier Reef would have been even worse had not a tropical cyclone which smashed into the Pacific island of Fiji in February brought rain and cooler weather to parts of Queensland.

"If you think about it, being rescued by the vagaries of a cyclone is a fairly precarious place to be," he added.

Andrew Baird, from James Cook University's center for coral reef studies, said he had been surprised by the scale and severity of the event on the major tourist draw card, which is teeming with marine life.

"We've been expecting a really big event for a while I suppose and here it is," he said.


WATCH: The Great Barrier Reef.

Baird said because the bleaching is far less serious in the southern reaches "lots of the reef will still be in good shape."

"But the reef that's been badly affected — which is a third to a half of it — is going to take a while to recover," he said.

"And again the big question is how many of these events can it handle? And I think the answer is not many more." - Japan Times.

WAR ON MOTHER NATURE: Human Devolution And Vampirism - Poland Approves Logging Europe's Last Primeval Forest?!

March 26, 2016 - POLAND - Poland on Friday gave the go ahead for large-scale logging in the Bialowieza forest intended to combat a spruce bark beetle infestation, despite scientists, ecologists and the EU protesting the move in Europe's last primeval woodland.

"We're acting to curb the degradation of important habitats, to curb the disappearance and migration of important species from this site," Jan Szyszko, environment minister with Poland's right-wing government told journalists.

Szyszko vowed that the logging plans would not apply to strictly protected areas of the primeval forest that was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.

But under the new plan, loggers will harvest more than 180,000 cubic metres (6.4 million cubic feet) of wood from other areas of the forest over a decade, dwarfing previous plans to harvest 40,000 cubic metres over the same period.

Vowing to protect the forest, Greenpeace accused Szyszko of "ignoring the voices of citizens and scientists, the European Commission, UNESCO and conservation organisations."

Along with other environmental groups protesting the move, Greenpeace also said the logging could trigger the EU to launch punitive procedures against Poland for violating its Natura 2000 program.

Sprawling across 150,000 hectares, the Bialowieza forest reaches across the Polish border with Belarus, where it is entirely protected as a nature park.

It is home to 20,000 animal species, including 250 types of bird and 62 species of mammals—among them Europe's largest, the bison.

Europe's tallest trees, firs towering 50 metres high (164 feet), and oaks and ashes of 40 metres, also flourish here, in an ecosystem unspoiled for more than 10 millennia. - PHYS.

 

WAR ON MOTHER NATURE: Massive Oil Spill In Bangladesh - Villagers Struggle To Clean Up, As Oil Threatens Rare Dolphin Preserve; Environmentalists Warn Of An Ecological "Catastrophe"!

The oil tanker was carrying an estimated 357,000 litres (77,000 gallons) of oil when it sank in the Sundarbans’s Shela river, home to
rare Irrawaddy and Ganges dolphins.  © Agence France-Presse

December 12, 2014 - BANGLADESH - Bangladeshi villagers using sponges, shovels and even spoons worked Friday to clean up a huge oil spill in a protected area that is home to rare dolphins, after environmentalists warned of an ecological "catastrophe".

Thousands of litres of oil have spilt into the protected Sundarbans mangrove area, home to rare Irrawaddy and Ganges dolphins, after a tanker collided with another vessel on Tuesday.

The government has sent a ship carrying oil dispersants to the area, which is inside one of three sanctuaries set up for the dolphins.

But environmentalists say the chemicals could harm the delicate ecology of the Sundarbans, a UNESCO world heritage site.

As authorities debated whether to deploy the dispersants, the company that owns the stricken oil tanker said it would buy up the oil that local villagers have collected.

Bangladeshi villagers try to collect oil that spread in the river after an oil tanker sank in the Shela River in Mongla, in a photo taken on December 11, 2014.
© World Conservation Society

"It has no commercial value as it can't be used, but we are using the offer to encourage people so that the cleaning up process speeds up," said Rafiqul Islam Babul of the Padma Oil Company.

"Villagers including children are going out onto the river in boats to collect the oil floating on the water using sponges, shovels and spoons," he said.

"Then they are putting it in small ditches on the river banks and our employees are buying it."

The head of the local port authority earlier told reporters that fishermen would use "sponges and sacks" to collect the spilt oil, which has already spread over an 80-kilometre (50-mile) area.

A Bangladeshi oil-tanker lies half-submerged on December 9, 2014, after it was hit by a cargo vessel on the Shela River in the Sundarbans in Mongla

Amir Hosain, chief forest official of the Sundarbans, admitted that authorities were unsure about the best course of action.

"This catastrophe is unprecedented in the Sundarbans and we don't know how to tackle this," he told AFP.

"We're worried about its long-term impact, because it happened in a fragile and sensitive mangrove ecosystem."

Damage already done

Rescue vessels have now salvaged the tanker, which was carrying an estimated 357,000 litres (77,000 gallons) of oil when it sank.

But officials say the damage the has already been done as the slick has spread to a second river and a network of canals in the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, which straddles India and Bangladesh.

Rubayat Mansur, Bangladesh head of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, said most of the oil appeared to have already leaked out of the tanker before it was salvaged.

A Bangladeshi oil-tanker lies half-submerged on December 9, 2014, after it was hit by a cargo vessel on the Shela River in the Sundarbans in Mongla.
© World Conservation Society

"I visited the sunken trawler this morning. Only few hundred litres of oil remain inside, so almost all the oil has spilled into the Sundarbans," he said.

Mansur said oil dispersants were "not appropriate for the mangrove ecosystem" and urged local villagers to help collect the oil from nets that have been placed in the river to contain its spread.

Spread over 10,000 square kilometres (3,800 square miles), the Sundarbans is a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site and home to hundreds of Bengal tigers. The delta comprises a network of rivers and canals.

Mansur said Bangladesh's coastal areas including the Sundarbans were the "largest known home" of the Irrawaddy dolphins.

"Irrawaddy Dolphins can be found in South East Asia. But their population size is very small compared to Bangladesh," said Mansur.

Bangladesh set up sanctuaries in the Sundarbans in 2011 after studies showed that there were hundreds of endangered Irrawaddy and Ganges river dolphins there.

Fishing is banned in the area, but tankers and other boats are allowed to pass through.

The Irrawaddy and Ganges dolphins are both on the warning "red list" of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which says numbers are falling. - PHYS.

EXTREME WEATHER: 2,600 Acres of Wildfire Ravages The Reunion Island, the Worst Wildfire the Area Has Ever Seen in 20 Years!

"...a true national catastrophe..."

French authorities sent reinforcements Monday to battle a wildfire raging through the national park of Reunion Island, a unique ecosystem designated a World Heritage Site.

A total of 171 firefighters were to arrive on the French overseas territory in the southwestern Indian Ocean, local prefect Michel Lalande said, bringing to 400 the number of French reinforcements sent to help battle the blaze. The fire erupted on October 11 in La Reunion National Park and according to local officials has already affected more than 2,600 hectares (6,400 acres) of land. The park, which covers more than 100,000 hectares or 40 percent of Reunion, was last year granted World Heritage Site status by UN cultural agency UNESCO, which praised its "variety of rugged terrain and impressive escarpments, forested gorges and basins creating a visually striking landscape".

UNESCO raised concerns about the fire in a statement last week, saying it was "the worst the area has seen in 20 years. Key areas of endemic plants seem to be seriously affected as well as other key micro-habitats for biodiversity. Among wildlife, several rare species are under threat," UNESCO said. French environmentalists have accused authorities of reacting too slowly to the fires. The French Green Party on Sunday denounced "the drastically inadequate response" by state and local authorities to the fire, which it called "a true national catastrophe". - AFP.