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CCD Coalition: 206 - Earth’s Tree News
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Australia:
Scientists have found that Australia’s tropical rainforests are a lot more important in ‘cleaning’ the earth’s environment than anyone previously thought. All trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but until now, scientists had thought the temperate forests found in the northern hemisphere were better at sucking up CO2 than the tropical rainforests of South-East Asia. Environmental scientist at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory, Lindsay Hutley, says the new research turns the traditional view of global carbon patterns on its head. “This new work is kind of reversing that, suggesting that actually there’s quite a significant sink from the tropics and much weaker sink from the northern hemisphere,” he said. Dr Hutley says the new paper, published in the journal Science, reinforces what he has been finding in his own work on tropical savannas in north Australia. It turns out tropical savannas are also good at taking carbon out of the atmosphere. “I guess it just reinforces how important tropical ecosystems are,” he said. “We know how important they are in terms of biodiversity but now this work suggests that they’re having a major impact on the global carbon balance and perhaps a more significant impact on it than what we previously thought.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/22/1958683.htm
Hundreds of Australian farmers are planning to chop down protected trees on their properties in a day of protest against strict land-clearing laws, prompting public condemnation on Wednesday from environment groups. Fed up with government restrictions on the use of their land, the farmers in New South Wales state are organising a day of civil disobedience on July 1, with proposals to cut down a tree on each property. “It’s been a long campaign by farmers who have been sidelined by the government. This day of clearing a tree, taking a tree out, has been bandied about for a long time,” local farmer Alistair McRoberts told Australian radio on Wednesday. The move comes as the Australian and New South Wales governments continue their investigation into whether one farmer in the Gwydir Valley bulldozed part of an internationally protected wetland and cleared it of vegetation. Australian Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned farmers against breaking any laws on land clearing or tree felling, saying that this would constitute criminal action rather than an act of civil disobedience. “The proposition that we’re all entitled to do with our land whatever we like is simply not true, whether you live in the country or the city,” Turnbull said on Tuesday. McRoberts said his group represented a minority of farmers, but after more than a decade of talks with governments and environment groups, many farmers in the Gwydir Valley had not been properly compensated for locking away large tracts of land. He said the government wanted to stop land clearing because it wanted the vegetation to be used to offset carbon pollution from the country’s vast coal industry. In a joint statement, Australia’s Wilderness Society, WWF Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation said the planned protest should be condemned. http://www.forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=76479
