Wandojo Siswanto, one of the negotiators for Indonesia's delegation at 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen and a key architect of its Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) partnership with Norway, has been sentenced to three years in prison for accepting bribes.
Following an investigation by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), Wandojo was found guilty of receiving a bribe of about $10,000 from Anggoro Widjojo, a director of PT Masaro Radiokom, to win favorable treatment in the Ministry of Forestry's budget for the telecommunications company. Wandojo had been named in at least two other corruption probes, including a 2008 case where he admitted to taking a Rp 50 million ($4,600) kickback from lawmaker Al-Amien Nasution.
Wandojo was removed as a Special Advisor to the Minister of Forestry in September. Wandojo's arrest and sentencing highlight concerns about the capacity of Indonesia's forestry ministry to manage potentially billions of dollars of payments under the proposed REDD+ program, which aims to reduce Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions by shifting its development model away from one that consumes forests to one that protects forests. Several governments—including Norway, which has already committed up to a billion dollars—are supporting the initiative.
Concerns over the fate of Indonesia's REDD funds have been raised before. Critics cite the country's reforestation fund, which lost $5.25 billion between 1994 and 1998, according to Ernst and Young audit. The fund was managed by the forestry ministry. Losses have continued through 2009. Chandra M. Hamzah, deputy chairman at the KPK, told Reuters in September that the forestry sector is "a source of unlimited corruption."
Wandojo was quoted in The Jakarta Post in 2010 responding to Norway's initial refusal to provide additional funds for tree planting "We will renegotiate the agreement with Norway. Indonesia needs money for tree planting."
Wandojo has been one of several figures in the investigation. In August the Corruption Court convicted Anggodo Widjojo -- the brother and business partner of PT Masaro Radiokom's Anggoro Widjojo -- for attempting to bribe officials from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) with as much as Rp 5.1 billion ($566,000) in an attempt to get it to drop a corruption case against his brother. Anggodo Widjojo was sentenced to four years in prison, while his brother has been at-large since August 2008.
Kaban, the forestry minister from 2004 to 2009 and a legislator from 1999-2004, is also a person of interest in the case. Kaban has been linked to several other corruption cases, including bribe-taking for issuance of forest concessions, according to the Jakarta Post.
Earth the feature film came out in 2007, but I just watched the DVD over the weekend. I was immediately struck by the photography, which is nothing short of remarkable. Each landscape and habitat is shown in glorious HD, and you really need to see it on an HD television in order to get the most from it. Watch it on a standard television set and you'd really be missing out.
I only regret not seeing this in the cinemas when it first came out, but I'm guessing Indonesian cinemas would never show anything of this much value in any case. The documentary itself is divided into life stories which focus on certain species and their hunt for food or water. It's very similar to the National Geographic "Great Migrations" which came out recently, and which I'll also be reviewing shortly. In that, I mean it shows at least a great journey carried out by a few select species and their hardships along the way.
We see an adult polar bear on the search for seals, desperately venturing onto the sea ice in a race against time before the ice thaws. This window of opportunity is getting smaller and smaller each year as the ice caps melt earlier and global temperatures rise. A herd of elephants are also shown making their annual migration towards the Okavango delta on the trek for water. Again we are reminded of desertification, deforestation and the fact that these crucial waters are beset on their route by human extraction for a variety of uses, but primarily farmland irrigation.
A humpback whale and her calf make the journey southwards on the hunt for krill and along the way we are treated to a variety of dazzling oceanic spectacles which really bedazzle you with their glorious HD imagery. However, there is the constant reminder of climate change as these creatures are dependent of course on krill which are in turn dependent on ice.
It really is a fascinating documentary and cannot be faulted. I highly recommend anyone to watch it and I have since shown it to one of my classes. Despite their usual indifference towards any subject matter that doesn't involve hollywood celebrities or handheld gadgets it met with a favourable reception. I think the message of the film hit home, and they as I shared the somewhat pessimistic opinion that it won't be long before the species we see here are a myth which we will pass on to our grandchildren but will eventually be forgotten. And so it is that this fantastic documentary is overshadowed by sadness. Sadness at being almost certain of the fate that awaits these glorious creatures unless we do something about it, and fast. You can get involved and the film urges us to in it's closing credits. Visit Life Is to find out more.
If radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant - disabled by the March11 tsunami and earthquake - continues to enter the ocean, marine life could be threatened, experts say. In the past week, seawater samples taken near the nuclear power plant, on Japan's eastern coast, have shown elevated levels of radioactive isotopes, including cesium 137 and iodine 131, according to the New York Times.
All life on Earth and in the oceans lives with exposure to natural levels of ionizing radiation - high-frequency radiation with enough energy to change DNA. Most such genetic damage heals, but the addition of human-made radiation can make it harder for the body to repair broken genes.
Radiation concentrations in the Japanese seawater samples have fluctuated in past days, but on Wednesday the amount of iodine spiked to 3,355 times the legal limit for seawater, Japanese nuclear safety officials told the Associated Press.
That level is the highest so far—and an indication that more radiation is entering the ocean, though how is still unknown, the agency reported. Cesium was also found to be 20 times its safety limit on March 28, according to the Times.
Radiation Can Cause "Bizarre Mutations" Once in seawater, radiation can hurt ocean animals in several ways—by killing them outright, creating "bizarre mutations" in their offspring, or passing radioactive material up the food chain, according to Joseph Rachlin, director of Lehman College's Laboratory for Marine and Estuarine Research in New York City.
"There will be a potential for a certain amount of lethality of living organisms, but that's less of a concern than the possible effects on the genetics of the animals that become exposed," Rachlin said. "That's the main problem as I see it with radiation—altering the genetics of the animal and interfering with reproduction."
Even so, according to radioecologist F Ward Whicker, the concentrations of iodine and cesium levels "would have to be orders of magnitude larger than the numbers I've seen to date to cause the kind of radiation doses to marine life that would cause mortality or reductions in reproductive potential. I am very doubtful that direct effects of radioactivity from the damaged reactors on marine life over a large area off the coast of Japan will be observed."
Likewise, using legal limits to gauge damage to marine life is of little value right now, he said. To make a "credible assessment" of the risk to marine animals, scientists would have to know the actual concentrations of radioactive iodine in the water and fish or other marine animals off Fukushima Daiichi, he said.
Radiation Hardest on the Little Ones It's possible that levels of radioactive contamination near the Fukushima nuclear reactors could increase and cause some harm to local marine life, Whicker said. "If this happens, the most likely effects would be reductions in reproductive potential of local fishes. ... ," he said. "Marine organisms' eggs and larvae are highly sensitive to radiation, since radioactive atoms can replace other atoms in their bodies, resulting in radiation exposure that could alter their DNA."
Most such deformed organisms don't survive, but some can pass abnormalities on to the next generation, Lehman College's Rachlin said. Either way, the radiation exposure could hurt the population's ability to survive long-term. Rachlin thinks the most susceptible critters would be soft-bodied invertabrates such as jellyfish, sea anemones, and marine worms - which can take up the radiation more quickly than shelled creatures - though Whicker said fish may be most at risk.
Whicker added, "I would expect any temporary losses in reproduction in local fish to be offset by immigration of unaffected individuals from surrounding areas that would be impacted to a lesser degree." In addition to its threats to reproduction, pockets of radioactive material can can burn fish passing through, hitting them like a stream of searing water, Rachlin said.
Complicating matters is the fact that predator species in the Pacific such as tuna and sailfish are already stressed by overfishing, according to Rachlin. "I'm concerned—this is the spawning season. ... If this impacts the survivorship of the young and larvae, this will be a further insult."
Radiation Threat Here to Stay? According to chemical oceanographer Bill Burnett, "In the short run [the radiation] could have some definite negative impacts" on marine life. "The good news is the half life [of iodine] is only eight days," added Burnett, an expert in environmental radioactivity at Florida State University. So "if they stop the source of radioactive leakage, this is going to be a short-term problem." However Fukushima Daiichi's leaking cesium is potentially more serious, since that isotope takes 30 years to decay, Burnett said.
Radiation Can Travel Up the Food Chain There could also be some movement of radiation up the food chain if animals eat irradiated plants and smaller, radioactive animals, Rachlin said. In particular, plants such as kelp can quickly absorb iodine, FSU's Burnett said. There's a possibility that the devastation of towns in northeastern Japan caused by the earthquake and tsunami also released toxic metals such as lead into the soil and water, according to Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendall.
Previous studies have shown that metals can work in concert with radiation to suppress immune systems in vertebrates, making them more vulnerable to disease, Kendall said. It's a "big issue for the environment and human health because of the widespread destruction. It takes me back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina—this to me is even more complicated with the radiation."
Ocean Resilient Against Radiation The ocean has a "tremendous capacity" for diluting radiation, Colorado State's Whicker noted. "It also has resilience, in the sense that the area would recover over time as the situation improves and as the radioactivity decays and disperses." "But I should caution that we have not had much opportunity to study the effects of very large releases of radioactivity into marine ecosystems," he said. The best data comes from nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s.
Texas Tech's Kendall also pointed out that there's not much known about radiation in seawater."The dose makes the poison," he said, "and the more concentrated the radiation, the more potential effects. It's something we definitely need to monitor." Added Lehman's Rachlin: "If it's a one-shot pulse, OK, not a problem. But if the radiation leaks continue for several months, Japan may be dealing with a more serious blow to marine life, he said. The coastline, after all, isn't Chernobyl, he said. "We can't cement [over] that whole area."
Something that I have really become passionate about recently is the concept of the Vertical Farm. The idea was coined by Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental health sciences and microbiology at Columbia University in New York City, who developed the idea of vertical farming in 1999 with graduate students in a medical ecology class.
Despommier had originally challenged his class to feed the population of Manhattan (about 2,000,000 people) using 13 acres (5.3 ha) of usable rooftop gardens. The class calculated that, by using rooftop gardening methods, only 2 percent would be fed. Unsatisfied with the results, Despommier made an off-the-cuff suggestion of growing plants indoors, vertically. The idea sparked the students' interests and gained major momentum. By 2001 the first outline of a vertical farm was introduced and today scientists, architects, and investors worldwide are working together to make the concept of vertical farming a reality. In an interview with Miller-McCune.com, Despommier described how vertical farms would function:
"Each floor will have its own watering and nutrient monitoring systems. There will be sensors for every single plant that tracks how much and what kinds of nutrients the plant has absorbed. You'll even have systems to monitor plant diseases by employing DNA chip technologies that detect the presence of plant pathogens by simply sampling the air and using snippets from various viral and bacterial infections. It's very easy to do. Moreover, a gas chromatograph will tell us when to pick the plant by analyzing which flavenoids the produce contains. These flavenoids are what gives the food the flavors you're so fond of, particularly for more aromatic produce like tomatoes and peppers. These are all right-off-the-shelf technologies. The ability to construct a vertical farm exists now. We don't have to make anything new."
Preparation for the future
It is estimated that by the year 2050, close to 80% of the world’s population will live in urban areas and the total population of the world will increase by 3 billion people. A very large amount of land may be required depending on the change in yield per hectare. Scientists are concerned that this large amount of required farmland will not be available and that severe damage to the earth will be caused by the added farmland. Vertical farms, if designed properly, may eliminate the need to create additional farmland and help create a cleaner environment.
Increased crop production
Unlike traditional farming in non-tropical areas, indoor farming can produce crops year-round. All-season farming multiplies the productivity of the farmed surface by a factor of 4 to 6 depending on the crop. With some crops, such as strawberries, the factor may be as high as 30.
Furthermore, as the crops would be sold in the same infrastructures in which they are grown, they will not need to be transported between production and sale, resulting in less spoilage, infestation, and energy required than conventional farming encounters. Research has shown that 30% of harvested crops are wasted due to spoilage and infestation, though this number is much lower in developed nations. Despommier suggests that, if dwarf versions of certain crops are used (e.g. dwarf wheat developed by NASA, which is smaller in size but richer in nutrients) year-round crops, and "stacker" plant holders are accounted for, a 30-story building with a base of a building block (5 acres) would yield a yearly crop analogous to that of 2,400 acres (970 ha) of traditional farming.
Protection from weather-related problems
Crops grown in traditional outdoor farming suffer from the often suboptimal, and sometimes extreme, nature of geological and meteorological events such as undesirable temperatures or rainfall amounts, monsoons, hailstorms, tornadoes, flooding, wildfires, and severe droughts. The protection of crops from weather is increasingly important as global climate change occurs. “Three recent floods (in 1993, 2007 and 2008) cost the United States billions of dollars in lost crops, with even more devastating losses in topsoil. Changes in rain patterns and temperature could diminish India’s agricultural output by 30 percent by the end of the century.”
Because Vertical Farming provides a controlled environment, the productivity of vertical farms would be mostly independent of weather and protected from extreme weather events. Although the controlled environment of vertical farming negates most of these factors, earthquakes and tornadoes still pose threats to the proposed infrastructure, although this again depends on the location of the vertical farms.
Conservation of resources
Each acre in a vertical farm could allow between 10 and 20 outdoor acres of farmland to return to its natural state, and recover farmlands due to development from original flat farmlands.
Vertical farming would reduce the need for new farmland due to overpopulation, thus saving many natural resources, currently threatened by deforestation or pollution. Deforestation and desertification caused by agricultural encroachment on natural biomes would be avoided. Because vertical farming lets crops be grown closer to consumers, it would substantially reduce the amount of fossil fuels currently used to transport and refrigerate farm produce. Producing food indoors reduces or eliminates conventional plowing, planting, and harvesting by farm machinery, also powered by fossil fuels. Burning less fossil fuel would reduce air pollution and the carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, as well as create healthier environments for humans and animals alike.
Organic crops
The controlled growing environment reduces the need for pesticides. Advocates claim that producing organic crops in vertical farms is practical and the most likely production and marketing strategy.
Halting mass extinction
Withdrawing human activity from large areas of the Earth's land surface may be necessary to slow and eventually halt the current mass extinction of land animals.
Traditional agriculture is highly disruptive to wild animal populations that live in and around farmland and some argue it becomes unethical when there is a viable alternative. One study showed that wood mouse populations dropped from 25 per hectare to 5 per hectare after harvest, estimating 10 animals killed per hectare each year with conventional farming. In comparison, vertical farming would cause very little harm to wildlife.
Impact on human health
Traditional farming is a hazardous occupation with particular risks that often take their toll on the health of human laborers. Such risks include: exposure to infectious diseases such as malaria, exposure to toxic chemicals commonly used as pesticides and fungicides, confrontations with dangerous wildlife such as poisonous snakes, and the severe injuries that can occur when using large industrial farming equipment. Whereas the traditional farming environment inevitably contains these risks (particularly in the farming practice known as “slash and burn”), vertical farming – because the environment is strictly controlled and predictable – reduces some of these dangers. Currently, the American food system makes fast, unhealthy food cheap while fresh produce is less available and more expensive, encouraging poor eating habits. These poor eating habits lead to health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
Urban growth
Vertical farming, used in conjunction with other technologies and socioeconomic practices, could allow cities to expand while remaining largely self sufficient food wise. This would allow for large urban centers that could grow without destroying considerably larger areas of forest to provide food for their people. Moreover, the industry of vertical farming will provide employment to these expanding urban centers. This may help displace the unemployment created by the dismantling of traditional farms, as more farm laborers move to cities in search of work. t is highly unlikely that traditional farms will become obsolete, as there are many crops that are not suited for vertical farming, and the production costs are currently extremely lower.
Energy production
Vertical farms could exploit methane digesters to generate a small portion of its own electrical needs. Methane digesters could be built on site to transform the organic waste generated at the farm into biogas which is generally composed of 65% methane along with other gasses. This biogas could then be burned to generate electricity for the greenhouse.
Developers and local governments in the following cities have expressed serious interest in establishing a vertical farm: Incheon, Abu Dhabi, Dongchan, New York City, Portland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Surrey, Toronto, Paris, Bangalore, Dubai, Shanghai and Beijing. The Illinois Institute of Technology is now crafting a detailed plan for Chicago. It is suggested that prototype versions of vertical farms should be created first, possibly at large universities interested in the research of vertical farms, in order to prevent failures such as the Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, Arizona.In 2010, the Green Zionist Alliance proposed a resolution at the 36th World Zionist Congress calling on the Jewish National Fund to develop vertical farms in Israel.
A little while ago, Greenpeace initiated a campaign to get FaceBook users to play an active role in pushing the social networking site to opt for renewable energy when choosing it's data centre. They have done this by setting up a Facebook group page to "unfriend coal", with the deadline of Earth Day, April 22nd.
This action started because Facebook is due to move to a new data centre to cope with the increasing demand on its servers. This move will take place this year, and they have so far opted to move to Oregon. The area is well known as being driven by coal and fossil fuels for it's electricity needs. For a company with such a broad social impact, it it imperative that they send the right message to their followers. And that message should be to go green.
Greenpeace want Facebook to
Increase the use of clean energy to make Facebook coal free
Develop a plan to make Facebook coal free by 2021
Educate their users about how Facebook powers its services and its carbon footprint
Advocate for clean energy at a local, national and international level
Greenpeace has been working in the IT industry for half a decade to get companies to be greener. Facebook's coal problem is representative of the IT sector's growing demand for energy. At current growth rates data centers and telecommunication networks, the two key components of the cloud Facebook depends on, will consume about 1,962 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020. That's more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.
PacifiCorp is the power company which Facebook chose to supply their new US$ 180 million data centre in Prineville, Oregon. Pacific Power, whose parent company is PacifiCorp, gets almost 60 percent of its energy from burning coal. Facebook also went to a state, Oregon, with only one existing in-state coal plant (that's shutting down within the decade) and instead decided to throw its lot with a utility that imports dirty coal from Wyoming, two states over.
It has been 70 years since Rothschild giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi), aka Baringo giraffes, disappeared from the Lake Baringo area of Kenya that gave them one of their names. But now eight of these critically endangered animals have returned to the lake, and with them comes an unexpected bonus: a promise of peace.
According to a report from Kenya's The Standard, the Pokot and Njemps peoples have been at war for centuries "in endless fights over cattle, pasture and water," resulting in "blood-spilling orgies of violence."
Elders from the two communities met recently, conducted unity prayers, and promised to end the violence between them. Their incentive: tourism and jobs. Lake Baringo is a popular destination for bird-watchers, but constant conflict has kept tourists away from what is known as the Baringo District where the Pokot and Njemps people live. The elders say that they hope the presence of the endangered giraffes will bring more visitors to the area.
Already, the presence of the giraffes has created jobs. More than 100 people have been employed to provide security for the animals.
Rothschild giraffes disappeared from the area in the 1940s following an extended drought and a history of poaching. It was the Njemps elders who came up with the idea to bring giraffes back to Lake Baringo four years ago. They approached the nearby Ruko Community Wildlife Conservancy (RCWC), a 19,000-acre wildlife sanctuary which is already home to numerous other species and had already relocated a herd of impala to the area.
With the help of the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Northern Rangelands Trust, the RCWC acquired eight giraffes from the Soysambu Conservancy, also in Kenya, and began the difficult task of relocating the giraffes. It wasn't easy: it started with a six-hour truck ride, then an hour-and-a-half ferry across Lake Baringo, with the latter marking the first time that giraffes have traveled by water in Kenya.
The four male and four female giraffes now have been at Lake Baringo since February 7 and are reportedly adapting well to their new environment. Rothschild giraffes are critically endangered, with only about 670 of the animals left in the world. RCWC hopes the eight giraffes will start breeding and give birth to a new population at their historic Lake Baringo home.
On Friday, March 11, Japan was rocked by an earthquake. People were displaced, a nuclear reactor was in trouble, and the world watched as a tsunami flooded Japan, threatened the islands of the Pacific, and ultimately hit the western coasts of North and South America. Chris Rowan pointed out that very little of the devastation resulting from this earthquake was from the initial shaking. This is partly because of Japan's stringent building codes. But mainly because any damage from the seismic waves that sent skyscrapers in Tokyo swaying was dwarfed by the impact of the 10 metre tsunami that hit the Japanese coast less than an hour later."Most of the reporting (both good and bad) that has been done on the earthquake, the tsunami, and the resulting fallout from both has focused on their effects on humans. But humans are just one species affected by these sorts of disasters. I wondered: what happens to animals when faced with such a massive tsunami?
Slowly, a bit of information about various scaley, furry, or feathered critters has begun to trickle out of the affected areas. Kazutoshi Takami, a veterinarian at the Osaka Municipal Tennoji Zoological Gardens, reported last week that several zoos and aquariums were suffering shortages of gas, heater fuel, and food and drinkable water for humans as well as for animals. Also, according to Takami, the Fukushima Aquarium made plans to move their sea mammals and birds to Kamogawa Sea World.
M. Sanjayan of The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia, told ScienceInsider that the biggest impact on wildlife would be on shorebirds nesting on small islands throughout the Pacific, rather than on the Japanese mainland. Indeed, the majority of wildlife-related news of the tsunami has come from small Pacific islands such as those in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
On Saturday, March 12, Pete Leary, a wildlife biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service who is stationed at Midway, blogged extensively on the tsunami and subsequent animal rescue operations: "We had all 67 island employees/visitors up here watching the news on BBC and watching our tide gauge data over the internet. We saw that we had about a 5 foot rise in the tide gauge level, but were glad that we couldn't see any water when we looked out the windows.
After looking at a bit of the washover on Sand Island, and setting a crew to work on digging albatross chicks and petrels out of the debris, Greg and I took the boat over to Eastern Island. On the way, we passed thousands of albatross adults and petrels that had been washed into the water and lost their ability to stay dry. Their feathers were messed up by being tumbled over the island and through the vegetation. We pulled some into the boat, but needed to get to Eastern Island, so we had to hope that most of them would paddle to shore.
Eastern Island was mostly washed over, so 10's of thousands of chicks were washed away. I'll have to look at our count numbers from Dec. to figure out how many chicks were in the affected areas. There were dead fish by the hundreds up in the middle of the island. The short-tailed albatross chick must really be wondering what kind of place it lives in because it was washed away from the nest for the second time this year already. This time, it was about 40 yards away from the original nest. It was easy to spot because all the other chicks were washed away in a previous storm. I didn't want to pick the chick up, because it was already stressed and upset, but the parents may not have found it that far from the nest. I put out a sheet of plastic and when it stepped onto it, I gave it a sled ride the 40 yards back to its nest. I hope that's all the excitement that it has for the rest of the season.
There were a lot of chicks and adults buried in debris (mostly dead vegetation). Greg and I were digging out stuck birds all day. We took our volunteers and some people from the visitors group over yesterday and dug out another hundred or so birds. We also found 2 turtles that were washed quite a way up onto the island, which were then carried back to the beach and seemed glad to get back in the water. At least we didn't find any injured Hawaiian monk seals or Laysan ducks. The seals were back resting on the beaches on Friday. Although we lost a lot of wildlife, all of the people who are here because of the wildlife are safe."
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is now estimating that the Midway refuge sustained losses of more than 110,000 Laysan Albatross chicks – representing approximately 22% of chicks born this year – along with an estimated two thousand adults. In addition, thousands of Bonin petrels were buried alive, and thousands of fish were washed ashore where they suffocated. Thankfully, Pete and his staff were able to rescue a handful of birds and turtles, but this is small comfort compared to the loss of entire shorebird nesting sites.
Darwin’s famous Galapagos Islands fared a bit better. Despite the fact that the tsunami struck during high tide, the water rose over 1.7 meters beyond normal levels, flooding buildings along the coastline. UNESCO has reported that the Southwest side of San Cristobal Island, home to a nesting site for marine iguanas, was among the most affected areas of the Galápagos Islands World Heritage site. While some mortality is expected among the iguanas, officials do not expect extensive damage.
What Can We Expect? While some of the reports are heartening, and many are devasting, more in-depth research into the short- and long-term effects of the tsunami on marine and coastal ecosystems will take much longer. But the 2004 magnitude 9.15 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, and the resulting tsunami that rippled across the Indian Ocean have been extensively studied, and allow us to speculate regarding possible outcomes of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
The Wildlife Trust of India, along with the International Fund for Animal Welfare initiated several investigations following the earthquake and tsunami to assess their impact on wildlife. Overall, they found that damage to wildlife populations was generally limited on the mainland, and slightly worse on the islands. Particularly hard-hit, however, were coral reef systems. Several beaches were washed away, and freshwater habitats were inundated with saltwater. While most of these ecosystems were eventually able to rebound, problems did occur.
For example, one mainland wildlife sanctuary became flooded with saltwater and covered with sand, making is impossible for the various plant-eating ungulates (hoofed animals) to graze. Even worse, with seawater comes toxic pollution.
According to the Wildlife Trust report: Other grave problems stem from the onslaught of seawater laden with sediments and toxins. Aquifers, the primary source of drinking water, have been contaminated by saltwater, raw sewage, oil, and other pollutants. On the coasts of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, paddies and farm fields are smothered under a crust of salt and silt. Some areas may never recover, for others irrigation and one or more rainy seasons may be enough to flush out the soil. For now farmers are being encouraged to plant salt-tolerant crops, like pumpkins and kale.
In other areas, rather than covering plants with saltwater, the tsunami simply washed all plants away, making it possible for invasive species to take root, quite literally. The change in plant life wasn’t problematic for some species, such as the fan-throated lizard (Sitana ponticeriana), which were able to survive in the new ecosystem. Other species, surely, were not so lucky, but little information is available.
And there were probably other invaders, as well. Furry ones. Large dead trees from distant islands were found washed up on mainland beaches. While there was no danger to beach ecosystems from the trees themselves, since they were dead, they may have carried some critters with them that would eventually colonize mainland coasts. It is well-known that rodents, reptiles, and insects are quite capable of setting up camp in new environments after rafting across the sea.
As we can already tell from the Japan earthquake, birds are particularly vulnerable to tsunamis. But in the 2004 tsunami, it wasn’t all bad news for the birds! In fact, after the seawater receded, it left quite a bit of silt and sediment behind. Some of that sediment settled into pre-existing lagoons and creeks, making them much shallower. This would be bad news for most inhabitants of those lagoons, but great news for wading birds, who now had new places to nest. In one ironic example, the tsunami actually helped reverse human damage to a particular creek: This creek used to be a local birding area that attracts a large number of migrant waders and the blackwinged stilt (Himantopus himantopus). A few years ago, the Chennai Corporation as part of an effort to beautify the city had dredged and deepened the creek. The waders that had since left the creek had made a re-appearance after the tsunami brought back all the silt!
Other birds didn’t fare so well. A group of birds called the megapodes, which require external sources of heat to incubate their eggs, are found in the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Because they prefer to lay their eggs on sandy ground, over 90% of megapode nests were located within thirty meters of the waterline, prior to the tsunami. Several of the islands that are home to the megapodes were completely washed over, and others very nearly so. As with any bird species, maintaining constant temperature is critical for proper development of the birds within the eggs. Since these birds use external heat, however, the flooding of the nests by cold seawater became problematic for those nests that were closest to the water. Many of the birds that did survive relocated into the interior of the island, settling into evacuated villages. But when the villagers began to return, they were not happy to find the birds nesting around their homes. Even worse, the main source of income for these villagers came from coconut plantations, were were almost entirely washed away. As a result, the villagers turned to hunting and fishing in order to survive. One scientist noted "Each tribal family has one to four airguns. The Nicobar megapode was found to be the most favoured targets of these airguns."
As for shallow water fish, it was initially assumed that the tsunami would be beneficial for them as well. Researchers hypothesized that the dead and decaying material in the sea would result in a huge growth in plankton populations. This hypothesis was later confirmed, when scientists observed massive increases in plankton-feeding fish species, like sardines. Increases in fish populations, coupled with reductions in motorized boats in the area, brought more dolphins to the coastal waters as well.
There was more good news, for the sea turtles of Sri Lanka. Initial reports had confirmed that there was extensive damage to nesting sites, hatcheries, and adult foraging habitats due to the tsunami. However, the number of nesting females, at least at one site, remained unchanged in the following year. It is possible that the adults were simply at sea when the tsunami hit. The good news for these turtles should be understood in context, however. The researchers were quick to note that most sea turtle species in the region were already endangered, and that "the fate of sea turtles in the region is more likely to be determined by long-term human influences than by infrequent natural catastrophes."
When it came to non-human primates, the outcomes were mixed. In 2000, 40 groups of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis umbrosa), comprising 814 individuals were observed, with group size varying from 7 to 98 animals. While the groups that lived mostly in the interior of the islands were relatively unaffected, coastal groups were not as lucky. In particular, these groups lost quite a few juvenile macaques. In 2000, the adult to juvenile ratio was approximately 1:1, but following the tsunami, it had dropped to 1:0.4. The reduction in the proportion of juveniles will have long-term consequences for the social organization and popluation structure of those groups, as fewer juvenile females means fewer baby monkeys in subsequent generations. It is possible, that the reduction in macaque numbers wasn’t due to the tsunami itself, but rather came about as a result of the washing away of coastal fruit trees, leaving fewer resources and food for the macaque groups.
If the outcome of the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami for wildlife can be at all predictive of what is to come for the Japanese tsunami, there may be a few lessons to learn. First, coastal ecosystems were, in general, worse off than interior ecosystems. Second, islands fared far worse than the mainland. Already, data from Japan and the Pacific islands has begun to display this pattern. Third, many species seem to be able to either benefit from or at least persevere through such natural disasters. And where one species suffers, another might benefit.
Fourth, even if a given species isn’t directly affected by a natural disaster, there are often repercussions due to the complex interactions among different species, between plants and animals, and between predators and prey. Rather than asking about the outcome for a specific species, it makes more sense to ask about the health of larger ecosystems, in the wake of a tsunami.
And humans are a fundamental part of most ecosystems – which brings us to the final, and most important lesson. Human behavior can help ecosystems rebound following a tsunami, or it can continue the destruction. It was partially due to a moratorium on fishing – one that people generally respected – that allowed the sardine populations to thrive in the plankton-rich water, which allowed the dolphin populations to thrive, in turn, on the sardines. On the other hand, the hunting of the megapodes in the Nicobar Islands made it even harder for those birds to survive. And the tsunami might not have been terrible for the sea turtles, but they were endangered to begin with, thanks to human activity. As devastating as natural disasters can be to natural ecosystems, they are nothing compared to the long-term effects of human behavior.
