Still on bears, the twisted thoughts who like their paws on a plate are highlighted in the June 2007 issue of the Malaysian Naturalist (published by the Malayan Nature Society), which in a feature article, "Eating On The Wild Side", showed a grizzly picture of a pair of detached pads wrapped in newsprint. Across the country, wildmeat restaurants serving bears, mousedeer, pangolins, serows, leopards and tigers continue to cater to diners with a taste for dubious tonics at a rate beyond the means of enforcement officers.
The same issue also features a letter by S.M. Mohd Idris, President of Sahabat Alam Malaysia, condemning a statement by a senior politician that endorsed the export of long-tailed macaques as pets or menu items in monkey-brain establishments in Northeast Asia. Also covered is the plight of Tualang honey hunters by Lake Pedu in Kedah, whose ancient livelihood is being threatened by loggers eager for mature timber.
There is also an oft-held notion that Singapore can do without its nature areas as plenty of forests and wilderness still exist in neighbouring lands. Indonesia certainly gives the lie to this belief, as long as it maintains its present rate of deforestation, which will see the archipelago fully denuded within 14 years, and as long as its politicians regard its rainforests as a means of political leverage rather than the very lifeline of the nation itself. Malaysia, by comparison, is usually seen as a better performer, although illegal logging and unmitigated habitat destruction still occur at significant rates, as revealed by bear researcher Wong Siew Te.
At times, civil society can achieve powerful victories, such as the protection of the pristine Belum-Temenggor forest in Perak. But sadly, some authorities there still give no thought to conservation, happily condemning one of the nation's oldest forest reserves and a rare green lung to become part of the vast urban sprawl that extends throughout much of central Selangor under questionable circumstances. Before it goes under an army of bulldozers though, a last ditch effort was made to collect a threatened aquatic aroid for cultivation and showcase the final days of the forest's exquisite flora, which include the rare waterlily Barclaya kunstleri (a plant of deep shade and cool waters that is probably impossible to grow in artificial conditions) and Begonia aequilateralis, a critically endangered begonia known only from two populations, and soon, just one.
Across Asia, mere remnants remain of once unbroken jungles that are increasingly seen as powerful carbon sinks that help mitigate global climate change. Data from way back in 1996 show that Bangladesh has lost 92% of its forest cover, India 80%, the Philippines 94%, Thailand 78% and Vietnam 83% (Corlett & Primack, 2005). Population pressures, the overwhelming power of bed-sharing politicians and lumber magnates (sometimes one and the same – read this new report by Global Witness about Cambodia's logging mafia) who prize private profit over public good, endemic corruption and seemingly unquenchable demand for energy collude to chip away what remains.
Back in Singapore, what thought has been given to the not-too-hidden assumption that every square inch of soil and shore will have to earn its keep? Prevalent economic models seem to rely primarily on population growth and the slow but steady encroachment of wealth-generating activities onto remaining natural areas. What hope then do places like Chek Jawa, Pulau Ubin, the Southern Islands and other local hotspots of biodiversity have against those who fail to see that the 'development' of these lands would equal an irreplaceable loss (for gardens and parks are but pale copies of forests and reefs) of space, ecosystem services and sanity? What lessons would neighbours aspiring to rapid affluence learn when even the most advanced of states sees no way but to sacrifice nature for national output?
Addendum: A new research paper in Science looks at the world's missing carbon sink, concluding that compared to temperate forests in North America and Siberia, intact tropical rainforests are responsible for "removing an unexpectedly high proportion of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, partially offsetting carbon entering the air through industrial emissions and deforestation."
Writing in "Weak northern and strong tropical land carbon uptake from vertical profiles of atmospheric CO2", a team led by Britton Stephens of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado found that northern forests absorb only 1.5 billion tons of carbon a year, almost 1 billion tons less than the estimate produced by earlier computer models.
The scientists also found that intact tropical ecosystems are a more important carbon sink than previously thought. Previously models had suggested that tropical ecosystems were a net source of 1.8 billion tons of carbon, but the new study indicates that tropical ecosystems are the net source of only about 100 million tons of carbon, even though tropical deforestation is occurring rapidly. Thus, the forests are helping to offset industrial carbon emissions and the atmospheric impacts of land clearing much more than once thought. Now, if only we could devise a system to get tropical nations to value (and allow richer countries to help pay for) what's left of their natural greenhouse gas scrubbers before they pay the price in higher sea levels, weirder weather, droughts, disease outbreaks and the knowledge that political will succumbed to short-sighted recalcitrancy and the blind logic of the invisible hand.
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