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#TropicalForests

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Q: How can we fight Deforestation around the world?
A: Provide an income to landowners for leaving their land as forest, paying them to keep it forest. How can that be done and paid for / funded?

Listen on Spotify:

#sustainability #ForestPreservation #biodiversityloss #nature
#tropicalforests #trailcam
#biology #forest #forests

open.spotify.com/episode/5QcB7

SpotifyForest Preservation Around the World - Fighting Deforestation & Biodiversity LossSparks Sustainability · Episode

New article on trait-environment relationships in tropical forests of French Guiana.

Marion Boisseaux has published a new paper from her PhD thesis (part of the METRADICA project). While environment didn't explain much of the trait value variation when traits were considered individually, it had a strong influence on trait syndromes.

Blog post ➡️ ecology.ghislainv.fr/news.html
Article ➡️ doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.1467

Honduras: Anti-mining activist Juan Lopez shot dead

#JuanLopez is the fourth member of an #environmental #activism group based in in #Tocoa to be killed since 2023.

President #XiomaraCastro condemned the murder and has ordered an investigation.

September 16, 2024

"An #AntiMining #EnvironmentalActivist in #Honduras who protested to preserve #TropicalForests and rivers was killed over the weekend, even after warnings to better ensure his safety.

"Juan Lopez, 46, was gunned down as he left church Saturday in the northeastern town of Tocoa, police said on Sunday.

"Honduran President Xiomara Castro condmened the apparent murder of Lopez, a member of the Libre party she's allied to, in comments online.

"'We condemn the vile murder of our comrade and environmental leader Juan Lopez in Tocoa, Colon,' she said. 'I have ordered that all the capabilities of law enforcement be used to clarify this tragedy and identify those responsible.'

Multiple members of Lopez's enviromental organization killed

"Lopez belonged to the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods, an environmental organization in Tocoa on the country's Atlantic coast.

"Three other members of the group were killed last year in what the organization saw as retaliation.

"The group had suffered threats and harassment for years amid efforts to preserve the #Guapinol and #SanPedro rivers, and the #CarlosEscaleras #Nature Reserve, as the presence of #mining and #hydroelectric companies increased.

"Honduran Attorney General Johel Zelaya said the 'reprehensible' murder would not go unpunished, and paid tribute to Lopez's #activism.

"'His life was an example of struggle. He never gave up in his incessant battle, hand-in-hand with the people to preserve natural resources,' Zelaya said on X.

Lopez aware of risks of his activism

"An outspoken member of the ruling #LibreParty, Lopez had recently publicly called for the resignation of Libre officials caught on video negotiating bribes with drug traffickers in 2013.

"Carlos Zelaya, a brother-in-law of president Castro, was caught up in that video. He resigned his seat in congress after admitting he took part in that meeting with drug gangsters.

"'If you leave home, you always have in mind that you do not know what might happen, if you are going to return,' Lopez had said in 2021 when speaking of his activism with AFP.

"Lopez had also raised the alarm himself earlier in the year, saying he had noticed two people on motorbikes observing him in locations around his home.

Activist deaths high in Latin America

"Global Witness, a British NGO, says Honduras is one of the world's most dangerous countries for environmental activists.

"#LatinAmerica accounted for 85% of all the world's environmentalists who were killed last year, with 18 deaths registered in Honduras, according to #GlobalWitness.

"The United Nations resident coordinator in Honduras, Alice Shackelford, said Lopez had been threatened for his activism and praised his determination to stand up to powerful interests.

"'We condemn the terrible murder of Juan Lopez, a human rights defender threatened for his work,' she said in a post."

km/msh (AFP, Reuters)

dw.com/en/honduras-anti-mining

#JusticeForJuan #GuapinolRiver #WaterDefender #SaveTheForests #DefendTheSacred
#NoMiningWithoutConsent #Greenwashing #WaterIsLife #SaveTheRivers #EMCO #InversionesLosPinares
#MunicipalCommitteeForTheDefenseOfCommonAndPublicGoods

Deutsche Welle · Honduras: Anti-mining activist Juan Lopez shot deadBy Deutsche Welle

#AmazonForests poisoned by #mercury from #GoldMining

Study finds unprecedented levels of #MercuryPollution

January 28, 2022
by Cheryl Walker

"Wake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

"The total mercury concentrations in a forested area in #Peru’s #LosAmigosConservationConcession were the highest ever recorded.

"The study, 'Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution From #ArtisanalGoldMining,' appears Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications. The research team was led by Jacqueline R. Gerson, as a Ph.D. student at Duke University.

“What this study found was that the wildest forests left on earth are capturing mercury released by artisanal mining, and at superfund-site levels,” said Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Presidential Chair of Conservation Biology and Director of Wake Forest’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. 'The wildlife and humans that live within these wild forests are poisoned as well, with effects that we are just beginning to understand.'

"''This study reveals, for the first time, the mechanism of how mercury released into the air by gold mining contaminates #TropicalForests and forest #soils,' Fernandez said. “This atmospheric mercury, which is either deposited on to leaves or absorbed by leaves, eventually falls to the ground and gets incorporated into forest soils.'

"The region of #MadreDeDios is considered a global #biodiversity hotspot, but in recent decades has suffered an unprecedented #GoldRush. mining is doing irreversible damage to one of the world’s largest remaining pieces of #TropicalRainforest and threatening its survival. In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, east of the Andes Mountains, nearly 250,000 acres of rainforest, roughly the size of Dallas, Texas, have been razed and transformed into somewhere that looks like a desert pockmarked by tens of thousands of mercury contaminated mining ponds by illegal #GoldMining.

"Gold miners use toxic mercury to pull flakes of gold out of the river sediment. Then, they separate the gold from the mercury using open fire ovens. The heat melts the gold and turns the mercury to a toxic vapor.

"'People had a lot of ideas about where mercury might be going in these tropical landscapes, and they turned out to be wrong,' Silman said. 'The paper shows that mercury isn’t staying in the mining zone, but rather that trees are scrubbing mercury from the air and transferring it into forest #ecosystems, and into forest wildlife and peoples, where it moves up the food chain with unknown effects.'

"The study also reveals how these contaminated soils serve as a repository for this deposited mercury, preventing. or at least slowing, its transfer into rivers and lakes where it is transformed into a more toxic form of mercury, #Methylmercury, and contaminate aquatic food webs."

news.wfu.edu/2022/01/28/amazon

#WaterIsLife #GoldMine
#GoldMining #Cyanide

Wake Forest News · Amazon forests poisoned by mercury from gold miningWake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

Amazonian forests 🌴🌳 in Brazil—
“Four out of every five trees there have been felled…” leading to fears of #extinction for many #tree species, plus the animals living there.

This area needs protection and restoration now.

#trees #TropicalForests #Amazon #nature

nautil.us/tropical-forests-in-

Nautilus · Tropical Forests in Big TroubleOver a third of all species of trees on the planet may face extinction.

For anyone interested in #Conservation , #TropicalForests , #SouthAmerica , and #InternationalInvestments ,

our study "Changing determinants of international conservation #funding committed to major #deforestation regions in South America" led by Dr. Siyu Qin investigates 5 factors (conservation targets, threat levels, costs, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and preexisting investment) that potentially influence conservation funding allocation over 1987-2013.

authors.elsevier.com/c/1i6pv1R