08 May 2003 By Tomas Sarmiento, Environmental News network-Reuters

ON THE ORINOCO RIVER, Venezuela — It may be South America's largest fresh water turtle, but when the green-lacquered amphibian is young, it fits in the palm of a hand and looks like the ideal aquarium pet.

The Arrau turtle is threatened with extinction, so every year conservationists in Venezuela collect thousands of the hatchlings, raise them in captivity, and then release them into the wild to try to guarantee the survival of the species.

Hunted for their meat and eggs by native Indians and other residents living along the banks of Venezuela's mighty Orinoco River, the population numbers of the species known in Latin as Podocnemis expansa have been decimated over the last century.

"The problem is basically human. Residents of the region have a strong tradition of eating the eggs, eating the newborns and the adult turtles," said Omar Hernandez, coordinator of the government-funded program to save the turtles.

Although the species has been legally protected since the 1960s, turtles are sold at local markets for nearly $100 each. The region's poor inhabitants, mostly farmers, simply go to the river and catch them to enrich their meager diet.

For the last 11 years, Venezuela's Scientific Development Foundation FUDECI has spearheaded the project to raise and release young Arrau turtles into the Orinoco River. The release point is a sun-baked, sandy islet in southwest Venezuela, where the Orinoco flows between the isolated and jungle-covered states of Apure and Bolivar.

During the 19th century, German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt estimated there were at least 300,000 adult female turtles, Hernandez said. Today, despite the prohibition on hunting, only about 1,000 female adults lay their eggs on the jungle islands and beaches of the Orinoco, one of the world's largest rivers.

A small team of biologists, ecologists, and government officials annually takes thousands of recently born turtles from the river to a nearby breeding center to protect them for a year and strengthen their chances of survival in the wild.

INTO THE WATER

When they are born, Arrau turtles are the size of a coin and easy to catch. Avid predators include not just local fishers but also a long list of wild creatures such as the catfish, the heron, and the black-and-white "cari-cari" hawks that swoop over the banks of the river.

When freed, the young turtles measure a more robust five inches in diameter and are safe from most of their natural enemies. "We can avoid the high mortality rate, and the animals are much more likely to escape," Hernandez said.

The Arrau turtles that inhabit the basin of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers are also found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, and Peru. When fully grown, they can reach about one yard in length.

The FUDECI project financed by the government has released about 120,000 Arrau turtles into the wild since it began, including 16,000 freed during the latest operation in April. Next year, Venezuela expects to release about 50,000 turtles into the Orinoco River, one of the key spawning areas for the turtles, Environment Minister Ana Elisa Osorio said.

The government hopes the project will help take the Arrau off the endangered list. The turtles reach sexual maturity around age 15, so in the next three years, some of the turtles raised briefly in captivity should start to breed.

COLOMBIAN BROTHERS

Venezuela is studying joint conservation projects with Colombia since the turtles often swim across the border between the two Andean neighbors, said Colombian Environment Minister Cecilia Rodriguez, who attended April's turtle release.

"This is a species of habitual migrants. Without a doubt these turtles released here will pass through the River Meta and say hello to their Colombian brothers," the minister said.

The proximity of the border with war-torn Colombia is evident. Journalists, officials, and project members who witnessed April's release operation reached the islet on National Guard patrol boats bristling with weapons.

But Angel Brito, one of the turtle project pioneers, is less worried about border tensions than about preserving the planet for his children. "Our greatest hope is that our children and grandchildren can get to know this important species, the hope that we can save a species," Brito said as he watched the last few turtles paddle slowly into the swirling currents of the great river.

By Peter Wilson

Caracas, May 7 (<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan fire fighters worked to control four forest fires on the mountaintop national park that overlooks the country's capital, El Nacional reported.

The fires were on the mountain's north side, facing the Caribbean, the newspaper said, citing firefighting units. The four fires have been burning since Saturday and have consumed about 260 hectares (642 acres).

Similar fires broke out in March. Venezuela's rainy season starts this month.

The fires are burning on the same mountain range where the country's worst-ever natural disaster occurred in 1999, when mudslides and floods killed at least 15,000 people.

(EN 5/7 A8) To see El Nacional's Web site, click on {NCNL } Last Updated: May 7, 2003 08:51 EDT

californiaaggie.com By Beth Walker Aggie News Writer

May 05, 2003 - What do a graduate student at The Domes, students at the Agrarian Effort Co-op and 100 households in Davis have in common? They all use solar panels to cut down on electricity use from fossil fuels. Tim Krupnik, a UC Davis graduate student who lives in The Domes — the fiberglass igloo-like dwellings on the west side of campus — spent about $400 for the batteries and inverter and installed some donated photovoltaic, or PV, panels on his roof. With the 170 watts it produces daily, he runs his lights, stereo and computer. The energy his stove and refrigerator consume comes from the utility company. “[The Domes] are obviously ecological dwellings,” Krupnik said. “I wanted to literally practice what I preach.” He said plans to build a solar-powered community structure are underway, so that all 28 residents in the 14 domes could share common resources instead of using more energy to power every dome’s kitchen. Krupnik is one of an increasing number of local residents pursuing solar power, spurred on by state-sponsored rebate programs and a desire to use cleaner energy. And, like the communal power systems planned for The Domes, solar energy can power more than one home. In summer 2002, solar panels were installed behind the Agrarian Effort Co-op on campus. During the summer months, they collect enough current to power the three co-ops and provide enough for one house during the winter. Solar power had been a project for the past eight years, according to Co-op resident Morgan Cisar, but was delayed by campus bureaucracy and building codes. The $26,800 price tag — $13,400 after state rebates — was funded entirely by the Co-op residents. “We tax ourselves,” said Cisar, a sophomore and activity director of ASUCD’s Project Compost. He said money from past rents accumulated in the Co-op’s bank account until residents could make the payment. Not only are people in alternative housing and co-ops choosing to use renewable energy, but more than 100 Davis residents have also installed solar paneling. Liz Merry and Bob Schneider, who live in the Village Homes development on Westernesse Road, obtained their 2.5-kilowatt photovoltaic system in November 2001. They spent $22,000 on the project; state rebates later brought the total to $14,500. Merry, a resident of Davis for 10 years, has been active in environmentally active groups, such as the Sierra Club and the Davis Energy Efficiency Project, for two decades. In 2001, motivated by the energy crisis and looking for ways to save money, Merry called around to find out about solar power options, but could not receive direct responses. “They didn’t have a three- or four-step answer,” she said. She said her frustration led her to research PV systems on the Internet for a month and a half until she understood the process and cost. Merry teamed with five other Davis homeowners interested in obtaining the technology but did not know where to start. So she organized the Davis Solar Group, at whose meetings PV neophytes could assist each other with paperwork and hiring an installer. “The people who are early adopters, anybody who buys photovoltaics [and] wind [energy],” she said. “It’s called early adopters in a business sense — those people really need to hang together and talk and make sure the technology is working well.” Talking with an alternative-energy user The California Aggie met with Merry and her husband, Bob Schneider, at her home to discuss her experience equipping her home with solar power. California Aggie: What factors led you to use alternative energy? Talking with an alternative-energy user The energy crisis got me interested in renewable energy….And then we had that workshop, the Energy Choices Workshop, and there’s a lot of people just like me that year who wanted to invest in PV and knew that’s what they were going to do and just needed their questions answered. So I organized us and we all installed PVs.

CA: So what exactly about the energy crisis prompted you to look into it? LM: That electricity prices were going up and that the state rebate program went up…which made it…relatively affordable. Other than that, people would have a hard time doing it.

CA: Your community here, Village Homes — is it a kind of ecological community? LM: It’s a very ecologically oriented community, with “community” as the big term. It’s a development of 225 houses, but we don’t have fences between our houses, at least not tall ones; we have a lot of communal areas. We share greenbelts on the front and back of our homes. Cars take a really secondary role in the community. We don’t have big garages all over the place.

CA: Have you been saving money on your energy bill? LM: Definitely. We’ve saved a lot of money. We use a lot of electricity…we’re not a typical PG&E customer or what you’d call conservation customer because that aquarium…takes a lot of pumping to keep the salt water where coral will be growing in it. So I actually use probably 1100 kilowatt-hours a month. An average home would probably use 700 to 900. I knew that we were going to get this reef tank when I started looking into PV…I wanted to make sure that [PV] was offsetting [the tank’s energy use]. PG&E sends you this huge statement every month. They treat all of the residential PV owners as mini-utilities, independent power producers…. We’re using about 1100 kilowatt-hours, but…we’re being charged for 560 kilowatt-hours….We’re producing more than half of what we use.…We would be paying about 26 cents a kilowatt-hour…the way the tiered rates go, but our PV system is producing all that so we don’t have to pay more than 11 cents a kilowatt-hour.

CA: How did you get the rebates? What was the process? LM: The first thing you do to get your rebate is to sign your contract with a PV installer. Get a copy of the contract that has the price and the warranty. The warranty has to be five years and then you submit that to California Energy Commission. They give you a reservation number. As long as you do just what you said you were going to do within nine months, they’ll give you this check when you do it. You install everything and you get the check at the end.

CA: Was it a real bureaucratic nightmare or was it easy? LM: I did it with this group of people, which we informally named the Davis Solar Group afterwards….We all learned together. So we had meetings at my house, did all the paperwork, actually used the same installer so he gave us a price break at that time because there were six of us all at once. That was a really good way to do it. Now we all share information on how our systems are doing and if there’s anything wrong.

CA: How does it work? LM: The sun hits the panels and the panels send direct current down these wires, and the direct current gets inverted to alternating current and the alternating current goes straight into the panel and the fish tank uses it. Today we produced 9 kilowatt-hours; right now we’re doing 324 watts, so that’s not very much. But total, we’ve done 5,471 kilowatt-hours since we started. To conceptualize, a kilowatt-hour is 1,000 watts over one hour, so like 10 100-watt light bulbs running for an hour. When it’s a really sunny, beautiful day [the electricity meter] will go backwards, and that’s a lot of fun. It’s feeding the grid instead of costing us money.

CA: Do other houses end up using some of this electricity? LM: It’s going into the PG&E utility grid. We’re all on the grid. It just feeds power back into the grid and goes wherever it’s being used. And this is a little [8-watt] panel. In the summertime the sun hits it and it powers a little fan [to cool the inverter].

CA: How much does the system generate? LM: There’s 2,880 watts up there. Through the panel inefficiency and the inefficiency of the inverter you get more like 2,200 watts on a really peak, perfect day. If it’s really clean I’ve seen it at 2,400….So that’s the kind of games renewable-power people go out and play…look at their meters and watch how much power their inverter is producing and call each other and say, “Wow, I did 18 kilowatt-hours today, oh boy.” Just know that’s power that’s not being produced by coal or nuclear or oil or even a dam you didn’t like…it’s a pretty good feeling.

CA: How long did it take to put it up? LM: About three days total. Once the equipment got here, we had a crane to put things on the roof. It’s a tile roof so that makes it more expensive than a regular roof. For a regular house [installation] would cost between $10,000 to $12,000 to put PV on for a regular size system…. It produces about twice as much; if it’s a 2,000 watt system it produces about 4,000 kilowatt-hours per year.

CA: Is there newer solar technology? LM: Solar, renewable energy is as new as you get. But how you collect it is certainly being developed. These are panels, and that’s almost old technology at this point. It’s film, except much thinner; it looks like an X-ray.…You see [new technology] on tiles. They’re blue and green and they look really, really pretty. And they’re PV panels, each little tile. Developers in California are adopting that. It’s called building integrated photovoltaics.

CA: So people are building it right into roofs? LM: Exactly. You can do your roof and your PV system at the same time. We don’t have very much of that around here because the developers bought all the equipment. But [panels] are the most economic thing to do.

CA: Why do you think Davis is so ecologically friendly? Bob Schneider: There were visionary people here early on…Because there’s a university here, and there used to be really activist students.

CA: Have you ever had problems with your PV system? LM: It did get dirty last summer. The production was about 10 percent lower than it should have been…so the guy who installed it came out and squeegeed it off.

CA: Why would you recommend this particular system or alternative forms of energy? LM: It’s a good thing to do for the planet. Because every watt that you’re not using and that you’re producing with renewable energy is one that doesn’t have to be developed in some other country or here in California. People in California don’t really have a sense that everything they consume affects Venezuela and Colombia and places really far away: Africa, India…we really are having an effect on other people’s environments.

CA: How long does it take to pay for PV? LM: There’s two ways to figure out the payback period. We paid for it in cash…It’s going to be taking us about 14 years to pay it back to the point where we’ve saved or not paid PG&E….A better way to finance your system…is when you’re doing a home loan or a mortgage and add $15,000 on a 30-year mortgage and pay $35 a month and be saving $70 a month….Over time you may have bought the system one and a half times…but cash flow-wise you’re actually paying less. I’d say it’s the difference between renting and owning your electricity. From PG&E, I rent it and use it, but I have to keep paying them….This way I own it and it’s always mine. Should we choose to conserve and just use how much it produces, it would all be free.

CA: Would you ever be able to power your whole house just by PV? LM: Yes. With this house we could do that. It’s a 2.5-kilowatt system. If we didn’t have the aquarium and we didn’t turn our heating and air system on, and didn’t have such a large Energy Star refrigerator.…There’s several things we could do….I’m very confident we could get to the point where it’s doing 90 percent of our electricity….I like solutions that involve common, easy things…put things on timers, use your software ability to put computer asleep at night….I like technology answers where we have them, at least. So PV is one of the easy technology answers.

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, May 3 (<a href=ipsnews.net>Inter Press Service News Agency-Tierramérica) - Any overview about birds in Latin America conveys a sense of the great wealth of species, serving as a reminder of the region's almost lavish biological diversity and of the aggressions against the environment, which not only threaten the habitat of one kind of bird or another, but of all living things.

Of the 9,700 known bird species in the world, 4,339 (45 percent) are found in the Americas. Of that total, 649 are in danger of becoming extinct before 2020, according to the environmental coalition BirdLife International, based in Britain.

In Brazil and Colombia, the world leaders for biodiversity, the threat of extinction hovers over 114 and 77 bird species, respectively.

Worldwide, 1,200 bird species -- approximately one out of eight -- are in danger of disappearing forever within the first two decades of this century.

The impacts of human activity on the environment are the cause behind bird species endangerment in 99 percent of the cases, according to the Washington-based non-governmental Worldwatch Institute.

Howard Youth, author of ”Winged Messengers: The Decline of Birds”, says we are witnessing the worst wave of species extinction since the dinosaurs disappeared from Earth 65 million years ago.

In the past 500 years, since the Europeans arrived in the Americas, at least 128 bird species have disappeared from the hemisphere, with more than 100 of that total becoming extinct in the just the last two centuries.

Birds serve as valuable environmental markers, says Youth. Clemencia Rodner, president of the Audubon Foundation of Venezuela, explained this concept to Tierramérica: ”Due to their visibility, birds are the best indicator, an early warning sign, when something is going wrong in an ecosystem. They flee or their numbers diminish.”

The loss of habitat is the leading threat to bird populations, if it does not cause their extinction outright. Each year, the world loses more than 50,000 square km of forests, an area the size of Costa Rica.

That was the case of the 'poc', inhabitant of Guatemala's Atitlán Lake until a generation ago. Known in English as the giant pied-billed grebe, it became extinct as the result of the diminishing coverage of the shoreline bush it nested in, the 'tul'.

A contributing factor to the demise of the poc was the 1976 earthquake, which caused the lake level to fall several meters, killing off the tul, but another was the introduction -- by humans -- of the black 'lobaina', which fed on the eggs of the poc, also known as the Atitlán grebe.

”It was a very special bird, unique to Guatemala and the colour of dark coffee. It didn't fly, it was a diver,” Diego Esquina, mayor of Santiago Atitlán, told Tierramérica.

A fast swimmer, the poc is remembered by older residents of the area for its ability to escape the gaze of the curious, diving under the lake surface, and not reappearing until it was 20 to 25 meters farther away.

In the mid-1980s, the ”save the poc” campaign was launched, but it only proved able to prolong the lives of the handful of remaining birds for a few more years.

Unfortunately, a similar story may be told of the harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja), ”a monumental bird”, says Rodner, and the strongest bird of prey in the world. It can weigh up to nine kilos, bit it needs an extensive -- and also protected -- habitat.

This type of eagle was historically found from southern Mexico to northern Argentina. Today, the area along the Venezuela-Brazil border is one of its best-preserved populations, but ”they feed almost exclusively on monkeys and sloths, and need to eat at least one every two days,” explained the activist.

”Where can populations develop in order to make the species viable, with several dozen birds? In Venezuela, only on the Yanomami indigenous reserves in the extreme south. But what happens if the jungles begin to disappear, and with them the sloths and the monkeys?” asks Rodner.

The onslaught against birds in general has several fronts: an airport planned for construction on the site that was Texcoco lake in Mexico could affect 70 species; pesticide use contaminates land and water and is fatal for millions of birds worldwide each year; trapping parrots to turn them into pets is a threat to one out of three parrots around the globe.

But to fight these threats, there are programmes to protect birds and their habitats in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela -- seven of the 12 countries with greatest biodiversity, alongside China, India, Indonesia, Kenya and South Africa.

Many birds fly great distances -- even across oceans -- and their protection must be coordinated by several countries if it is to be effective.

One example of a bi-national initiative with public and private funding is aimed at conserving some 5,000 swallow-tailed kites (Elanoides forficatus), which migrate between southeastern United States and Brazil.

The dickcissel (Spiza americana) lives and reproduces in the northern hemisphere summer on the U.S. plains, and in the winter heads to central-western Venezuela, where the species is known to ruin rice and sorghum crops.

The Venezuelan Audubon Foundation is promoting an alliance with local farmers to convince them not to kill the birds but to scare them off using a repellent in their fields.

The protected areas of Venezuela cover a combined total of 14 million hectares, or 16 percent of the national territory, in 43 national parks, 17 natural monuments and seven wildlife refuges. But Rodner complains that the country has not developed management plans for these areas to ensure appropriate habitat for the species meant to be protected.

Luis Cova, of the governmental Wildlife Institute, told Tierramérica ”there are many cases of success. For example, the refuges created along Venezuela's Caribbean coast have pushed up the number of flamingos from 18,000 to 44,000 in just over 10 years.” (Humberto Márquez is an IPS correspondent. Jorge Alberto Grochembake/Guatemala contributed to this report.)

• Originally published Apr. 26 in Spanish by the Latin American network of Tierramérica newspapers. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme: www.tierramerica.net (END/2003)

The Boston Globe By Paul Epstein and Chidi Achebe, 5/2/2003

IT IS HARD these days to think about oil. Images of blackened birds, hostages on oil rigs, and war are not pleasant. But since so many of the world's ills stem from drilling this ''black gold,'' a review of its multifarious impacts helps narrow in on solutions that could change our course. In Buzzards Bay, 14,700 gallons lie subject to shifting winds in an oil slick, tarnishing inlets, egrets, shellfish, and loons. On Nigeria's offshore rigs, 97 hostages are being held, crowning decades of conflict over oil.

Once called ''The Prize'' by Daniel Yergin in 1991, oil has become ''the curse.''

In November the spill from the Prestige -- carrying twice the oil as the Exxon Valdez -- stained the rugged Atlantic coast of Galicia, Spain, affecting more than 100,000 porpoises, puffins, gannets, and kittiwakes. It has damaged fisheries, livelihoods, and tourism. In Africa's most populous nation, sludge sickens communities as slicks bathe Niger River banks. From extraction to combustion, oil is hazardous to our health -- and to our security.

The increasing use of oil, as well as coal and natural gas -- all fossil fuels -- has come at an enormous price. An ''oiligarchy'' controls an expanding empire, and its entrails and discharges defile our air and land and water. More drilling threatens our national parks and wildlife refuges. In Nigeria, Ecuador, and Venezuela, oil has widened economic divides and the wealth generated engenders conflicts worldwide. Supply lines -- internationally and via our national grid -- are vulnerable to political instabilities.

Nigeria has suffered profoundly from political unrest fueled by oil and from reprisals in which thousands have been killed. The corruption spawned by oil casts a vast net of social pain that has not abated with the transition to democracy.

Venezuela is in turmoil, with oil the trophy. Angola, rich in oil, diamonds, and gold, has just ended a 30-year war, leaving physical devastation across the land. The war in Afghanistan was brewing for years before 9/11 -- to secure a pipeline from the newest megafind of oil along the Caspian Sea. The list, including the Iraq war and its uncertain aftermath, goes on.

Meanwhile, deep in the Ecuadorean forest, discharges from 333 wells despoil Indian homelands and contaminate the headwaters of the Amazon. In the Gulf of Mexico, fish nibbling near drilling sites get their fill of mercury and pass it on to birds, marine mammals, and humans who eat them. Refining emits benzene, which causes cancer, and burning pollutes the air and water with mercury, particles, and smog and causes acid rain.

Climate change -- a threat the oil companies could not have foreseen -- is the ''de-icing'' on the cake as glaciers and polar caps crack and retreat.

We are rapidly approaching a critical climatic and social threshold, and we must find a substitute for this finite resource. As ''The Prize'' foretold, oil has become the central actor in the modern world, and an unstable climate and disease threaten humans and wildlife and the very forests and coral habitat we all depend upon.

We need a new energy policy -- and urgently. We can double our efficiency -- as is done in most of Europe and Japan -- with hybrid cars, ''green buildings,'' and ''transport oriented growth.'' Alternative energy sources like solar panels already light homes, clinics, and schools in developing nations, power computers and small businesses, cook and refrigerate food, and purify and pump water for consumption and agriculture. As clean water grows dearer, solar energy can turn sea water into fresh supplies.

In the past century, huge subsidies assisted oil and facilitated networks of highways and airports. Switching to clean energy sources will require a lot of creativity and a lot more collaboration than the world has seen to date. But the potential costs of neglect are unthinkable, and the proper incentives can create a new clean engine for the global economy and propel us into a much healthier future.

Dr. Paul R. Epstein is associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Chidi Achebe, a Nigerian physician, works in Boston and studies at the Harvard School of Public Health.

This story ran on page A101 of the Boston Globe on 5/2/2003.