Rivers covered entirely by water hyacinth, cracked pavement shifting under the force of sprouting Japanese knotweed, and a dead red squirrel infected by its invader cousin from North America …

These are the most dramatic pictures that drum home the effects of invasive species, and they weren’t missing from the agenda last Tuesday, when some of the biggest stakeholders and government representatives came together in London to discuss the latest step in the fight against alien invaders.

The star speaker at the conference, convened by the European Squirrel Initiative, was François Wakenhut, head of the biodiversity unit in the European Commission’s environmental department, who briefed the attending MPs and organisations on what’s next in the collective effort against the likes of the killer shrimp and the Asian hornet.

But his main focus was on the new EU Regulation that came into force in January. It marks the first effort geared specifically towards the management of invasive exotics across the union’s member states – and hopes to get a grip on the most problematic plants and animals intruding on native wildlife.

A very British problem – and a growing one

Britain is home to at least 2,000 species that are not native to the country and currently sees ten new species cross its borders every year – as documented in the newly published
‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants & Animals in Britain‘.

Only around 15% of non-native species are actually invasive, meaning that they have negative effects on native wildlife and, in some cases, are also a burden on the economy. But they are the second biggest threat to biodiversity and cost the UK more than £1.7bn annually; across Europe, that number grows to €12bn.

Invasive species in Britain are already covered, at least partly, by various bits of existing legislation as well as several EU directives that deal with wildlife and conservation. And as Wakenhut correctly observed,

“The UK has been at the forefront of the invasive alien species fight over the past years and, in this sense, it is probably not a coincidence that one of the first debates on the implementation for the regulation is taking place here.”

The main legislation in the UK is the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, which makes it illegal – and punishable by hefty fines and even prison – to release any non-native plant or animal into the wild and also prohibits the sale of some species, like water fern and floating pennywort.

In addition, in 2008 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) put together, along with the Scottish and Welsh governments, an Invasive Non-Native Species Framework Strategy for Great Britain that is currently under review and will be updated later this year.

The different government agencies that are affected by invasive species also have representatives on a programme board, which works to coordinate policy throughout the UK.

Its secretariat, a small body within the Animal and Plant Health Agency, maintains an online database of invasive species and action plans against them, and spearheads campaigns like ‘Check, Clean, Dry’, an effort to educate boat and angling clubs on how to avoid importing and spreading aquatic invaders.

More cooperation between member states

Under the new EU regulation, invasive alien species of Union concern will be banned from possession, trade and release into the wild. Additionally, likely pathways across Europe will be increasingly monitored to prevent the spread of new as well as already established species.

In other words, what is already in place in Britain will now be enforced across all member states. How much this sharing of expertise and monitoring will actually change the situation in this country is questionable, at least until effective pathway management becomes measurable, for example by a decreasing rate of new invasions.

“I’m confident that, within two years, we will be able to show what the trend will be”, says Wakenhut. “Whether that trend will go in the right direction or not – too soon to tell.”

Another aspect of the regulation deals with polluters – those rare cases where the source of an introduction, intentional or not, can actually be proven. “If you can demonstrate that a private operator is at the source of the introduction, you will then be able to direct the responsibility and the burden of the restoration effort or the eradication effort to that operator”, says Wakenhut.

Countries will also be able to enforce emergency measures to circumvent the voting and vetting process of the commission when a surprise invasion calls for immediate action.

Which species are of Union concern will be decided over the course of this year. The European Commission will draw up a list of the most threatening species, which can then be managed across borders and, so goes the plan, eradicated or stopped from invading in the first place.

Priority would ideally be divided between those that haven’t arrived yet and those already wreaking havoc on national ecosystems and economies. But the process brings together a variety of different stakeholders, all with their own axe to grind.

Which is the peskiest of them all?

At the conference, three speakers made their case for three very different species to be placed high on the list: the grey squirrel, the American signal crayfish and Japanese knotweed.

All of these have well documented and often devastating effects. The grey squirrel has all but eradicated the British red squirrel since its introduction in 1876 while Japanese knotweed receives by far the most media attention out of all invasive species in Britain.

In fact, the infamous weed, known for cracking its way through concrete and tarmac and decreasing property values, is a good example of a species that has received enough attention and research funding that there is now a direct effort to keep it in check.

In 2010, after years of quarantined testing, a sap-sucking plant louse that exclusively targets Japanese knotweed was introduced at a few target locations throughout the country. It marked the first time an insect had ever been released against a weed in the EU, but five years later it is still too early to assess how successful this attempt at biological control will be.

“It’s a release program that’s been slightly hindered by the regulatory environment under which we work, so we haven’t been able to release on what we would call dream sites”, says Dick Shaw, the UK director of the non-profit research organization CABI, which is behind the knotweed cure.

“For the UK, we can’t do much more than we’re already doing [about Japanese knotweed]. If you go to France and you see tens of kilometres of rivers completely covered by Japanese knotweed and no one’s doing anything, I think there’s an awful lot more that can be done in the EU”, he adds.

During his presentation with the catchy name ‘Don’t ignore the biggest species: weeds are the worst’, Shaw was making the case for more than just Japanese knotweed. The plant he sees as the most threatening in Europe is actually floating pennywort, which is also widespread and close to getting its own bio control agent in the UK.

Himalayan balsam, another well-known invader whose uncontrollable spread has spurred local ‘balsam bashing’ events, now has to deal with a rust fungus that CABI released last year. As with Japanese knotweed, this intentionally introduced species does not affect native plants – and it’s not meant to eradicate Himalayan balsam, which covers an estimated 13% of Britain’s riverbanks, either.

“If it does work, it can at least stop it from spreading and being as competitive. So you wouldn’t get those monocultures [of knotweed or balsam], you would get it more interspersed with competitive native species. And then slowly they would begin to outcompete the knotweed. That’s the long-term goal”, said Shaw.

The most dangerous species will be decided on at the beginning of next year and the initial EU-wide list will likely be limited to species that already have solid risk assessments to prove their worthiness.

Until then, the member states and, at a lower level, organisations like CABI and the European Squirrel Initiative will try to influence the national and EU-wide selection process as much as possible.

“Inevitably, for the initial proposal that we’ll make, there will be a tendency to build upon what’s already been developed”, said Wakenhut. “So in that sense, we will borrow from what has already been peer-reviewed and risk-assessed. But we need to bear in mind that the list will be a dynamic one. Once we adopt it, it can be changed anytime.”

The main focus must be to keep out what has not yet arrived

One risk with this naturally biased process is that too much focus is put on plants and animals that have already invaded or spread, simply because a strong case for them is easily made – but at the cost of neglecting the prevention of future invasions.

During his talk, Wakenhut repeatedly emphasised the need for proportionality; that prevention is, in most cases, more cost-effective and easier to achieve than the eradication of an established species.

When the quagga mussel, a small invader from the Ponto-Caspian region around the Black Sea, was first found in Surrey last fall, it was already too late. As David Aldridge, an ecologist at the University of Cambridge and expert on the mussel, observed at the time: “We’re really just waiting for these pests to arrive. And you can’t do much once they’re here.”

The quagga is believed to have made its way, largely unhindered, through Central Europe and then to the UK from the Netherlands. “At the moment, there’s a number of species, like the Ponto-Caspian ones, that aren’t yet here but might arrive”, Trevor Salmon, who heads the Environment Agency’s native and invasive non-native species team, said at the conference.

Many of these will come to Britain through Europe and vice-versa. Even though Britain is at the forefront of the fight against them in Europe, this nonetheless makes cooperation between countries imperative.

Especially so since 75% of non-native species are introduced unintentionally, meaning that they can only be stopped by controlling their likely pathways. “It’s hitchhikers. It’s not like the problem is someone sticking a squirrel into a suitcase”, as Salmon puts it.

For now, which species will be included and how high they will place on the list is still up in the air. By next January, the commission will have completed a first draft of invasive alien species that are of Union concern. Its current biodiversity strategy envisions that, by 2020, already established species will be eradicated or controlled and new invasions a thing of the past.

But with the huge volume of people and goods crossing Europe every day, does this regulation have any hope of fulfilling its ambitious goal?

Wakenhut stays vague. “Whether we’ll deliver by 2020 is something we will assess then”, he says.

Yannic Rack is the editor of a hyperlocal news website and a journalism student at City University London who has written for local newspapers in the UK and the US.

Read: ‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants & Animals in Britain‘ by Olaf Booy, Max Wade & Helen Roy, is published by Bloomsbury this month.

Rivers covered entirely by water hyacinth, cracked pavement shifting under the force of sprouting Japanese knotweed, and a dead red squirrel infected by its invader cousin from North America …

These are the most dramatic pictures that drum home the effects of invasive species, and they weren’t missing from the agenda last Tuesday, when some of the biggest stakeholders and government representatives came together in London to discuss the latest step in the fight against alien invaders.

The star speaker at the conference, convened by the European Squirrel Initiative, was François Wakenhut, head of the biodiversity unit in the European Commission’s environmental department, who briefed the attending MPs and organisations on what’s next in the collective effort against the likes of the killer shrimp and the Asian hornet.

But his main focus was on the new EU Regulation that came into force in January. It marks the first effort geared specifically towards the management of invasive exotics across the union’s member states – and hopes to get a grip on the most problematic plants and animals intruding on native wildlife.

A very British problem – and a growing one

Britain is home to at least 2,000 species that are not native to the country and currently sees ten new species cross its borders every year – as documented in the newly published
‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants & Animals in Britain‘.

Only around 15% of non-native species are actually invasive, meaning that they have negative effects on native wildlife and, in some cases, are also a burden on the economy. But they are the second biggest threat to biodiversity and cost the UK more than £1.7bn annually; across Europe, that number grows to €12bn.

Invasive species in Britain are already covered, at least partly, by various bits of existing legislation as well as several EU directives that deal with wildlife and conservation. And as Wakenhut correctly observed,

“The UK has been at the forefront of the invasive alien species fight over the past years and, in this sense, it is probably not a coincidence that one of the first debates on the implementation for the regulation is taking place here.”

The main legislation in the UK is the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, which makes it illegal – and punishable by hefty fines and even prison – to release any non-native plant or animal into the wild and also prohibits the sale of some species, like water fern and floating pennywort.

In addition, in 2008 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) put together, along with the Scottish and Welsh governments, an Invasive Non-Native Species Framework Strategy for Great Britain that is currently under review and will be updated later this year.

The different government agencies that are affected by invasive species also have representatives on a programme board, which works to coordinate policy throughout the UK.

Its secretariat, a small body within the Animal and Plant Health Agency, maintains an online database of invasive species and action plans against them, and spearheads campaigns like ‘Check, Clean, Dry’, an effort to educate boat and angling clubs on how to avoid importing and spreading aquatic invaders.

More cooperation between member states

Under the new EU regulation, invasive alien species of Union concern will be banned from possession, trade and release into the wild. Additionally, likely pathways across Europe will be increasingly monitored to prevent the spread of new as well as already established species.

In other words, what is already in place in Britain will now be enforced across all member states. How much this sharing of expertise and monitoring will actually change the situation in this country is questionable, at least until effective pathway management becomes measurable, for example by a decreasing rate of new invasions.

“I’m confident that, within two years, we will be able to show what the trend will be”, says Wakenhut. “Whether that trend will go in the right direction or not – too soon to tell.”

Another aspect of the regulation deals with polluters – those rare cases where the source of an introduction, intentional or not, can actually be proven. “If you can demonstrate that a private operator is at the source of the introduction, you will then be able to direct the responsibility and the burden of the restoration effort or the eradication effort to that operator”, says Wakenhut.

Countries will also be able to enforce emergency measures to circumvent the voting and vetting process of the commission when a surprise invasion calls for immediate action.

Which species are of Union concern will be decided over the course of this year. The European Commission will draw up a list of the most threatening species, which can then be managed across borders and, so goes the plan, eradicated or stopped from invading in the first place.

Priority would ideally be divided between those that haven’t arrived yet and those already wreaking havoc on national ecosystems and economies. But the process brings together a variety of different stakeholders, all with their own axe to grind.

Which is the peskiest of them all?

At the conference, three speakers made their case for three very different species to be placed high on the list: the grey squirrel, the American signal crayfish and Japanese knotweed.

All of these have well documented and often devastating effects. The grey squirrel has all but eradicated the British red squirrel since its introduction in 1876 while Japanese knotweed receives by far the most media attention out of all invasive species in Britain.

In fact, the infamous weed, known for cracking its way through concrete and tarmac and decreasing property values, is a good example of a species that has received enough attention and research funding that there is now a direct effort to keep it in check.

In 2010, after years of quarantined testing, a sap-sucking plant louse that exclusively targets Japanese knotweed was introduced at a few target locations throughout the country. It marked the first time an insect had ever been released against a weed in the EU, but five years later it is still too early to assess how successful this attempt at biological control will be.

“It’s a release program that’s been slightly hindered by the regulatory environment under which we work, so we haven’t been able to release on what we would call dream sites”, says Dick Shaw, the UK director of the non-profit research organization CABI, which is behind the knotweed cure.

“For the UK, we can’t do much more than we’re already doing [about Japanese knotweed]. If you go to France and you see tens of kilometres of rivers completely covered by Japanese knotweed and no one’s doing anything, I think there’s an awful lot more that can be done in the EU”, he adds.

During his presentation with the catchy name ‘Don’t ignore the biggest species: weeds are the worst’, Shaw was making the case for more than just Japanese knotweed. The plant he sees as the most threatening in Europe is actually floating pennywort, which is also widespread and close to getting its own bio control agent in the UK.

Himalayan balsam, another well-known invader whose uncontrollable spread has spurred local ‘balsam bashing’ events, now has to deal with a rust fungus that CABI released last year. As with Japanese knotweed, this intentionally introduced species does not affect native plants – and it’s not meant to eradicate Himalayan balsam, which covers an estimated 13% of Britain’s riverbanks, either.

“If it does work, it can at least stop it from spreading and being as competitive. So you wouldn’t get those monocultures [of knotweed or balsam], you would get it more interspersed with competitive native species. And then slowly they would begin to outcompete the knotweed. That’s the long-term goal”, said Shaw.

The most dangerous species will be decided on at the beginning of next year and the initial EU-wide list will likely be limited to species that already have solid risk assessments to prove their worthiness.

Until then, the member states and, at a lower level, organisations like CABI and the European Squirrel Initiative will try to influence the national and EU-wide selection process as much as possible.

“Inevitably, for the initial proposal that we’ll make, there will be a tendency to build upon what’s already been developed”, said Wakenhut. “So in that sense, we will borrow from what has already been peer-reviewed and risk-assessed. But we need to bear in mind that the list will be a dynamic one. Once we adopt it, it can be changed anytime.”

The main focus must be to keep out what has not yet arrived

One risk with this naturally biased process is that too much focus is put on plants and animals that have already invaded or spread, simply because a strong case for them is easily made – but at the cost of neglecting the prevention of future invasions.

During his talk, Wakenhut repeatedly emphasised the need for proportionality; that prevention is, in most cases, more cost-effective and easier to achieve than the eradication of an established species.

When the quagga mussel, a small invader from the Ponto-Caspian region around the Black Sea, was first found in Surrey last fall, it was already too late. As David Aldridge, an ecologist at the University of Cambridge and expert on the mussel, observed at the time: “We’re really just waiting for these pests to arrive. And you can’t do much once they’re here.”

The quagga is believed to have made its way, largely unhindered, through Central Europe and then to the UK from the Netherlands. “At the moment, there’s a number of species, like the Ponto-Caspian ones, that aren’t yet here but might arrive”, Trevor Salmon, who heads the Environment Agency’s native and invasive non-native species team, said at the conference.

Many of these will come to Britain through Europe and vice-versa. Even though Britain is at the forefront of the fight against them in Europe, this nonetheless makes cooperation between countries imperative.

Especially so since 75% of non-native species are introduced unintentionally, meaning that they can only be stopped by controlling their likely pathways. “It’s hitchhikers. It’s not like the problem is someone sticking a squirrel into a suitcase”, as Salmon puts it.

For now, which species will be included and how high they will place on the list is still up in the air. By next January, the commission will have completed a first draft of invasive alien species that are of Union concern. Its current biodiversity strategy envisions that, by 2020, already established species will be eradicated or controlled and new invasions a thing of the past.

But with the huge volume of people and goods crossing Europe every day, does this regulation have any hope of fulfilling its ambitious goal?

Wakenhut stays vague. “Whether we’ll deliver by 2020 is something we will assess then”, he says.

Yannic Rack is the editor of a hyperlocal news website and a journalism student at City University London who has written for local newspapers in the UK and the US.

Read: ‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants & Animals in Britain‘ by Olaf Booy, Max Wade & Helen Roy, is published by Bloomsbury this month.

As the United for Wildlife conference begins in Kisane, Botswana today, here’s something for delegates to ponder.

In 1980 more than 75,000 wild lions roamed the African Continent. Today it is estimated that fewer than than 25,000 survive in 23% of the territory they once inhabited.

The world has at last woken up to the tragedy facing Africa’s elephants and rhinos but has been far too slow to realise the desperate plight of Africa’s lions. From habitat loss to human-wildlife conflict and hunting, the African lion is facing a battle on all sides to survive.

To shoot a wild lion in Tanzania may cost in the region of $50,000 to $80,000 a price beyond the reach of all but a small number of extremely wealthy hunters.

However, in South Africa, farmers have gone into the bargain basement hunting business by breeding lions to be shot by hunters for a fraction of the price, in so called ‘canned hunting’ operations.

Killing tame lions in cold blood

Unlike Tanzania where a hunter might only expect a 35% success rate in hunting a wild lion, the South African canned hunting operations guarantee a kill by supplying a lion who has normally been hand-reared from a cub and by placing the animal in an enclosure, where there is likely to be no escape from the hunter.

A female lion in a canned hunting operation in South Africa can be killed for as little as $5,000; males are more expensive in the region of $25,000, but still less than half the cost of shooting a wild lion in Tanzania.

The canned hunting operations now even breed a genetic variant of a lion for the hunter, white lions with blue eyes are in high demand and command a significant price premium in the global trophy hunting market.

This massive reduction in the cost of lion shooting is bringing in hundreds of new amateur trophy hunters into South Africa every year and this has led to a huge increase in the lion breeding business.

South Africa is now home to around 160 lion farms breeding more than 5,000 lions a year on a conveyer belt of brutality and cruelty for trophy hunters from Dallas to Shanghai.

These canned hunting operations are very poorly regulated and the animal welfare conditions of the lions in what is an intensive breeding process are often extremely poor.

Although Provincial Regulations do set criteria on the minimum size for holding facilities and the time limits for the transfer of lions from the breeding farm to the hunting enclosure, these are not effectively enforced.

Many canned hunting operations allow poorly trained marksmen to shoot lions with a high powered rifle or a bow. In many cases the lions are only wounded by the amateur hunters, and have to be killed by a professional marksmen, resulting in a prolonged painful death.

Protecting wild lions? Or endangering them?

The canned hunting operators claim they are protecting the future of wild lions by breeding lions for trophy hunters, however this could not be further from the truth. Most trophy hunters are only interested in taking the skin or the head of the lion they have shot, leaving the most valuable part of the carcass, which are the bones.

The canned hunting operators have seized on this valuable commodity and are now exporting lion bone to the lucrative medicine markets of China, Laos and Vietnam. The lion bone trade is now a growing source of revenue for the canned breeding facilities and there are concerns this could be leading to an increasing level of poaching of wild lions.

The fear is that the mostly legal trade in bones from farmed lions killed in canned hunts could provide cover for an illegal trade in wild lion bones – and possibly tiger bones as well.

We have no direct evidence that this is the case, but clearly the possibility is there, and it’s a high priority for conservation organizations including Born Free Foundation to investigate whether this is actually taking place.

Farmed lions are likely to be more genetically uniform than wild ones, and some ‘breeds’ – like the white-skinned blue-eyed lions mentioned above – will carry specific genetic markers, so DNA analysis of ‘legal’ bones could give important indications of the presence of wild lion remains.

Another sinister side of the canned hunting business is the exploitation of lion cubs and young lions. As the number of lions bred for trophy hunters has increased, so have the number of tourist attractions in South Africa offering the opportunity to spend time in close contact with cubs and young lions.

Many of these operations claim to be conservation projects and even enlist volunteers to help look after the lions, but in many cases the dark truth is that the lions are destined for the guns and bows of trophy hunters.

Lions need ‘endangered species’ protection

Public anger over the canned lion hunting business is growing rapidly and on the 13 March protests took place in London and cities and around world as part of the Global March for Lions. The Australian government has reacted by banning the import of hunting trophies from the body parts of lions.

The Environment Minister Greg Hunt who announced the crackdown at the Global March for Lions in Melbourne’s Federation Square said “the practice of canned hunting was cruel and barbaric.”

Following this move by the Australian government, the focus now moves to Brussels where the European Commission has agreed to introduce a new system of import permits for body parts from endangered species including lions. This measure is intended to ensure that any imported hunting trophies are both legal and sustainable.

The new rules should result in the ban on the import of lion hunting trophies from a number of West African countries where there is real concern that lions are not being hunted sustainably including Benin, Burkina Faso and potentially Cameroon.

However these new regulations are unlikely to stop the import of hunting trophies from South African canned lion hunting operations, which account for the vast majority entering the EU every year. As the EU currently views these operations as legal and not a threat to wild lion populations.

The US Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service is currently finalizing a rule to list the African lion as a ‘threatened species’ under the US Endangered Species Act, with a special rule that would only allow lion trophy imports from countries with an approved, scientifically-sound, management programme for the species.

An unacceptable trade that must be ended

To help draw global attention to the cruelty and greed behind the canned lion hunting business an award winning film maker and photographer Marta Ariza, is producing a film called ‘Death for a Trophy‘ to be released in the Autumn.

It is hoped this film will do for the canned hunting what Black Fish did for SeaWorld, by raising global awareness of the cruelty, exploitation and greed which lie at the heart at of the booming canned hunting business in South Africa.

Time is running out for the African Lion, the king of the jungle is fast heading towards extinction. If we are to protect their future, there can be no justification for the continued hunting of wild lions and the cruel canned hunting business should be shut down for good.

Dominic Dyer is Policy Advisor at the Born Free Foundation, which recently merged with Care for the Wild.

I have been an activist in Intag’s anti-mining struggle for two long decades. But it is impossible to understand my activism, without knowing where I live and what is at risk.

Knowing that I’ve lived in Ecuador’s Intag region since 1978 and that my home is surrounded by primary and secondary cloud forests of incredible biodiversity, clean rivers, waterfalls and stunningly beautiful vistas, will help.

Intag is also populated with some of the nicest people I have come across, all living in small, tight-knit agricultural communities. Until the mining companies came looking for copper, the area was peaceful with very low crime rates.

It is in this setting that I’ve raised my children, learned how to farm sustainably, and deepened my love for nature. In other words, this is a place I love and care for deeply.

This is the reason why I, and others like me, have fought so hard and for so many years to oppose the open-pit copper mine threatening us.

The recurring nightmare

It is December 13, 2013, and the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, lashes out against me in a nationally televised address in which he falsely accuses me of destabilizing his government.

He makes accusations related to a manual I co-authored to help communities understand what they face when large-scale mining companies come knocking at their door. The manual includes steps communities can take to minimize or avoid the impacts of mining.

 At the end of his speech, Correa asks his countrymen to “react” to this threat. Feeling threatened, I went into hiding for a few weeks.

90 days earlier, Correa gave a televised speech in which he named and broadcast photographs of me and several other activists who oppose the proposed open-pit copper mine that Intag has been fighting for the last two decades. He implied that a few foreigners (I am Cuban by birth and a US citizen) were impeding Ecuador’s development.

The December threats against me by Mr Correa attracted the attention of Amnesty International, prompting them to issue an International Action Alert to safeguard me.

But this was not the first time I had to go into hiding for my activism.

Flash​back to 2006

Now it is dawn, October 17 2006, and 19 heavily armed police are breaking into my home. A minute before, I received a warning phone call from a neighbour and was able to melt into the nearby forest and avoid arrest. Had it not been for the phone call, I would not be alive today to write this*¹.

After intimidating my teenage son and a neighbour, the police ransacked my room looking for evidence meant to land me in jail. The police found nothing, though they did steal cash and a few valuables. Ironically, it’s been the only time I’ve been robbed in almost four decades of living in Intag.

Before the police left, a lone officer entered my home and ‘found’ a gun and a packet with something that looked like drugs. The planted evidence gave rise to another arrest warrant for illegal possession of a firearm: a serious crime carrying a minimum eight year jail term. Now I had two arrest warrants, and in order to avoid arrest, I went into hiding over a month.

Seven months after the raid I received an email from an insider at the mining company who told me that the ultimate goal of the police raid was to jail me and then have someone kill me there.

Two years later, the courts ruled that the lawsuit that kick-started the incident was malicious; filed by an American woman paid by the mining company. The alleged crime had been to steal her camera and money and instruct people to beat her up.

This incident was purported to have taken place in a public anti-mining demonstration in Ecuador’s capital amidst hundreds of protesters from Intag, with a squad of police looking on. Neither the District Attorney nor the judge involved in the case asked for a police report before ordering the arrest and search warrants.

A coordinated plan to neutralize opposition to mining

The raid, it turned out, was part of a plan to neutralize opposition to a copper mining concession in Intag. The plan was drawn up by Honor and Laurel, an international security firm. Two weeks after raiding my home, they sent in 50 paramilitaries with attack dogs, machetes and tear gas to try to access the mining concession.

The communities turned them back then, as they did again on December 2006 when even more paramilitaries came to the Junín community, this time armed with pepper spray, shotguns and .38 caliber guns. The confrontation was filmed and forms part of documentaries: ‘Under Rich Earth’, When Clouds Clear’ and ‘In the Open Sky – Rights Undermined‘.

Though I am one of those most targeted by the mining companies, I am not alone. Another case is that of Javier Ramírez, a campesino anti-mining leader from the Junín community who was recently released from jail after serving ten months for a crime he did not commit. Almost a year later, his brother Victor Hugo is still in hiding accused of the same crime.

Since 2012 Ecuador’s state-owned mining company, Enami, along with Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, have been trying hard to continue where Bishimetals and the Canadian company Copper Mesa failed.

 For three years the companies have pretty much been following the script used by most mining and petroleum multinationals for steamrolling opposition. Offer everything to everyone: high paying jobs to key people; offer to improve basic infrastructure (like roads), and so forth. When that fails, the tactics get nastier.

Thus, just as the Canadians sent in their armed security firm in 2006, the Ecuadorian government sent in a 300-strong elite police force to intimidate the hell out of the communities.

Similarly to the timing of the raid on my home and the sending of the security to the communities, the police assault took place a few weeks after the arrest Javier Ramírez, who was president of the Junín community at the time.

Why do I oppose the mining?

To understand the struggle you need to know what is at stake. The cloud forests of Intag are adjacent to one of the world’s most biologically important protected area, the Cotacachi Cayapas Ecological Reserve, coming ahead of the Yasuní National Park in terms of irreplaceability.

Cloud forests make up less than 2.5% of the world’s tropical forest. Nonetheless these fragile ecosystems are centres of endemism and biodiversity and play an important role in conserving watersheds and maintaining the natural flow of rivers.

Based on a preliminary study undertaken for a small open-pit copper mine, the proposed mine threatens the whole Intag region with profound environmental and social upheaval.

The study for the small mine predicted, in their own words: “massive deforestation” which would lead to a process of “desertification”, contamination of rivers and streams with lead, arsenic and other heavy metals.

Subsequent impacts to primary forests would further endanger species already facing extinction; including jaguars, spectacled bears and brown-faced spider monkeys.

The study went onto say that the mine would impact the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve, the only protected area of any significant size in Western Ecuador, and one of the planet’s most biologically important.

It also predicted some grim social impacts, including increased crime and the relocation of four communities. Junín, Javier Ramírez’s community, would be the first one to be wiped off the map. The year after these impacts were published, many times more copper was found in the region.

If the copper mining is allowed to go ahead, given the exceptional steep terrain of the mining site, the composition of the mining deposit, combined with the area’s high rainfall, the presence dozens of pristine rivers and streams as well as abundant underground aquifers and primary forests sheltering endangered mammals and other species, and the seismic risks, this would be one of the world’s most environmentally devastating mining projects. The threat could not be clearer nor grimmer.

Why bother?

I am often asked how I can keep opposing copper mining after so many years and so much harassment. The thought of Intag’s beauty, biological and cultural diversity vanishing, to be replaced by yet another open-pit mine haemorrhaging heavy metals is what sustains me.

In spite of the death threats, the incessant stress, the economic hardships, the witnessing of so much injustice and apathy, the short-sightedness of politicians, and being vilified by the highest elected official of a nation, I think it’s worth it.

I find the question of how I can keep opposing the mine baffling. I find it baffling because it is impossible for me to grasp that anyone who feels part of, and loves his community, and values the incredible cloud forests of Intag, would do anything else but defend it against such a clear and imminent threat.

The alternative is to pack up and leave. And I’m not about to do that.

Event: Carlos Zorrilla will be giving a talk about his work on 15^th April for the Anglo Ecuadorian Society at the Institute of Latin American Studies, London. To book a place, please contact mpatlea@gmail.com.

Carlos Zorrilla is co-founder and Executive Director of DECOIN (Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag).

Translated by Sarah Fraser (Rainforest Concern).

DECOIN’s work takes place within the cloud forests of northwest Ecuador, which form part of the most biodiverse of the world’s 36 Biological Hotspots. He is the author of several papers on development, large-scale mining and its impacts on communities and the environment and was principal author of the guide ‘Protecting your Communities Against Large Scale Mining and Other Extractive Industries’. DECOIN works in partnership with Rainforest Concern on cloud forest conservation projects in Ecuador.

Rainforest Concern is a UK Registered Charity, established to protect threatened natural forest habitats and the biodiversity they contain, together with the indigenous people who depend on them for survival. In its 21 year the charity has legally protected over 1.4 million hectares of threatened forest habitats, always engaging the local communities to protect their interests, and working closely with local conservation NGOs. Rainforest Concern has worked with 21 partner organisations in 12 countries: Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Romania, Costa Rica, Panama, India, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Suriname.

People can be so creative in their protests.

Whether engaged in a little street theatre explaining the problems of assembling nuclear weapons (and careless cleaning up of nuclear spills), or making a cake in the shape of a Trident submarine and getting a Welsh Dragon to eat it at a blockade.

These were two of the early actions organised by Action Atomic Weapons Eradication (ActionAWE) after its launch in February 2013 – fun ways of dealing with extremely serious and life-threatening issues that the public needs to be reminded of – especially as we approach a general election.

We are a UK based grassroots campaign to eradicate nuclear weapons by raising awareness of the humanitarian, health and security consequences of nuclear weapons through education, outreach and direct action.

And our speciality is dramatic and eye-catching actions to highlight and disrupt the illegal, immoral, dangerous, polluting and wasteful use of resources in the building and maintenance of nuclear weapons at the Atomic Weapons Establishments at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, only 50 miles west of London.

One of my favourite actions took place just a few weeks ago at the House of Commons – and this one was truly beautiful! About 20 of us quietly entered the lobby of the House of Commons and performed an oratorio called ‘Trident is a War Crime’, composed specially for the occasion.

The music was so lovely that no one tried to stop us for the full 15 minutes of our performance. We can only hope that any MPs present were listening to the words, which called on them to abandon their support of state terrorism through nuclear weapons.

Video: performance of oratorio in the House of Commons Lobby, 11th March 2015. Produced by Zoe Broughton.

The composer, Camilla Cancantata, afterwards explained: “This piece is not meant to be a passive listening experience. It was not written for a concert hall audience who listen, applaud and then go away and forget.

“The words and music are meant to engage and challenge the people in our society who have the constitutional power to ensure Britain upholds international law and abandons all nuclear weapons. We are using song rather than spoken word because we want to give the words weight, urgency and emotional resonance.”

No Trident renewal!

The UK has over 180 nuclear warheads in its current nuclear weapons system, called Trident. The nuclear submarines that carry Trident are getting old, so the government has already started funding their replacement and has pledged to finalise contracts to finish replacing them in 2016.

This new generation of nuclear weapons not only undermines the UK pledges to disarm that were made to the international community in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but also encourages state terrorism: threatening to use, even for so-called deterrent purposes, 100 kiloton nuclear weapons – eight times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago – is considered as a preparation to commit a War Crime.

ActionAWE is mobilising citizens to take concerted actions against Trident to make it harder for any MPs and political parties that wish to continue to spend our money on replacing Trident to get elected.

Video: 4 minutes 15 seconds of Burghfield Lockdown, 2nd March 2015. Narrated by Angie Zelter.

Replacing Britain’s nuclear arsenal is completely unnecessary and would be hugely expensive (estimates are that it will cost £130 billion if it goes ahead), at a time of drastic budget cuts to other services, such as health, education, social and disability services, that are vital for people’s real security.

People do have the power to stop this terrible waste of resources, it is not a ‘done deal’, but only if we work together and act visibly over and over again saying “No” to Trident. Active disruption of the ongoing work at Burghfield and Aldermaston is an essential part of this resistance.

Time to ditch our imperial hangover

Britain clings to nuclear weapons as part of an imperialist legacy based on ‘punching above our weight’ internationally. This mentality means that UK governments spend a higher proportion of public money on military equipment than almost all equivalent governments do.

It also means that UK governments are far more likely to resort to military action and wars (as illustrated recently in Iraq and Afghanistan) instead of investing in less violent (and more effective) ways to resolve conflicts, help oppressed people and build peace.

Britain’s involvement in wars and military interventions from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya has caused thousands of deaths and injuries and untold misery to people living in those countries and has contributed widely to the growing problems of refugees seeking safety.

These wars have also cost the lives of many servicemen and women and and injured many more. Militarism, including the manufacture, deployment and use of weapons, poisons and endangers our environment.

Video: A very fluffy protest at Knighton, as a seven-mile long peace scarf – Wool Against Weapons – is unrolled. Groups all around the UK and further afield knitted lengths of scarf, 5th July 2014. Narrated by Angie Zelter.

This is particularly true of the nuclear chain: from uranium mining, to uranium and plutonium production, warhead manufacture, testing, nuclear power and waste. Nuclear weapons are linked to every major economic, health, environmental, political and moral issue facing us today.

Trident replacement links directly with our major concerns about the climate, poverty and militarism, and our relationships with the peoples and governments over the whole planet.

ActionAWE is providing a space for people to speak out and act against continuing the madness of the UK threatening mass murder and climate change with nuclear weapons.

Learn more about ActionAWE at our website. 

Also on The Ecologist: Review of ActionAWE’s recent publication ‘World in Chains‘.

Tomorrow the follow up to last year’s London Conference on the Illegal Trade in Wildlife kicks off in Kasane, Botswana.

The original meeting in February 2014 famously featured the British princes Charles and William giving the event international prestige and celebrity pulling power – and drew together heads of government to discuss the rise in the illicit trade in wildlife.

Now the ‘United for Wildlife‘ Kasane meeting will review the status of implementation of the actions agreed as part of the ‘London Declaration‘.

But according to the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, “Governments have been talking about adopting more sophisticated enforcement responses for many years but have failed to invest adequately in more proactive measures.”

EIA is also calling on governments to improve legislation to ensure illegal wildlife trade is treated as serious crime with meaningful penalties as a deterrent, and to enable the confiscation of proceeds of crime.

And it ia seeking firm promises from countries to permanently “end all trade in ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts, including farmed tiger parts.” Last month China, the world’s main ivory importer – announced a ban on ivory imports, but only for a single year, sending a weak signal to ivory dealers and carvers.

Indigenous peoples treated as criminals

But despite the uninspiring record on combatting wildlife crime to date, draconian laws and zealous enforcement are the rule when it comes to indigenous peoples hunting for their own subsistence – even though this is completely outside the scope of the London Declaration.

Indigenous organizations from Brazil, Cameroon, Kenya and many other countries, over 80 experts on hunter-gatherers, and thousands of people from around the world are now calling on on delegates in Kasane to recognize tribal peoples’ right to hunt for their survival.

Thousands of people and organizations are backing a letter to delegates from Survival International, which campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights, which states:

“We are asking you to stress to participants that there is a difference between peoples hunting sustainably for subsistence, and illegal poaching which endangers wildlife. Our efforts to press the organizations in United For Wildlife to make public declarations acknowledging this have met with little success.”

And the Kisane conference’s host country, Botswana, is one of the worst when it comes to indigenous peoples’ rights including their right to traditional subsistence on their own lands.

Despite winning a major legal victory which confirmed their right to hunt inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Bushmen in Botswana are routinely arrested and beaten when found hunting.

Trampling indigenous rights underfoot

Botswana is also moving ahead with a massive diamond mine on Bushman land in the Kalahari, and has parcelled out vast tracts of indigenous land into concessions for fracking – giving the lie to President Ian Khama concern for wildlife.

“A ban incorporating subsistence or tribal hunting, such as President Khama has declared in Botswana, is a gross violation of human rights”, Survival’s letter continues. “It is in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the ILO Convention 169 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“It is also in violation of Botswana’s High Court ruling from 2006, as well as the country’s Constitution. It will destroy the last hunting Bushmen in Africa – as we believe is partly its intention.”

And the letter concludes by pointing an accusing finger at both Botwana and other conference participants: “Several conservation organizations in United For Wildlife have played a role in the illegal eviction of tribal peoples from their lands, as has the government of Botswana.

“For the Botswana conference to be calling for ‘law enforcement’ about poaching while being complicit in gross human rights violations, does no service to conservation.”

Khama, who is set to open the Kisane conference, presents himself as a great conservationist, and in 2010 received a personal visit in Botswana from Princes William and Harry in support of the Tusk Trust, which supports a number of African conservation projects. He is also a board member of the huge US-based NGO Conservation International.

True conservationists must stand up for indigenous rights

Things are no better in Cameroon where Baka and Bayaka ‘Pygmies’ in the Republic of Congo have been beaten and tortured by anti-poaching squads, and fear going into the forest to hunt. 

India has also been illegally evicting tribal peoples from tiger reserves and other forest lands, often leaving them in landless and in poverty at the roadside unable to feed themselves. As many as 200,000 people may have been evicted for ‘conservation’ in the last few decades.

During a symposium co-organized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (a sponsor of the Kisane conference) wildlife crime in February, human rights lawyer Gordon Bennett issued a damning legal analysis of the negative impacts of wildlife law enforcement on tribal peoples.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, “It’s utterly irresponsible for conservationists and politicians to call for tougher law enforcement against ‘poaching’ without clearly acknowledging that tribal subsistence hunters are not, in fact, ‘poachers.’

“It’s not a matter of semantics – tribal hunters are being systematically arrested, beaten and tortured for ‘poaching,’ and it is happening because conservationists are not standing up for tribal peoples’ rights.

“If delegates at the Kasane conference cared even the slightest about the lives of the indigenous communities their policies affect most, they would acknowledge that tribal people should not be treated as criminals when they hunt to feed their families.”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

A monograph published by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – of which a summary is published in the scientific journal The Lancet Oncology – has branded the herbicide glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

The insecticides malathion and diazinon received the same calassification (Group 2A) while the tetrachlorvinphos and parathion were classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B) based on convincing evidence that these agents cause cancer in laboratory animals.

The designation follows a meeting earlier this month of 17 IARC experts at the orgnization’s headquarters in Lyons, France, to assess the carcinogenicity of the five widely used organophosphate pesticides.

According to the Lancet article, “Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There was limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.

“Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA, Canada, and Sweden reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides. The AHS cohort did not show a significantly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides, and as IARC notes, “it is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties.”

The full assessments of the five chemicals will be published as volume 112 of the IARC Monographs.

Supported by animal and cell line studies

Additional evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity arose from animal experiments: “In male CD-1 mice, glyphosate induced a positive trend in the incidence of a rare tumour, renal tubule carcinoma.

“A second study reported a positive trend for haemangiosarcoma in male mice. Glyphosate increased pancreatic islet-cell adenoma in male rats in two studies. A glyphosate formulation promoted skin tumours in an initiation-promotion study in mice.”

The paper adds that glyphosate and its numerous formulations “induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro.

“One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations. Bacterial mutagenesis tests were negative. Glyphosate, glyphosate formulations, and AMPA induced oxidative stress in rodents and in vitro.”

Glyphosate “has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption”, the paper notes. It adds that the presence of aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA) in human blood after glyphosate poisoning “suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans” similar to that performed by soil bacteria.

The Working Group classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

‘You can drink it like lemonade’

The findings are a fatal blow to industry claims that glyphosate is harmless and the oft-repeated canard that “you can drink it like lemonade” without ill-effect.

It also adds to pressure for regulators including the Europeran Food Standards Agency (EFSA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) to re-examine the basis on whicht he product has been licenced.

The IARC draws attention to regulatory anomalies in the press release that accompanies the Lancet publication, noting: “On the basis of tumours in mice, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) originally classified glyphosate as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group C) in 1985.

“After a re-evaluation of that mouse study, the US EPA changed its classification to evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans (Group E) in 1991. The US EPA Scientific Advisory Panel noted that the re-evaluated glyphosate results were still significant using two statistical tests recommended in the IARC Preamble.

“The IARC Working Group that conducted the evaluation considered the significant findings from the US EPA report and several more recent positive results in concluding that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.”

Agro-chemical industry rejects IARC findings

Monsanto, which owns to now-expired patents on glyphosate and maker of the world’s leading glyphosate formulation, Roundup, rejects the IARC findings, insisting that “all labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health and supported by one of the most extensive worldwide human health databases ever compiled on an agricultural product.”

The conclusion, said Monsanto’s Vice President Global Regulatory Affairs Philip Miller, “is not supported by scientific data … We don’t know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe.”

But as indicated by IARC concerns about glyphosate’s cancer-causing properties are long standing and their earlier rejection by US-EPA was paradoxical and appeared to go against its own advisory panel’s recommendation.

And of course the IARC study excludes other concerns as to glyphosate’s wider toxicity, for example as a teratogen that gives rise to birth defects, as a endocrine disruptor and as a genotoxin.

It also does not consider the critical issue of the enhancement of glyphosate’s toxicity caused by other elements such as adjuvants and surfactants in herbicide formulations.

The paper: ‘Carcinogenicity of tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate‘ is published in The Lancet Oncology.

More information:

• ‘Roundup – a converging pattern of toxicity from farm to clinic to laboratory‘.
• ‘Glyphosate and Cancer‘.

A monograph published by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – of which a summary is published in the scientific journal The Lancet Oncology – has branded the herbicide glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

The insecticides malathion and diazinon received the same calassification (Group 2A) while the tetrachlorvinphos and parathion were classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B) based on convincing evidence that these agents cause cancer in laboratory animals.

The designation follows a meeting earlier this month of 17 IARC experts at the orgnization’s headquarters in Lyons, France, to assess the carcinogenicity of the five widely used organophosphate pesticides.

According to the Lancet article, “Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There was limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.

“Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA, Canada, and Sweden reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides. The AHS cohort did not show a significantly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides, and as IARC notes, “it is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties.”

The full assessments of the five chemicals will be published as volume 112 of the IARC Monographs.

Supported by animal and cell line studies

Additional evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity arose from animal experiments: “In male CD-1 mice, glyphosate induced a positive trend in the incidence of a rare tumour, renal tubule carcinoma.

“A second study reported a positive trend for haemangiosarcoma in male mice. Glyphosate increased pancreatic islet-cell adenoma in male rats in two studies. A glyphosate formulation promoted skin tumours in an initiation-promotion study in mice.”

The paper adds that glyphosate and its numerous formulations “induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro.

“One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations. Bacterial mutagenesis tests were negative. Glyphosate, glyphosate formulations, and AMPA induced oxidative stress in rodents and in vitro.”

Glyphosate “has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption”, the paper notes. It adds that the presence of aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA) in human blood after glyphosate poisoning “suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans” similar to that performed by soil bacteria.

The Working Group classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

‘You can drink it like lemonade’

The findings are a fatal blow to industry claims that glyphosate is harmless and the oft-repeated canard that “you can drink it like lemonade” without ill-effect.

It also adds to pressure for regulators including the Europeran Food Standards Agency (EFSA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) to re-examine the basis on whicht he product has been licenced.

The IARC draws attention to regulatory anomalies in the press release that accompanies the Lancet publication, noting: “On the basis of tumours in mice, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) originally classified glyphosate as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group C) in 1985.

“After a re-evaluation of that mouse study, the US EPA changed its classification to evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans (Group E) in 1991. The US EPA Scientific Advisory Panel noted that the re-evaluated glyphosate results were still significant using two statistical tests recommended in the IARC Preamble.

“The IARC Working Group that conducted the evaluation considered the significant findings from the US EPA report and several more recent positive results in concluding that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.”

Agro-chemical industry rejects IARC findings

Monsanto, which owns to now-expired patents on glyphosate and maker of the world’s leading glyphosate formulation, Roundup, rejects the IARC findings, insisting that “all labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health and supported by one of the most extensive worldwide human health databases ever compiled on an agricultural product.”

The conclusion, said Monsanto’s Vice President Global Regulatory Affairs Philip Miller, “is not supported by scientific data … We don’t know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe.”

But as indicated by IARC concerns about glyphosate’s cancer-causing properties are long standing and their earlier rejection by US-EPA was paradoxical and appeared to go against its own advisory panel’s recommendation.

And of course the IARC study excludes other concerns as to glyphosate’s wider toxicity, for example as a teratogen that gives rise to birth defects, as a endocrine disruptor and as a genotoxin.

It also does not consider the critical issue of the enhancement of glyphosate’s toxicity caused by other elements such as adjuvants and surfactants in herbicide formulations.

The paper: ‘Carcinogenicity of tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate‘ is published in The Lancet Oncology.

More information:

• ‘Roundup – a converging pattern of toxicity from farm to clinic to laboratory‘.
• ‘Glyphosate and Cancer‘.

Much of the Earth was once cloaked in vast forests, from the subarctic snowforests to the Amazon and Congo basins.

As humankind colonised the far corners of our planet, we cleared large areas to harvest wood, make way for farmland, and build towns and cities.

The loss of forest has wrought dramatic consequences for biodiversity and is the primary driver of the global extinction crisis. I work in Borneo where huge expanses of tropical forest are cleared to make way for palm oil plantations.

The biological cost is the replacement of some 150 forest bird species with a few tens of farmland species. But forest is also frequently retained inside or at the edges of oil palm plantations, and this is a pattern that is replicated globally.

The problem, according to new research published in Science Advances, is that the vast majority of remaining forests are fragmented.

In other words, remaining forests are increasingly isolated from other forests by a sea of transformed lands, and they are found in ever-smaller sized patches. The shockwaves of loss thus extend far beyond the footprint of deforestation.

Accessible forests

The team, led by Nick Haddad from North Carolina State University, used the world’s first high-resolution satellite map of tree cover to measure how isolated remaining forests are from a non-forest edge. Edges are created by a plethora of deforesting activities, from roads to cattle pastures and oil wells, as well as by rivers.

They found that more than 70% of remaining forest is within just 1km (about 0.6 miles) of an edge, while a 100 metre stroll from an edge would enable you to reach 20% of global forests.

Comparing across regions, the patterns they find are even starker. In Europe and the US, the vast majority of forest is within 1km of an edge – some of the most ‘remote’ areas in these regions are a stones throw from human activity. ‘Getting away from it all’ has never been more challenging.

If you want remote forests on a large scale you’ll have to head to the Amazon, the Congo, or to a lesser degree, central and far eastern Russia, central Borneo and Papua New Guinea.

Biodiversity reduced

These findings wouldn’t be cause for alarm if wildlife, forests, and the services that they provide humankind such as carbon storage and water, were unaffected by fragmentation.

However, by drawing together scientific evidence from seven long-term fragmentation experiments, Haddad and colleagues show that fragmentation reduces biodiversity by up to 75%. This exacerbates the extinction risk of millions of forest species, many of which we still don’t know much about.

Forest species struggle to survive at edges because these places are brighter, windier, and hotter than forest interiors. Edges become choked by rampant vines and invaded by disturbance-tolerant, parasitic or invasive species that outcompete the denizens of dark forest interiors.

In Borneo, for example, small forest patches house bird communities that are far more similar to those found in the surrounding oil palm than to those of larger forest tracts.

The survival of large, carbon-rich trees – the building blocks of any intact forest ecosystem – is reduced in smaller and more isolated forest fragments. These patches thus fail to maintain viable populations, which over time are doomed – an ‘extinction debt’ yet to be paid.

With so much global forest in close proximity to humans, larger forest animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, tapirs or curassow birds are being hunted to extinction in individual areas. This shifts animal communities within the forest fragments to one dominated by small-bodied species.

Further, hunters are willing to penetrate forests for several kilometres from edges in search of game, effectively making the truly wild global forest estate yet smaller.

Difficult management decisions

The insidious effects of fragmentation mean that the top conservation priority must be preventing further incursions into dwindling wildernesses. By preventing the first cut we can help to prevent global fragmentation and the further loss of biodiversity.

Of course, we should not ignore fragmented regions. Some of these, including the Brazilian Atlantic forest, Tropical Andes and Himalayas, share a toxic mix of hyperdiversity, endemic species with tiny ranges, and severe fragmentation.

The critically-endangered Munchique wood-wren, for instance, exists only in a handful of peaks in the Colombian Andes, but these are now isolated from each other by cattle pastures and roads. Here we must seek to restore forest cover and improve connectivity between larger fragments if we are to prevent extinctions.

However, the rapid expansion of human populations, greed, and meat consumption mean that more forest is likely to be lost, even if farm yield and efficiency can be improved to help bridge gaps between current and future demand.

The difficult question is where should this expansion happen? Given the severe degradation of small and isolated fragments, perhaps conversion could target some of these patches, coupled with wilderness protection and expansion.

Next time I visit my local National Park – the highly fragmented Peak District – I will spare a thought for the species that are being harmed by their habitats being broken up into ever smaller chunks.

There are no easy answers to the problems of fragmentation, but our forests urgently need a global management plan.

The paper: ‘Habitat fragmentation and its lasting impact on Earth’s ecosystems‘ by Nick M. Haddad et al is published in Science Advances (full paper / open access).

David Edwards is Lecturer of Conservation Science at the University of Sheffield.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

A monograph published by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – of which a summary is published in the scientific journal The Lancet Oncology – has branded the herbicide glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

The insecticides malathion and diazinon received the same calassification (Group 2A) while the tetrachlorvinphos and parathion were classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B) based on convincing evidence that these agents cause cancer in laboratory animals.

The designation follows a meeting earlier this month of 17 IARC experts at the orgnization’s headquarters in Lyons, France, to assess the carcinogenicity of the five widely used organophosphate pesticides.

According to the Lancet article, “Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There was limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.

“Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA, Canada, and Sweden reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides. The AHS cohort did not show a significantly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides, and as IARC notes, “it is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties.”

The full assessments of the five chemicals will be published as volume 112 of the IARC Monographs.

Supported by animal and cell line studies

Additional evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity arose from animal experiments: “In male CD-1 mice, glyphosate induced a positive trend in the incidence of a rare tumour, renal tubule carcinoma.

“A second study reported a positive trend for haemangiosarcoma in male mice. Glyphosate increased pancreatic islet-cell adenoma in male rats in two studies. A glyphosate formulation promoted skin tumours in an initiation-promotion study in mice.”

The paper adds that glyphosate and its numerous formulations “induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro.

“One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations. Bacterial mutagenesis tests were negative. Glyphosate, glyphosate formulations, and AMPA induced oxidative stress in rodents and in vitro.”

Glyphosate “has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption”, the paper notes. It adds that the presence of aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA) in human blood after glyphosate poisoning “suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans” similar to that performed by soil bacteria.

The Working Group classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

‘You can drink it like lemonade’

The findings are a fatal blow to industry claims that glyphosate is harmless and the oft-repeated canard that “you can drink it like lemonade” without ill-effect.

It also adds to pressure for regulators including the Europeran Food Standards Agency (EFSA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) to re-examine the basis on whicht he product has been licenced.

The IARC draws attention to regulatory anomalies in the press release that accompanies the Lancet publication, noting: “On the basis of tumours in mice, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) originally classified glyphosate as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group C) in 1985.

“After a re-evaluation of that mouse study, the US EPA changed its classification to evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans (Group E) in 1991. The US EPA Scientific Advisory Panel noted that the re-evaluated glyphosate results were still significant using two statistical tests recommended in the IARC Preamble.

“The IARC Working Group that conducted the evaluation considered the significant findings from the US EPA report and several more recent positive results in concluding that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.”

Agro-chemical industry rejects IARC findings

Monsanto, which owns to now-expired patents on glyphosate and maker of the world’s leading glyphosate formulation, Roundup, rejects the IARC findings, insisting that “all labeled uses of glyphosate are safe for human health and supported by one of the most extensive worldwide human health databases ever compiled on an agricultural product.”

The conclusion, said Monsanto’s Vice President Global Regulatory Affairs Philip Miller, “is not supported by scientific data … We don’t know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe.”

But as indicated by IARC concerns about glyphosate’s cancer-causing properties are long standing and their earlier rejection by US-EPA was paradoxical and appeared to go against its own advisory panel’s recommendation.

And of course the IARC study excludes other concerns as to glyphosate’s wider toxicity, for example as a teratogen that gives rise to birth defects, as a endocrine disruptor and as a genotoxin.

It also does not consider the critical issue of the enhancement of glyphosate’s toxicity caused by other elements such as adjuvants and surfactants in herbicide formulations.

The paper: ‘Carcinogenicity of tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate‘ is published in The Lancet Oncology.

More information:

• ‘Roundup – a converging pattern of toxicity from farm to clinic to laboratory‘.
• ‘Glyphosate and Cancer‘.