Category: RT Newswire

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 29, 2008
4:33 PM

 CONTACT: The Wilderness Society
Dave Slater (202/429-8441); Dave Alberswerth (202/429-2695);
Nada Culver (303/650-5818, ext. 117); Eleanor Huffines (907-272-9453)
 
 
More Than 44 Million Acres Under Lease for Oil and Gas in US
New analyses shows unprecedented drilling boom, tremendous surplus of undrilled leases, and errors in recent BLM oil and gas assessment
 
WASHINGTON, DC – May 29 – More than 44 million acres of public lands are leased for oil and gas development, according to a new Wilderness Society analysis of Interior Department data. The analysis points to an explosion of drilling on federal lands, with 7,124 drilling permits (APDs) issued in 2007, a new record for the Bush Administration. Nationwide, the leasing is outstripping the oil and gas industry’s capacity to drill, as industry is drilling on only a quarter of the leases they hold. [view the detailed analysis here

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Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil 
 
The photos are being used to prove the tribe’s existence
Image: Gleison Miranda, Funai
 
One of South America’s few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been spotted and photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru.

The Brazilian government says it took the images to prove the tribe exists and help protect its land.

The pictures, taken from an aeroplane, show red-painted tribe members brandishing bows and arrows.

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Plum Creek plans to cut down 200-year-old trees
North Woods logging
By BRIDGET HUBER
May 28, 2008 4:00:29 PM
 
FELLING THE GIANTS?

You would think the Plum Creek Timber Company would be doing all it could to avoid negative publicity right now.

The Seattle-based company’s proposal to build nearly 1000 homes and major resort destinations in the Moosehead Lake region has generated enormous controversy across the state, and still hasn’t been approved by the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC). Plum Creek has worked hard to put a green face on the plan, most notably by touting the benefits of the plan’s “conservation framework,” which would protect more than 400,000 acres from development, though the framework would not prevent logging, mining, or water extraction on much of the land. (For more on the project, see “Up Plum Creek Without a Paddle,” by Yanni Peary, November 28, 2007.)

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THE ECONOMICS OF ECOSYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY
<http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/economics/index_en.htm>

At the meeting of the environment ministers of the G8 countries and
the five major newly industrialising countries that took place in
Potsdam in March 2007, the German government proposed a study on ‘The
economic significance of the global loss of biological diversity’ as
part of the so-called ‘Potsdam Initiative’ for biodiversity.

The following wording was agreed at Potsdam: ‘In a global study we
will initiate the process of analysing the global economic benefit of
biological diversity, the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the
failure to take protective measures versus the costs of effective
conservation.’

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