Month: Aug 2020

Ancient 2,000-year-old redwoods have survived California wildfires – including 329ft tall Mother of the Forest tree – as state continues battle against three huge blazes that have destroyed 1.2m acres, killed seven and put 250,000 under evacuation orders

• Three massive wildfires are raging in Northern California as 250,000 people are under evacuation orders
• The large fires include: The LNU Lightning Complex, the SCU Lightning Complex, and the CZU Lightning Fire
• CZU Lightning Fire tore through 18,000-acre Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Northern California
• But while the ancient redwoods did sustain damage from the fires, the historic trees will survive, experts say
• Since mid-August there have been more than 13,000 lightning strikes, sparking 600 wildfires in the state
• The blazes have burned through more than 1.2million acres or 1,875 square miles
• More than 1,200 buildings have been destroyed and 14,000 firefighters have been deployed

When a massive wildfire swept through California’s oldest state park last week it was feared many trees in a grove of old-growth redwoods, some of them 2,000 years old and among the tallest living things on Earth, may finally have succumbed.

But an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Monday and confirmed most of the ancient redwoods had withstood the blaze.

Among the survivors is one dubbed Mother of the Forest.

‘That is such good news, I can’t tell you how much that gives me peace of mind,’ said Laura McLendon, conservation director for the Sempervirens Fund, an environmental group dedicated to the protection of redwoods and their habitats.

The historic park headquarters is gone, as are many small buildings and campground infrastructure that went up in flames as fire swept through the park about 45 miles south of San Francisco.

‘But the forest is not gone,’ McLendon said. ‘It will regrow. Every old growth redwood I’ve ever seen, in Big Basin and other parks, has fire scars on them. They’ve been through multiple fires, possibly worse than this.’

When forest fires, windstorms and lightning hit redwood trees, those that don’t topple can resprout.

Mother of the Forest, for example, used to be 329 feet tall, the tallest tree in the park. After the top broke off in a storm, a new trunk sprouted where the old growth had been.

Trees that fall feed the forest floor, and become nurse trees from which new redwoods grow. Forest critters, from banana slugs to insects, thrive under logs.

On Monday, Steller’s jays searched for insects around the park´s partially burned outdoor amphitheater and woodpeckers could be heard hammering on trees.

Occasionally a thundering crash echoed through the valley as large branches or burning trees fell.

When Big Basin opened in 1902 it marked the genesis of redwood conservation. The park now receives about 250,000 visitors a year from around the world, and millions have walked the Redwood Trail.

The park only recently reopened after COVID-19 related closures and now is closed -because of the fire. The road in is blocked by several large trees that fell across it, some waist-high, some still on fire.

While there is a great deal of work to be done rebuilding campgrounds, clearing trails and managing damaged madrones, oaks and firs, Big Basin will recover, McLendon said. The forest, in some ways, is resetting,’ she said.

State Parks District Superintendent Chris Spohrer said he was pleased to know the redwoods had survived. He said an assessment team had only been able to check buildings so far, and that he hopes they can inspect the trees in the coming days. ‘The reason those trees are so old is because they are really resilient,’ he said.

As of Monday more than 10million people in the West were under red-flag warnings, which means warm temperatures, low humidity and strong winds provide for an increased risk of fire danger, according to the National Weather Serivice.

The fires have been further complicated by evacuations amid the coronavirus pandemic and looting in some areas. ‘What we’re hearing from the community is that there’s a lot of looting going on,’ Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart said, adding that 100 officers were patrolling areas and anyone not authorized to be in evacuation zones would be arrested.

Gov. Newsom has issued a checklist for residents to take face masks, sanitation supplies, important documents, medication and three days’ worth of food and water.

Over the weekend Newsom said the state received a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration due to the fires meaning President Trump released federal aid to supplement recovery efforts in Lake, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, and Yolo counties.

This year there’s been a spike in wildfires. So far in 2020 there’s been 7,014 fires compared to 4,292 at this time in California last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

Reference https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8660133/California-continues-battle-against-three-large-wildfires-sparked-13-000-lightning-strikes.html

Located at Al Borg Street and at the entrance of the Cairo tower, the National Tree of India salutes you, the tree celebrated by the Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

It is one of the oldest banyan trees in Cairo, planted in 1868 – the same year poet Laureate Ahmed Shawqi was born. The Indian banyan with its poetic, propagating, dangling aerial roots is reminiscent of Ahmed Shawki’s poetry.

Not only is it one of the oldest banyan trees in Cairo, but according to several sources, it is the only one remaining.

Over the years, the tree has become an icon of Zamalek, with couples, tourists, and children making memories and taking pictures next to it.

These perennial trees are classified among the world’s largest. By nature, banyan trees send their roots downwards, creating branch-like pillars that look like more tree trunks.

The Cubbington pear tree is the second-largest in the country, a local landmark and was England’s tree of the year in 2015. Yet, despite years of protests, it is being felled for a railway line. It sits on the proposed phase one line of the new rail route and its being uprooted once construction begins.

The woods around it in Warwickshire have been blocked off to visitors and a sign erected warning against trespassing. The pear tree is thought to be the second-largest wild pear tree in the country and estimated to be 250 years old. It still bears fruit every year. In spring, blackcaps and chiffchaff are heard singing in the wood, with “wood anemones and a carpet of bluebells surrounding it. Despite its popularity, it is scheduled to be cut down to make way for the HS2 railway development. Once completed, the new line will link London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.

Until the area was closed off, Cubbington Action Group, which was set up to protest against HS2, had been leading walks to show people the tree. Students from Shuttleworth College in Bedfordshire have taken cuttings from it, so that descendants can be created for the local churchyard, schools and villages.

Save Cubbington Wood, another protest group, set up a camp last September in an effort to protect the trees from being felled by contractors, but they were evicted in March. An HS2 spokesperson told the BBC: “Seven million new trees and shrubs will be planted as part of the HS2 programme. The new native woodlands will cover over 9 sq km of land.”

Felling was stopped temporarily because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it is due to resume in September. Sadly, the pear tree appears to be doomed.

Reference https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/17/tree-of-the-week-the-beloved-250-year-old-wild-pear-being-cut-down-for-hs2#img-1

Over the past decade, Umeshwar Singh Amra has witnessed his homeland descend into a battleground. The war being waged in Hasdeo Arand, a rich and biodiverse Indian forest, has pitted indigenous people, ancient trees, elephants and sloths against the might of bulldozers, trucks and hydraulic jacks, fighting with a single purpose: the extraction of coal.

Yet under a new “self-reliant India” plan by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests are to be opened up for commercial mining.

Among them are four huge blocks of Hasdeo Arand’s 420,000 acres of forest in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, which sit above an estimated 5bn tonnes of coal.

It marks a significant shift. The coal industry in India is state-owned, but this auction of 40 new coal blocks will see the creation of a privatised, commercial coal sector in India. Among those bidding for it are India’s rich and powerful industrial giants, including the $14bn (£11bn) Adani group run by the Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, who operates India’s largest coal power plants and has close ties to Modi.

The coal auction has already proved controversial at both the local and political level. At least seven of the coal blocks up for auction were previously deemed “no go” areas for mining due to their environmentally valuable status and about 80% of the blocks are home to indigenous communities and thick forest cover. Four state governments – West Bengal, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh – have written to Modi in opposition or raised legal objections to the auction, and one coal block, which overlapped with the Tadoba tiger reserve in Maharashtra, has already been removed.

Amra, who is an Adivasi, a term used to describe India’s indigenous people, was one of nine local sarpanchs – village leaders – who recently wrote to Modi demanding a stop to the auction in Hasdeo Arand. He said: “If the government gave me the option to give up my life in exchange for no more mining happening in the forest, I would do it in a second.”

Amra has seen first-hand the environmental devastation wreaked by open-cast coal mines. In 2011, two vast open-cast mines were excavated on the forest’s peripheries, ripping up the fragile land and filling the surroundings with pollution, smoke, heat, noise and poison. Crime rose drastically in the area and the elephants that lived in the forest, disoriented by the new hostile conditions, became aggressive, leading to dozens of deaths.

The prospect of more significant blocks of the forest, the largest in India, being handed over to private mining operations was more than Amra could bear. Five villages will be destroyed and more than 6,000 mainly indigenous people displaced, as well as thousands of hectares of trees, torn down for mines and roads.

“If more mining happens everything will change; the natural resources will be gone, our way of life will disappear, everything will be under threat,” he said. “We are tribal people, we cannot go out and live in the cities and no amount of money can ever compensate us. There is no forest like this in the world – cut it down and it can never be replaced.”

While across the world governments have geared towards a “green recovery” post Covid-19 – the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said recently there was “no good reason for any country to include coal” in recovery plans – India is putting fossil fuel at the forefront of its strategy to turn the pandemic into economic opportunity.

“Why cannot India be the world’s largest exporter of coal?” asked Modi as he announced the coal auction project.

Yet with its 45% ash content, making it some of the most polluting coal in the world, there is unlikely to be an international market for Indian coal. In addition, many major factories in India cannot run on “dirty” domestic coal, meaning they will still need to import it from abroad.

There is also a question of necessity. While India is the world’s second largest consumer of coal, and annually imports 247m tonnes, costing more than $20bn (£15bn), India’s electricity demand is forecast to fall by up to 15% over the next five years due to the economic reverberations of Covid-19. Meanwhile, a report this week by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air concluded that the current state-run coal mines of India already have capacity to produce 20% more coal than the expected demand in 2030.

Environmental activists also question why India cannot be weaned off foreign coal through a gradual increase in investment in domestic renewable energy, such as solar. This month, Modi inaugurated Asia’s largest solar farm in the state of Madhya Pradesh. India is the world’s cheapest producer of solar power and the cost of constructing a new solar plant is 14% less than that of a building a new coal plant. With proper investment, it has been estimated that the solar energy industry could generate as many as 1.6m jobs in India by 2022, far more than would be generated by domestic coal.

But India’s joint secretary for coal, Maddirala Nagaraju, said that all the country’s projections showed that demand for coal would increase and insisted that increased domestic coalmining was the “cheapest way of meeting the energy needs of the people”.

“We are the country with the fourth largest coal reserves in the world and we need to provide energy security for over a billion people: coal is the only way,” said Nagaraju. He conceded that there would be “costly trade-offs” in opening up protected forest areas for mining, but said this had the support of local communities who “want the land to be acquired because they get high compensation packages”.

He added: “Yes, some people have objected, but the mining will bring a lot of development, employment and money to these areas. How else will we develop these Adivasi people in central India?”

Among the prominent opponents to the project is the former environment minister, Jairan Ramesh, who also wrote a letter to Modi condemning coal auctions. It was during his time in office that a survey was carried out in 2010 on India’s biggest coalfields and determined that 30% were “no-go areas” due to their biodiversity or resident tiger or elephant populations. Yet since Modi came to power in 2014, that 30% has been reduced to about 5%.

Ramesh alleged this was a direct result of pressure from the powerful corporate coal lobby, Adani in particular. The Adani group is contracted to operate two of the mines currently open in Hasdeo Arand, and has been pushing to expand mining operations in the forest for years, even reportedly offering microloans to local tribal people in order to win their support.

“Adani is behind this,” claims Ramesh. “He is one of the most influential forces on the government.”

“Modi poses as a great environmental champion globally but his track record is one of complete loosening of environmental laws and regulations,” Ramesh added. “The corporate lobbies are just too powerful and in the name of ease for businesses, environment has become the biggest casualty.”

The Adani group rejected the allegations as baseless and politically motivated. A spokesperson said the company: “Has always strived to provide balanced and affordable energy supply to an energy-deprived population of 1.3 billion people whose per capita energy consumption is less than half the world’s average and almost one-tenth of many of the developed economies.

“The Adani Group has been a leading contributor to India’s vision for a balanced energy mix and an enabler of India’s leadership in meeting its [Paris agreement on climate change] target.”

It said it aimed to become the world’s largest renewable energy company by 2025.

Reference https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/08/india-prime-minister-narendra-modi-plans-to-fell-ancient-forest-to-create-40-new-coal-fields