Posted on 12 November
2013 - The saola, one of the rarest and
most threatened mammals on the planet, has
been photographed in Vietnam for the first
time in the 21st century. The enigmatic
species was caught on film in September
by a camera trap set by WWF and the Vietnamese
government’s Forest Protection Department
in the Central Annamite mountains.
“When our team first
looked at the photos we couldn’t believe
our eyes. Saola are the holy grail for South-east
Asian conservationists so there was a lot
of excitement,” said Dr. Van Ngoc Thinh,
WWF-Vietnam’s Country Director. “This is
a breath-taking discovery and renews hope
for the recovery of the species.”
A cousin of cattle but
recalling an antelope in appearance, the
Critically Endangered saola, dubbed the
Asian Unicorn because it is so rarely seen,
is recognized by two parallel horns with
sharp ends which can reach 50 centimetres
in length. The last confirmed record of
a saola in the wild was in 1999 from camera-trap
photos taken in the Laos province of Bolikhamxay.
In 2010, villagers in Bolikhamxay captured
a saola, but the animal subsequently died.
“In Vietnam, the last
sighting of a saola in the wild was in 1998,”
said Dang Dinh Nguyen, Deputy Head of Quang
Nam Forest Protection Department and Director
of Quang Nam’s Saola Nature Reserve. “This
is an historic moment in Vietnam’s efforts
to protect our extraordinary biodiversity,
and provides powerful evidence of the effectiveness
of conservation efforts in critical saola
habitat.”
In the area where the
saola was photographed, WWF’s Preservation
of Carbon Sinks and Biodiversity Conservation
(CarBi) Programme has implemented an innovative
law enforcement model in which Forest Guards
are recruited from local communities, and
co-managed by WWF and Vietnamese government
counterparts, to remove snares and tackle
illegal hunting, the greatest threat to
the saola’s survival.
“Saola are caught in
wire snares set by hunters to catch other
animals, such as deer and civets, which
are largely destined for the lucrative illegal
wildlife trade,” said Dr. Van Ngoc. “Since
2011, forest guard patrols in the CarBi
area have removed more than 30,000 snares
from this critical saola habitat and destroyed
more than 600 illegal hunters’ camps. Confirmation
of the presence of the saola in this area
is a testament to the dedicated and tireless
efforts of these forest guards.”
The saola was discovered
in 1992 by a joint team from Vietnam’s Ministry
of Forestry (now called Ministry of Agriculture
and Rural Development) and WWF surveying
the forests of Vu Quang, near Vietnam's
border with Laos. The team found a skull
with unusual horns in a hunter's home and
knew it was something extraordinary. The
find proved to be the first large mammal
new to science in more than 50 years and
one of the most spectacular species discoveries
of the 20th century.
Twenty years on, little
is still known about the saola’s ecology
or behaviour, and the difficulty in detecting
the elusive animal has prevented scientists
from making a precise population estimate.
At best, no more than a few hundred, and
maybe only a few tens, survive in the remote,
dense forests along the Vietnam-Laos border.
“These are the most
important wild animal photographs taken
in Asia, and perhaps the world, in at least
the past decade,” said William Robichaud,
Coordinator of the Saola Working Group of
the IUCN Species Survival Commission. “They
are also inspiring evidence of the effectiveness
of the forest guards model to keep saola
from sliding into the abyss of extinction.
But more support is needed, so that WWF
and other partners can scale up the initiative
to additional parts of the saola’s range
in Vietnam and Laos.”
The saola is an icon
for biodiversity in the Annamite mountains
that run along the border of Vietnam and
Laos. The area boasts an incredible diversity
of rare species, with many found nowhere
else in the world. In addition to the discovery
of the saola, two species of deer, the large-antlered
muntjac and the Truong Son muntjac, were
discovered in the Annamite’s forests in
1994 and 1997 respectively.
“We are committed to
supporting the successful monitoring and
law enforcement interventions to ensure
the remaining saola, and other threatened
species, are given the best possible conditions
for recovery,” said Carsten Kilian, Senior
Project Manager with KfW, the German Development
Bank and a funding partner for WWF’s CarBi
Programme in the Central Annamites. “We
hope this remarkable find gives a much needed
boost to efforts to save one of the world’s
rarest and most distinctive large animals.”
The saola sighting confirms
the species persistence in Vietnam’s Central
Annamite mountains and will help WWF and
partners in the search for other individuals
and in targeting the essential protection
needed. WWF is also providing alternative
livelihood options for communities bordering
the Saola Nature Reserves to help reduce
poaching and provide much needed income
to villagers. This work is a critical complement
to law enforcement and protection efforts,
and will help wildlife across the Central
Annamites recover.
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No more excuses: WWF
scorecard shows that palm oil buyers must
do more to stimulate sustainable production
Posted on 12 November
2013 - Medan, Indonesia: Palm oil buyers
are doing more than before but not nearly
enough to encourage responsible growers
to reduce the adverse impacts of producing
the world’s most popular vegetable oil in
some of the most vulnerable tropical habitats
around the world.
The 2013 edition of
WWF’s Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard, released
on the opening day of the annual conference
of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
(RSPO), identified Belgian processor Ecover,
confectionary company Ferrero Trading, homegoods
giant IKEA, German retailer REWE, leading
global palm oil user Unilever and the UK’s
United Biscuits as the global leaders in
uptake of sustainable palm oil and efforts
to minimise greenhouse gas emissions.
“For the first time,
we include US companies alongside major
European, Australian and Asian companies
and now have a global scorecard of how much
palm oil buyers are doing to support sustainability,”
said WWF Palm Oil lead Adam Harrison. “However,
while we can report gratifying progress
by many companies it is still true that
demand for certified sustainable palm oil
is lagging significantly behind supplies
– and from our scorecard we can see which
companies are not taking the action they
should to change that.
“While some of these
palm oil buyers come up with excuses the
reality is that there are no good reasons
for so many buyers to be so significantly
behind schedule in achieving their own targets
of 100 per cent sustainable palm oil supplies
by 2015.”
Palm oil plantations,
largely in low lying tropical areas in south
east Asia but increasingly in Africa and
Latin America, produce 65 percent of the
world’s traded vegetable oil. Palm oil is
a key ingredient in many foods, cosmetics,
soaps and detergents and is emerging as
a significant biofuel stock. Overall palm
oil demand is expected to double by 2020,
increasing the pressure on tropical forests
and biodiversity, risking dangerous levels
of greenhouse gas emissions from tropical
peats and increased community conflict.
But that does not have to be the way the
industry grows. The RSPO shows that palm
oil can expand sustainably – and the role
of retailers and manufacturers is to support
that by buying RSPO certified sustainable
palm oil.
The scorecard ranks
78 manufacturers of products containing
palm oil and 52 retailers on RSPO membership
and compliance with reporting requirements,
targets and action on using 100 percent
sustainable palm oil use and policies and
plans for limiting the greenhouse gas emissions
from the palm oil they source.
Only 9 of the 130 companies
– Ecover, Ferrero Trading, Henkel, REWE
Group, Hershey, IKEA, Reckitt Benckiser,
Unilever and United Biscuits - reported
having policies that addressed GHG emissions
of palm oil supplies. However, a further
49 companies are moving to require suppliers
to comply with RSPO emission disclosure
requirements.
More than two thirds
of scored manufacturers and a slightly larger
proportion of scored retailers have committed
to 100 percent certified sustainable palm
oil use by 2015.
Forty-five of the 130
companies scored were already using 100%
CSPO – in total more than 2 million tonnes
a year between them. But all together the
130 companies are using almost 7 million
tonnes of palm oil a year – showing just
how far they still have to go.
“The RSPO is at a critical
stage,” said Adam Harrison. “Progressive
buyers of palm oil are starting to demand
that growers go further than the basic RSPO
standards on issues like not buying palm
oil fruit from unknown sources, minimising
hazardous chemical use and reducing GHGs.
These growers will need to be rewarded for
doing so – but it is clear that most buyers
are not yet even buying RSPO certified palm
oil.
“WWF wants all companies
to use the data available from the RSPO
to start buying from the leaders in the
RSPO rather than the laggards. But first
of all they should be buying all of the
CSPO currently available.”
As a first step, WWF
believes book & claim certificates are
a way to send market signals in support
of sustainable production so that economies
of scale can be achieved that will help
the entire industry move towards segregated
supply chains.
However, WWF would like
to see faster progress from companies toward
physically segregated certified sustainable
palm oil. Companies leading the demand for
segregated certified palm oil (by using
more than 50%) include food giants Heinz
and United Biscuits, chemical company Iwata,
Nutella manufacturer Ferrero Trading, and
UK retailer Waitrose.
