29 May 2014| last updated at 11:52PM

KUALA LUMPUR: ONE million residents in Wangsa Maju may face a water crisis soon if two developers do not stop illegal earthworks on their land.

The clearing of land on a Class Three hill slope has resulted in the pollution of Sungai Gombak.

The river supplies water to the Wangsa Maju treatment plant.

Due to land clearing, muddy surface run-off is flowing into Sungai Lalang and Sungai Salak. These two tributaries flow into Sungai Gombak, turning it muddy.

This had led to the closure of the Wangsa Maju water treatment plant from March 3 to May 13.

The plant supplies water to close to one million residents in the area.

Luckily for the residents, their water supply was not disrupted as they were getting water from the Klang Gate Dam.

Gombak District and Land Office district officer Datuk Nor Hisham Ahmad Dahlan said the Wangsa Maju treatment plant will need to be closed again if there are more downpours.

"If the hill slope is not rectified, then Sungai Gombak will continue to be polluted and the water treatment plant will not be able to process the water from the river," he said.

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Surface runoff muddies Sg Gombak

A mayor from the south-east of South Australia has gone on trial facing three charges of illegally clearing native vegetation.

Adelaide Magistrates Court heard Richard John Vickery cleared a large area of his property at Shaugh in 2008 so he could lease the land to an onion farmer.

Prosecutor Sam Whitten alleged Vickery cleared the land in contravention of the Native Vegetation Act.

He says chemicals were used and all seeds and stumps removed, leaving the land sterile.

"The land had approximately 90 species of native vegetation, supporting a high diversity of native plants and animals," the court was told.

Mr Whitten says the land had been cleared in the past but in a way that allowed native vegetation to regrow.

"What happened in 2008 was of an entirely different scale and extent," he said.

"By completely removing seeds and vegetation and using chemicals the soil was effectively sterilised. The native vegetation is unlikely to ever regenerate."

Mr Whitten says Mallee stumps removed might have been decades old.

"The prosecution accepts the land was suitable for use of rough grazing but was not suitable, due to the presence of native vegetation, for intense cultivation," he said.

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Tatiara Mayor Richard Vickery accused of illegal land clearing

A discussion on outdoor exercise equipment, a crosswalk light for Huntley Drive and the issue of land clearing were among the topics at the May 20 regular meeting of the Clarenville Town Council.

Shawn Hayward photo

Clarenville Council

Age-friendly park equipment

The recreation director obtained three separate quotes for exercise equipment for the age friendly park, located near the Clarenville High School.

The three prices were $19, 924 from Activate Playgrounds, $20, 354 from The Playground Guys and $29,390 from Henderson Recreation.

Recreation committee chair David Harris says they decided to go with The Playground

Guys since Activate Playgrounds couldnt get the full list of desired equipment.

Harris says the recreation committee had a great deal of discussion as to whether the exercise equipment will get used by the public.

We asked our recreation director to go out and talk to other municipalities who have similar equipment and similar age-friendly parks in their community and see if it was utilized and well received, says Harris.

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Councillor at large

SINGAPORE: The haze that is expected to hit Singapore in the coming months could go on for as long as three months, experts have warned.

This is similar to what the Republic experienced in 1997, they said.

Prolonged hazy skies could happen if a strong El Nino effect sets in, compounded by the already-started illegal land clearing by farmers in Sumatra.

El Nino is a phenomenon which causes severely dry weather and high temperatures in this region.

According to environmental reports, there were more than 3,000 hotspots in Sumatra at the peak of the haze crisis in March alone.

This compared to about 2,700 in June last year.

The next dry season will occur between June and October, and experts are concerned illegal land clearing in Sumatra will result in large-scale fires.

"If they deliberately set fires to clear land, particularly if it's land being cleared illegally, they are not going to listen to anyone who tells them not to start the fire," said Mr Faizal Parish, Director of Global Environment Centre, a non-governmental organisation based in Malaysia.

"They won't take immediate action to put out the fire. The problem (in Sumatra) is the need for active enforcement on the ground."

Worse, the March fires have not yet been put out completely.

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Experts warn of long period of haze

InsideClimateNews.org I entered the Amazon on the wings of a military-trained cowboy from San Antonio, Texas. Below, the Araguaia River flowed reddish-brown along a meandering path that extends some 1,600 miles before flushing into the Atlantic Ocean alongside the Amazon. Peering down from the cockpit, John Carter reminisced about life before bulldozers, fires and guns forced a tactical retreat.

"When we lived here, this was all my backyard," he says. "During the dry season, this water is crystal clear. I used to go spear-fishing."

The forest was so vast when Carter and his Brazilian wife Kika moved here in 1996 that he recorded clear cuts whenever he flew, in case the engine on his plane ever gave out. But soon enough the land rush was on, and the forests went up in flames set by people clearing land. When the carnage arrived at their doorstep, Carter consulted with his wife and they chose to fight, for their cattle ranch, their forest and the frontier he grew to love. Outspoken and seemingly fearless, he became something of a legend.

Below us, flat plains extended beyond the river, dark pools of water gleaming in the morning sun. Individual trees popped out of the barren earth at oddly regular intervals, each perched atop its own termite mound where it would remain safe during the annual floods. We continued north into the state of Mato Grosso"thick forest"and the flood plains gave way to a patchwork of ever-larger agricultural fields.

Although Carter eventually moved his family back to the United States due to a steady stream of death threatsand one attempt at sabotage on his planehe has been quietly building what he calls an "insurgency" in the Amazon through the grassroots operation he founded, dubbed the Aliana da Terra, or Earth Alliance. Set up in 2004, the Alliance consists of more than 700 landowners large and small who have committed to a core set of principles, including legal and sustainable agricultural methods as well as fair labor practices. Currently funded in large part by the Norwegian government, its territory covers an area that is more than twice the size of Connecticut. Carter has been slowly selling off his own assetscattle includedto make it all work.

On this particular day, Carter is flying a plane he co-owns with Jim Cable, an American businessman based in Brazil, and our first stop was the Xavante Mariwatsd indigenous community. I watched tribal members wave from below as Carter set the single-engine propeller plane down on a dirt runway. Inside a concrete building on an open plaza, he paid his respects and then got down to business.

The Alliance has helped the tribe drill a well, put up fences and start a cattle herd. Now it is working with them to expand a joint program to fight increasingly severe fires. Most are agricultural fires that have jumped the line, although Carter suspects fire is also being used as a tool and a weapon now that the authorities are keeping a closer eye on deforestation.

Carter told the tribe that the Alliance was ready to continue training its members in firefighting and work with them to expand operations so long as the tribe adopted a plan to support the program in the long run with sales from its cattle herd.

"I just need to see if you are in agreement," he said. "Who is going to coordinate this is you, not us."

The Xavante chief, Damio Paridzan, listened at a school desk in the middle of the room. Dressed in black pants with a black button-up shirt, complete with a feathered headdress and classic Brazilian Havaiana flip-flops, he spoke of the governments decision to relocate the tribe in the 1960s and its subsequent struggle to regain its land. After praising Carter for his help, he raised his voice and asked the question: "Should we close the deal?" The room erupted in cheers.

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An American Cowboy Fights for the Amazon

Surgical land clearing-aerial footage of Patrick cleaning up around a pond
Clearing undergrowth around pond @ future home site. Terex PT 110 forestry with Loftness G3 mulching head.

By: John Pierce

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Surgical land clearing-aerial footage of Patrick cleaning up around a pond - Video

A burst of growth in the wake of drought-breaking rains across inland Australia in 2011 helped to turn the country into one of the world's biggest carbon sinks, new research has found.

While oceans and land typically absorb about half the carbon emissions caused by fossil-fuel burning and land clearing, the unusually strong La Nina weather event and associated heavy rains resulted in land vegetation alone accounting for 40 per cent of the CO2 take-up that year.

Australia contributed about 60 per cent of the additional worldwide carbon sink, revealing a larger role for semi-arid regions than previously known, the lead author of a paper published on Thursday in Nature journal, Benjamin Poulter, said.

''Semi-arid regions have been overlooked in the carbon cycle because they have low productivity and because they store low amounts of carbon in vegetation and soils in comparison with tropical or boreal systems,'' said Dr Poulter, now an assistant professor at Montana State University after leading the study at France's Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l'Environnement.

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The research also found Australia has been on a greening trend, with vegetation expanding 6 per cent since 1981. The carbon uptake of plants has apparently become four times as sensitive to rainfall.

However, the scientists wrote that while drier regions could rival rainforests in carbon take-up, the more transitory nature of the vegetation meant its role as a sink could quickly reverse.

''The carbon that was stored in vegetation in 2011 was relatively quickly returned back to the atmosphere because of annual mortality of semi-arid grasses or because of increased fire activity consuming the greater fuel loads,'' Professor Poulter said.

''Changes in the behaviour of dryland systems in the global carbon cycle are very short-lived, and contribute mainly to larger inter-annual atmospheric CO2 variability,'' he said.

An indication of how temporary those carbon gains are may be on display in the coming year. The Bureau of Meteorology confirmed on Tuesday that an El Nino event had at least a 70 per cent chance of forming this year.

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Rain in outback helped extend world's carbon sink, finds paper

Hundreds of young people will be clearing weeds and planting trees from Hawaii to Vermont under a federal program that depends largely on private funding, the U.S. interior secretary said Thursday.

The government is putting in $1.9 billion of the $6.7 billion for the project announced by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Most of the rest is coming from Wells Fargo, according to Greg Knadle of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit created by Congress in 1984 to support wildlands. The group managed the donations for the young workers' project.

The crucial role played by the private sector underlines that the "budget situation is tight," Jewell told The Associated Press, saying internships and youth programs are the hardest hit at such times.

Jewell noted that when she was in the private sector, she tried to make clear to lawmakers that corporate support should not be a replacement for government funding. She said she hoped business leaders would continue to make that point.

"The term supplanting is something we worry about," said Jewell, who led outdoor retailer Recreational Equipment Inc., or REI, before being appointed interior secretary last year. Private efforts "should be the margin of excellence, not the margin of survival."

Jewell spoke at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, once home to military chemical weapons and agricultural pesticides manufacturing. After a Superfund cleanup, the 15,000-acre refuge was opened in 2010, offering city dwellers access to a natural grassland. Some of the more than 600 young people employed under the public lands project this year will be working at the refuge near Denver.

Some 1,500 volunteers also will be involved in projects that, in addition to Colorado, are planned in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wyoming.

On Thursday, Jewell helped members of Groundwork Denver plant cottonwood trees at the arsenal wildlife refuge. Groundwork Denver is one of several groups across the country that had projects funded under the program announced Thursday. It will work with 18 young people from low-income, urban families at the refuge.

Dele Johnson, a 23-year-old from Arvada, said work with Groundwork over the past two years has taken him to Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain National Park and urban gardens.

"This kind of work has prepared me to advocate for natural places," said Johnson, who just completed a public relations degree at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He said he wanted a career in which he could encourage other minorities to explore and protect the outdoors.

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Private Money Boosts Federal Public Land Program

Sacred burial grounds and community forests should be granted more protection under a new government proclamation issued this month, but rights groups and land-grab victims are wary that, without proper enforcement, it will amount to little in practice.

An interministerial proclamation, or prakas, signed by Minister of Agriculture Ouk Rabun and Minister of Environment Say Sam Ol on May 9 and obtained by the Post yesterday, aims to strengthen the management of economic land concessions (ELCs) to protect community areas, such as community forests and burial sites.

Each company must implement the tiger skin formula of guaranteeing that its ELC does not affect the farming lands of villagers, community forest and protected forest, the prakas says.

The tiger skin formula means that land inhabited by farmers must be cut out of the concession area.

The clearing [of land] must guarantee the preservation of the protected areas, including graveyards, jungle forest and spirit places, it says.

But rights groups and villagers were sceptical about how effective the prakas will be.

Chhay Thy, Ratanakkiri provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc, said that the prakas has been issued too late and was more likely a public relations gambit.

The ministries just released it so it would look good. They do not have any real intention to protect the forest, he said.

According to Thy, companies have already cleared most of the protected forests and graveyards in the area and planted rubber trees in their place.

Sav Nork, 42, community leader of the Jarai ethnic group in OYadav district, said the authorities had taken no action when he lost land to an ELC.

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Directive aims to stop ELC abuses

LUFKIN, TX (News Release) -

A Lufkin woman has been named the 2014 recipient of the Leopold Conservation Award, the state's highest honor for private land conservation, for her family's ecological transformation of a sizable piece of East Texas land in Nacogdoches County.

This year's award recognizes Virginia H. Winston, owner of the 3,418-acre Winston 8 Ranch, which is located five miles south of Nacogdoches. The ranch is a verdant medley of pine forest, longleaf pine, open range and wetlands providing food and shelter for a resurging population of whitetail deer, quail and Eastern turkeys. But that's not the way it was in the 1970s, when Mrs. Winston and her late husband John acquired the property.

Given in honor of renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold, the prestigious award is conferred each year by Sand County Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to private land conservation, in partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) as part of its Lone Star Land Steward Awards program. In Texas, the Leopold Conservation Award Program is sponsored by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Lee and Ramona Bass Foundation, DuPont Pioneer, Farm Credit and The Mosaic Company.

"Thankfully for Texas, more and more landowners are quietly yet diligently working to restore their property to benefit a host of habitats and fish and wildlife species," said TPWD Executive Director Carter Smith. "The Winston family has absolutely led by example. Through a substantial commitment of time and effort, they have converted a close-cut tract of land into one of the state's finest examples of exemplary land stewardship. We could not be more proud to recognize them for their important work."

"The nation benefits when private landowners seize opportunities to recover damaged land, as the Winstons have done," said Brent Haglund, Sand County Foundation President. "Families like the Winstons show us that the ethic and spirit of Aldo Leopold's writing and work continues."

Mrs. Winston accepted the Leopold crystal award and a check for $10,000 at the annual Lone Star Land Steward Awards dinner in Austin on May 21.

"The property has an active wildlife habitat improvement program that involves timber management, prescribed burning, invasive species control, and native habitat restoration," noted U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Jeffrey A. Reid in his nomination of the Winston 8 Ranch. "It is obvious [the Winston family is] planning for the long-term and not just immediate wants and needs."

Reid's nomination listed these accomplishments:

"The Winston legacy and dedication to stewardship is entrenched in their core family values," Reid said. "When John Winston acquired the property in the 1970s, it was largely a cutover track of land. Intensive planting, management, and harvesting have led this property to be held up as one of the premier examples of multiple use forest land and open pine management."

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State honors Lufkin family for land conservation