Polluters' fines in Colombia will water treatment
Colombia's Autonomous Regional Corporation of the Bogota savanna (CAR) will establish a series of tariffs to be paid by industries polluting the Bogota river. These funds will finance the construction of water treatment plants in Zipaquira, Cajica, Chia, Cota, and other towns surrounding the capital in order to reduce contamination of the river. CAR engineers predict severe damage to the Magdalena river, Colombia's most important waterway, unless pollution from the Bogota river, a major Magdalena artery, is reduced. The Bogota, unless checked, will empty 28 cubic metres of sewage per second into the Magdalena by 1990.
CAR is empowered to levy fines and tariffs on industries located in the savanna under the country's two-year-old ecological code.
WWF appeals for Amazonian forest conservation
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has urged Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela to safeguard viable representative samples of the rain forests of the Amazonian basin. It recognizes the need to make productive use of the Amazonian area and the conservation efforts already made by Peru and Venezuela.
(WWF, Morges, Switzerland)
U.N. meeting on ozone layer
A decision to postpone action until further research is completed was the major result of the first United Nations conference on the ozone layer, held at Washington, D.C., in March.
"The problem is we don't know what we don't know and we may never know it," said a Norwegian scientist. "There are limitations to our uncertainties," countered an American delegate, "and by the time we find out what we don't know, we may have caused irreversible damage to the ozone layer."
The ozone layer is a diffuse shield 17 to 25 kilometres high in the atmosphere and protects life on earth from excessive ultra-violet rays of the sun. It is feared that man-made substances emitted into the atmosphere can deplete the ozone layer.
(Development Forum, United Nations, April 1977)
Kenya further develops game viewing
Backed by a World Bank loan, Kenya is developing wildlife through an undertaking which combines game viewing by tourists and benefits to the herdsmen living in the game reserves.
The World Bank's interest can be traced back to pre-investment work done by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the U. N. Development Programme (UNDP). An FAO resource economist had calculated that in the Amboseli area investment in game viewing might yield an annual return of 28 to 38 percent.
"Group ranchers" would receive almost 40 percent of the financial return in cash payments, according to this calculation. The Masai herds-men would draw financial benefits from game hunting and cropping as well as being paid compensation for wildlife grazing on their rangelands.
This pattern, arrived at for Amboseli Park, could be repeated in other game reserves. High returns recommended for the tribesmen are seen as an essential condition for a healthy equilibrium between wildlife and livestock and as a means of preserving some of the species threatened with extinction.
Geneticist seeks to produce the perfect elm
An American geneticist has set out to produce the perfect elm-combining the graceful crown and larger leaves of the American species with the disease resistance of the Asian species which has smaller leaves and scraggly crowns. Dutch elm disease, a fungus, has killed hundreds of thousands of elms in the United States and Canada and threatens the rest.
To crossbreed different species of the same genus or family usually requires that the two species have the same number of chromosomes, otherwise the "chromosome barrier" blocks successful propagation of a hybrid. The trouble is that the American elm has 56 chromosomes and the Asian species has only 28.
So Dr. David Karnosky, the geneticist working on the problem at the Carey Arboretum in Millbrook, New York, is looking for American elm twins which may have half their parents' chromosomes. If a seedling elm could be grown to maturity, it might be possible to cross it with the Asian species.
It is a laborious job. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," Dr. Karnosky said.
(N. Y. Times)
Development claims Indian forests
A total of 3.4 million hectares of forests have been destroyed in India in the last three decades for agricultural purposes, river valley projects and as a result of industrial and urban expansion, according to the newspaper Financial Express, Delhi.
New Sika deer colony in Near East formed from Irish culls
Fifty Irish Sika deer are being used to set up a new colony of deer in the Near East. The male and female Sika were flown from Ireland to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
It had been decided that the Japanese Sika introduced to Ireland in 1860 would have to be culled in Killarney.
Unasylva - an international journal of forestry and forest industries
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