Phnom Penh Post: Illegal logging of staggering proportions abetted by military personnel is decimating stocks of luxury rosewood in the Central Cardamom Protected Forest, while the conservation group tasked with protecting the area and its government counterparts deny the trade is even happening. In a period of several hours beginning late on Sunday night, the Post witnessed at least nine industrial transport trucks, seven pick-up trucks and one Land Rover packed with timber drive out of Koh Kong province’s Thma...

National Public Radio: A new law in Pennsylvania has doctors nervous. The law grants physicians access to information about trade-secret chemicals used in natural gas drilling. Doctors say they need to know what's in those formulas in order to treat patients who may have been exposed to the chemicals. But the new law also says that doctors can't tell anyone else - not even other doctors - what's in those formulas. It's being called the "doctor gag rule." 'I Don't Know If It's Due To Exposure' Plastic surgeon...

Environment News Service: One of New Zealand's major environmental groups will appeal a decision by the Environment Court that stops climate change impacts from being considered under the Resource Management Act. The Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society of New Zealand says its appeal will be heard in the High Court. If the group's appeal is successful, it would mean that the contribution to climate change of developments such as coal mining would be considered during the government's permitting process, known...

United Press International: Scientists say climate records from Australasia show there are no other warm periods in the last 1,000 years that match the warming experienced since 1950. A study led by researchers at the University of Melbourne used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, corals and ice cores to study Australasian temperatures over the past millennium and compare them to climate model simulations. "Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained...

National Public Radio: May is the month we see strawberries explode in the market. There are strawberry festivals in every corner of the nation celebrating the juicy ruby beauties, and Strawberry Queens crowned galore. Those traditional harvest time festivals make us think our strawberries are mostly grown on the farm just down the road. But in fact, one state - California - supplies 80 percent of America's strawberries, and the percentage is growing. The reason? California's fields are stunningly productive. They...

Independent: Moves to cut subsidies for fitting solar panels on homes were halted by ministers today following warnings that the planned reductions threatened Britain’s hopes of hitting targets for renewable energy production. Ministers halved subsidies for feed-in tariffs last year and were due to implement another cut in July. The Independent disclosed this month that senior figures in the solar energy industry warned they faced a crisis which jeopardised thousands of jobs as a result of the tariff reductions....

Reuters: Apple Inc plans to power its main U.S. data center entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year, taking steps to address longstanding environmental concerns about the rapid expansion of high-consuming computer server farms. The maker of the iPhone and iPad said on Thursday it was buying equipment from SunPower Corp and startup Bloom Energy to build two solar array installations in and around Maiden, North Carolina, near its core data center. Once up, the solar farm will supply 84...

Environmental News Network: With melting sea ice opening up previously inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean, the fishing industry sees a potential bonanza. But some scientists and government officials have begun calling for a moratorium on fishing in the region until the true state of the Arctic fishery is assessed. When scientists with the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program began tracking 323 vertebrate species across the entire Arctic several years ago, most assumed that many fish and animals would not fare well...

redOrbit: Scientists in Australia have used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region over the last 1000 years. This is the first study of its kind. Researchers at the University of Melbourne led the study. They used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, corals and ice cores to study the temperatures in Australia over the past millennium and compared them to climate model simulations. “The results show that there are no other warm periods...

Inter Press Service: For the past two decades Masao Ishiji (59), has been fighting tooth and nail to ban the operation of four nuclear reactors that dot the western coastline of Oi in the Fukui prefecture facing the Japan Sea. Earlier this week, that desperate battle reached a critical front. When the Oi municipal assembly passed a new resolution Monday to restart Unit 3 and 4 reactors that had been closed for a year for stress tests, anti-nuclear activists knew they had reached a crucial juncture in their fight to...

Yale Environment 360: U.S. scientists say emissions in the Northern Hemisphere of black carbon aerosols and ozone, both of which absorb solar radiation, are likely causing the hemisphere’s tropical regions to expand poleward. After comparing observations of tropic expansion — which suggest that the tropics have widened 0.7 degrees per decade since 1970, largely because of global warming — with climate models, researchers at University of California, Riverside, found that the climate models tended to underestimate that...

Guardian: A furious row has broken out among local politicians over a proposal to build a nuclear waste dump in Kent. Romney Marshes is being mooted as a site for Britain's first store for high-level radioactive materials by members of Shepway district council but the move has infuriated the leader of Kent county council and a local MP. "Let's not sell Romney Marsh short; I believe it has and deserves a better future than being the dumping ground for all of Britain's high level nuclear waste," said Damian...

Guardian: From the Amazon to Cerrado the production of pig iron in illegal charcoal kilns is driving Brazilian rainforests to destruction. A two-year investigation by Greenpeace shows how trees are being burned to make charcoal, used in the production of 'pig iron'. This pig iron is exported to the US and converted into steel, which is bought by some of the biggest car makers in the world

New York Times: In just over a month, policy makers from around the world will meet in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The meeting has been called Rio+20, reflecting the two decades that have passed since a landmark conference on the environment and development was held in Rio in 1992. This time the main themes are energy, sustainable cities, food security, water shortages, the health of oceans, disaster readiness and assuring people a livelihood. Bangladesh is a prime...

Mongabay: Over 25 years after people stopped growing cardamom in Sri Lanka's Knuckles Forest Reserve (KFR), the spice crop is still having an impact on the forest, according to a recent study in Forest Ecology and Management. The clearing of understory plants and the use of fertilizers continue to shape the forest in the protected area. Cardamom is grown in the shade of the rainforest canopy and so does not require deforestation like other crops. However, often forest vegetation beneath the canopy is cleared....

Yale Environment 360: Two false-color thermal images taken by NASA satellites depict the rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska over the past 25 years. Since 1986, the glacier’s end-point, or terminus, has retreated 12 miles up an inlet in Prince William Sound, and the glacier also has lost about half its total thickness and volume. The top image, taken by a Landsat 5 satellite in 1986, shows two branches of the glacier joining together at a point marked “medial moraine.” The glacier’s terminus was just north...

National Public Radio: Raging wildfires are burning tens of thousands of of acres in Arizona, Nevada and parts of New Mexico and Colorado. But federal agencies overseeing the response say they're not worried - by this time last year, there had already been more fires that destroyed more acres. "I would describe [this season] as getting off to a slow start," said Kari Boyd-Peak, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center, which bills itself as a national support center for wildland firefighting. "We're just...

Guardian: The traffic lights are still blinking in Odaka town, north-western Japan, but few cars pass through these deserted intersections. Frozen in time after being hit by the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns in the nearby Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear plant, tables are still laid in partially-collapsed restaurants and cars are stacked up against railings where they were deposited by the retreating wave. When I visited last week, a deathly silence reigned, the only noise the chirruping of...

Reuters: An oil spill was discovered off Brazil's coast near the country's Espirito Santo state, Brazil's Navy said on Thursday, the latest in a series of spills that have raised questions about the safety of a massive expansion of the country's oil production capacity. The Navy said it has sent a team to investigate and has no immediate estimate of the spill's size. Oil workers returning home after work offshore said there was an oil stain about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) long on the ocean near the P-57...

Guardian: Ford, GM and BMW are sourcing material from Brazil that is driving illegal logging and slave labour, according to campaigners at Greenpeace. Brazil is a major exporter of pig iron, a primary ingredient of steel and cast iron, that is produced using massive quantities of charcoal. Reports over the past decade from the Brazilian government, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and the US Department of Labour have indicated that charcoal used by many pig iron suppliers in the Amazonian...