Attempt to abduct and Intimidate Sri Lankan Fisher Leader

Europe's natural heritage is showing an alarming decline, according to new research published today. The European Red List, a part of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, assessed a considerable portion of Europe’s native fauna and flora, finding that a large proportion of molluscs, freshwater fish and vascular plants now fall into a threatened category.

The assessment of some 6,000 species reveals that 44% of all freshwater molluscs, 37% of freshwater fish, 23% of amphibians, 20% of a selection of terrestrial molluscs, 19% of reptiles, 15% of mammals and of dragonflies, 13% of birds, 11% of a selection of saproxylic beetles, 9% of butterflies and 467 species of vascular plant species are now under threat.

European Commissioner for the Environment Janez Potočnik said: "The well-being of people in Europe and all over the world depends on goods and services that nature provides. If we don’t address the reasons behind this decline and act urgently to stop it, we could pay a very heavy price indeed."

Freshwater molluscs are the most threatened group assessed so far. Spengler’s Freshwater Mussel (Margaritifera auricularia), once widespread, is now restricted to a handful of rivers in France and Spain. Currently listed as Critically Endangered, it was considered to be nearly extinct in the 1980s. The species is one of two for which a European-level Action Plan was designed and there are ongoing conservation programmes which allow hope for its future.

“The figures confirm the worrying condition of European molluscs,” said Annabelle Cuttelod, IUCN Coordinator of the European Red List. “When combined with the high level of threats faced by freshwater fish and amphibians, we can see that the European freshwater ecosystems are really under serious threats that require urgent conservation action.”

Freshwater fish are also highly threatened, especially as a result of pollution, overfishing, habitat loss and the introduction of alien species. Sturgeons are particularly at risk, with all but one of the eight European species now Critically Endangered.

Included in the vascular plant category are the wild relatives of crop plants which are vital for food security yet are often neglected in terms of conservation. The Critically Endangered Beta patula is a close wild relative of cultivated beets and an important gene source for enhancing virus resistance. Other plant species that show concerning levels of threat are the wild relatives of sugar beet, wheat, oat and lettuce which are economically important crops in Europe.

But there is some positive news and the assessment highlights the success of well-designed conservation measures. Many species protected under the EU Habitats Directive and included in the Natura 2000 network of protected areas now have an improved chance of survival. Centranthus trinervis, a plant endemic to Corsica, has been downlisted from Critically Endangered to Endangered due to strict protection of its single known site. Additionally, the control of invasive species such as plants, goats and rats for example has benefited the majority of threatened land snails in Madeira over the past 10 years.

“These are encouraging signs that show the benefits of conservation actions supported by strong policy,” says Jean-Christophe Vié, Deputy Director, IUCN Global Species Programme. “Continued implementation of the current European legislation combined with new conservation programmes is essential to preserve these important native species and their habitats.”

*World Fisheries Day 21-11-2011*

*Food Sovereignty and Fisher People in the World.*

*Economic Globalization and Free Market*

*It is a free movement of capital for making profit by a few at the expense of the vast majority who do not have the basic needs, food, cloth, shelter, education and health. By hook or by crook a few rich people and multi national companies(Mncs) are making profits. There is no question of justice. There is no question of morality. There is no question of protecting environment. Food Sovereignty of a nation and a community is at a risk. Food is controlled by the rich and Mncs. In the name of making profit,  the Mncs introduce high yielding hybrid seeds, genetically engineered cultivation, pesticides, etc which make food poisonous. The traditional seeds and organic cultivation cannot compete with  the modern cultivation.  The industrialized and hi-tech cultivation by the Mncs displaced the vast majority  small farmers and naturally  nations and communities lost the food sovereignty.*

*Globalization and Fisheries.*

*The same situation has come to the fisheries and the small fisher people. A few industrialized fishers  started controlling the situation. The vast majority of small fishers were displaced.  Because of overfishing by the big ones, there was a depletion of fish resource all over the world. So the same Mncs went into industrialized aquaculture. Because  of  the use of pesticides and chemicals the fish too has become poisonous.  Good fish is not available for the fisher people and fish consumers.*

*The challenge before the small farmers and fishers?*
*Small farmers , good food for  all, fisher people  and fish consumers of every nation should depend on their own production. Through organic food production through natural seeds, fish production by small fisher people, traditional aquaculture, riverine and lake fishing,  each nation should become self sufficient. This is the campaign we should be involved during the World Fisheries Day.  Small fishers and small farmers should work together for land reform and aquatic reform all over the World. The land should be owned by small farmers, water bodies should be owned by small fishers and forest should be owned by the tribals, and indigenous people.

This is the ongoing struggle against Globalization, Mncs all over the World.
The struggle continues till each community and nation becomes self reliant for food*.

Thomas Kocherry, Special Invitee, World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), 7/48
, Manavalakurichy, Tamilnadu, India-629252, Moble: +91 936 064 5772.
thomasksa@gmail.com . 28-10-2011.

Surrounded by mangroves, the tropical island of Muisne, off Ecuador's northern coast, sounds like an idyllic place to live.

Click HERE to view graphic

Fishermen repair their nets on its palm-fringed beaches while "ecological taxis" – tricycles with passenger seats – patrol the unpaved streets; no motorised transport exists on the island. Yet Muisne and its Afro-Ecuadorian community of 8,000 are in decline. As the years roll by, there are fewer fish and shellfish to catch, the water becomes more polluted and a growing number of locals desperate to eke out a living migrate to the mainland, or leave Ecuador altogether.

Feeding the developed world's seemingly insatiable demand for cheap seafood, shrimp farms have ravaged Muisne's delicate mangrove ecosystem and turned its inhabitants from a poor but close-knit community to one scarred by a disturbing string of social ills.

"There is more poverty, more pollution, more alcoholism and more prostitution. This has been a curse for our community," says Lider Gongora, a Muisne resident and the executive director of CCONDEM, the national umbrella group that campaigns for mangrove communities. "It has devastated the local economy. Muisne is poorer as a result of the shrimp farms, and it is the same for all of Ecuador's communities that depend on mangroves."

In the 1970s, before shrimp farms arrived, the island had 20,000 hectares of mangroves. Now there are just over 5,000 hectares, nearly half of which is secondary forest, replanted by the community. From Indonesia to Brazil, the story is the same. Yet nowhere has the growth of farms for shrimp, prawns, salmon and other species been as explosive as in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, production in the region grew annually at 21.1 per cent between 1970 and 2008. Over the same period, annual global consumption of farm-reared seafood has risen from 700g to 7.8kg per capita.

Meanwhile, more than half of the world's estimated 32 million hectares of mangroves – one of the most biodiverse and fragile ecosystems – has been lost. In Ecuador, fewer than a third of the country's initial 360,000 hectares of mangroves survive. And in Honduras, scene of some of the least regulated shrimp farm expansion, which has led to a string of unresolved murders of fisherman, now has just a quarter of its 250,000 hectares of mangroves still standing.

The shrimp farms typically have a complex series of environmental impacts. Initially, sections of the mangrove are cleared to make way for the farms. Once operational, the farms may use large quantities of antibiotics and pesticides that often contaminate the surrounding forests. Farms can also obstruct the flow of rivers and streams, preventing them from mixing with seawater to provide the brackish water that mangroves need to thrive. In doing so, they provide a double whammy by stopping the farms' pollutants from being washed away, increasing the ecological devastation while the shrimp and prawns are reared in a cocktail of chemicals, stale water and bacteria.

As the mangroves' delicate ecological balance is disrupted, the effects can reach far beyond these unique, coastal forests. Many of the myriad species of fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects found in mangroves spend only one stage of their life there, hatching or breeding before migrating to other biomes, such as the open sea, nearby salt flats or inland forests.

The impact for Muisne has been depressingly predictable. Fishermen who wade waist-deep through the mangroves' soupy, opaque waters looking for black scallops have to spend longer and longer to catch less and less. Previously, one fisherman could harvest up to 2,000 scallops a day but now, working longer hours, it is 150 at most. "Sometimes you spend the whole day but don't get anything," complains Mr Gongora.

Despite the 2006 election of a leftist president, Rafael Correa, and the subsequent, groundbreaking rewriting of the constitution to include the "rights of nature", shrimp farming in Ecuador has actually increased, following a new law to expand production to fresh stretches of the country's Pacific coast. "Correa has his left-wing, environmentalist discourse but it is a big lie," Mr Gongora says, bitterly. "He justifies the shrimp farming by saying it brings foreign exchange, but what is the cost to Ecuadorians?"