The Walikale community gorilla reserve.

Mineral deposits in eastern Congo are at the heart of conflict and the continued unhindered transport across borders and the funds from companies based in the EU and Asia are key to the continuation of environmental crime, destruction of gorilla habitat and atrocities.

Multinational companies in the EU and in Asia, among other, operate through subsidiary companies in the DRC region and contribute directly or most often indirectly with funds for financing the illegal exploitation of resources in the DRC – without criminal investigations.

Companies originating in the EU, and companies based in Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Hong Kong (China), India, Malaysia, Thailand, Rwanda, South Africa, Switzerland, The Netherlands, The Russian Federation, The United Arab Emirates, and the UK and Northern Ireland are involved in exporting minerals and timber from conflict regions in the DRC (UNSC, 2008). Principle export points are Mombasa and Dar Es Salaam.

Militias and collaborating subsidiary companies or dealers are involved in everything from road “taxes” and “taxes” on local impoverished populations to massive scale exploitation of minerals, timber and charcoal.

Even though the logging concessions fall out- side of the protected areas, it is not uncommon – due to lack of resources for enforcement – that companies log inside protected areas, where often more valuable timber is present, and export this as part of their legal conces- sions – many however with at least 50% underreporting.

As valuable timber becomes rare outside of parks, militias enter parks and illegally cut and produce charcoal inside parks – even the best protected park of the Virungas housing large shares of the Worlds remaining mountain gorilla popula- tion. Rangers here destroyed over a thousand kilns for charcoal inside the park in 2009.

Charcoal business in the Virunga area.

The pressure on protected areas by militias and refugees in Eastern DRC.

As many of the parks and surrounding forests have lost 50–80% of their wildlife species, typically antelopes, zebras and other ungulates, the poachers are increasingly targeting primates including gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees. A significant demand comes from bushmeat hunters to supply militias, refugee camps and mining and logging camps, where much of the work- force is forced. Thirty-four million people living in the forests of Central Afri...

As climate change alters Arctic ecosystems and enables greater human activity, biological invasions are likely to increase in the Arctic. To some extent, Arctic terrestrial ecosystems may be predisposed to invasion because many invasive plants are adapted to open disturbed areas. Range map scenarios developed for 16 highly invasive plants either occurring in or at risk of invading Alaska also paint a sobering outlook for the future. This map dep...

Data from many sources and at several scales suggest that recent climate change is already affecting terrestrial Arctic ecosystems. Comparisons of historical and contemporary aerial photographs provide evidence that Arctic vegetation has already undergone significant shifts in recent decades, foreshadowing changes that are likely to come. In a repeated measurement study conducted on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada, over a period of 13 years, t...

The Arctic Council study on trends in the polar ecosystems - the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA) focuses on the areas displayed in this map. The high- and low Arctic regions are defined from the bioclimatic zones in the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM), while the sub-Arctic zone is the area definition that has been used int he Arctic Council.

The Arctic contains a variety of types of lakes but overall, it is thermokarst lakes and ponds that are the most abundant and productive aquatic ecosystems in the Arctic. They are found extensively in the lowland regions of western and northern Alaska, Canada and Siberia. These (i.e., thaw) lakes are most commonly formed by the thaw of ice-rich permafrost, which leads to the collapse of ground levels and ponding of surface water in the depression...

Over recent years, the southern limit of permafrost in northern peatlands has retreated by 39 km on average and by as much as 200 km in some parts of the Canadian Arctic. Although regional warming by 1.32°C has accelerated permafrost thaw in northern Manitoba, Canada, these changes are not exclusively linked to temperature rise. The loss of permafrost in Quebec has been attributed to the insulating effect of increased snowfall since the late 1950...

A false color Quickbird-2 satellite image of a portion of the Bovanenkovo Gas Field on the Yamal Peninsula in West Siberia. Image acquired 4 July 2004. The construction phase began in the late 1980s. From that period onward there remain visible signs of extensive off-road vehicle traffic across the terrain. Many of those tracks have naturally revegetated and now appear as bright red, indicating dense grass- and sedge-dominated vegetation. The roa...

Protected areas have long been viewed as a key element for maintaining and conserving Arctic biodiversity and the functioning landscapes upon which species depend. Arctic protected areas have been established in strategically important and representative areas, helping to maintain crucial ecological features, e.g., caribou migration and calving areas, shorebird and waterfowl staging and nesting sites, seabird colonies, and critical components of ...

The Arctic contains a variety of types of lakes but overall, it is thermokarst lakes and ponds that are the most abundant and productive aquatic ecosystems in the Arctic. They are found extensively in the lowland regions of western and northern Alaska, Canada and Siberia. These (i.e., thaw) lakes are most commonly formed by the thaw of ice-rich permafrost, which leads to the collapse of ground levels and ponding of surface water in the depression...

Limited by the availability of detailed observations, most historical evaluations of changes in freshwater ice have focused on relatively simple characteristics, such as the timing of autumn freeze up and spring break up, and maximum ice-cover thickness. Based on 27 long-term (about 150-year) records from around the Northern Hemisphere, Magnuson and others (Figure 8.1) discovered that freeze up has been delayed by approximately six days per hundr...

Wild reindeer and caribou, Rangifer tarandus, are widely distributed around the circumpolar Arctic where they play a key role in the environment, culture, and economy of the region. One of the two major wild reindeer populations in west Greenland has declined from about 45,000 to 35,000 between 2001 and 2005, while the trend for the second major herd is uncertain. From a management and biological perspective, however, it may be desirable to redu...