Rain Forests

Scientists have for the first time found high levels of ozone and acid rain over thousands of miles of virgin rain forests of Central Africa, the New York Times said in a report from Freiburg, West Germany. It said the discovery by separate teams of scientists from France and West Germany was particularly alarming because the pollution exists throughout the year and is comparable to levels found in industrialized Europe and North America. The scientists said the pollution is largely caused by fires set by farmers and herdsmen to clear shrubs and to stimulate the growth of crops and grass.

New music in Manila is a too-little-looked-at phenomenon. We've been missing something. For a Monday Evening Concerts program, built around the U.S. premieres of works by two Philippine composers, Zipper Concert Hall became, in Jonas Baes' "Patangis-Buwaya," a rain forest. The sounds made by a quartet of low winds and whistles and stones handed out to the audience were so uncannily authentic that all that was said to be missing were the mosquitoes. But the big piece of the night, José Maceda's "Strata," proved an even more peculiar sonic and spiritual wonder.

How can we tell South Americans not to cut down their rain forests when we North Americans continue to chop down the last 15% of our virgin old-growth forests? M.X. KIRBY Camarillo

TIKAL NATIONAL PARK, Guatemala - The woman in the shorts shrieked, grabbed her ankle and crumpled to the ground as though she'd been shot. And in a sense she had. "A bullet ant," surmised José Elias, our unflappable guide. "If they sting you, the pain will last 24 hours. Take care. " We left the stricken woman to her friends and plunged deeper into Guatemala's steamy jungle. Birds sang madly, chaotically. Emerald billed toucans alighted in the treetops. The spooky cry of a howler monkey echoed through the forest.

Re "Rescuers Hear Only Silence From Sea of Mud," Feb. 19 The reporting of the mudslide disaster in the Philippines fails to address the causes of this catastrophe and seems to treat it as an act of God, thus absolving people of any responsibility. Failure to recognize and correct the human involvement in this tragedy will just lead to thousands more deaths in the future. In 2001, a team of scientists from Humboldt University of Berlin reported that forest cover on Leyte Island had decreased markedly since the late 1980s because of illegal logging with the support of government officials.

The world's tropical forests, thought to be vital to life on Earth, are vanishing at a rate twice as fast as that estimated 10 years ago, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said last week. First estimates from the agency's 1990 Forest Resources Assessment showed that the annual rate of deforestation rose sharply from 37,000 square miles in 1980 to 66,000 square miles 10 years later--an area about the size of Oklahoma every year.

Question: How do you avoid tripping if you have 200 legs? Answer: The millipede has evolved a special gait, scuttling and undulating to keep its legs in order. That was one fact children and adult visitors could learn Tuesday at the grand opening of BioTrek--Cal Poly Pomona's new rain forest simulation and learning center. But the purpose of the 3,500-square-foot facility, four years in the making, is more ambitious than simply dispensing science trivia, according to officials.

For Beverly Revness and Janice Tarr, the school year that ended Friday was a long, difficult and tumultuous one, but comments from students like 10-year-old Natasha Roje give them hope that it was not all in vain. "I wonder, if I have children," Natasha told a classroom visitor recently, "if they'll ever get to know about the rain forests, or if they have to see pictures and stuff." Small-Scale Triumph Revness and Tarr, teachers at Kenter Canyon Elementary School in Brentwood, have spent the year raising the environmental consciousness of their fourth- and fifth-graders with a joint project for the two classes.

Deforestation and climate change may sound like familiar concerns to the modern ear. But a team of French scientists is arguing that even 3,000 years ago, humans may have played a role in transforming the Central African rain forest into the savannas we see today. As Bantu farmers expanded south and east into the rain forest in search of fertile agricultural land, they may have created savanna "corridors" that cut into the forest and helped turn that lush landscape into drier grassland, according to a study published online this week in the journal Science.

It's official: Barbie has broken up with Asia Pulp & Paper Co. Responding to a campaign by environmental activists at Greenpeace, toy giant Mattel Inc., maker of the famed Barbie doll line, announced Wednesday that it would stop buying paper and packaging that the environmental group has linked to rain forest destruction in Indonesia. The El Segundo company said it would tell suppliers to avoid wood fiber from companies "that are known to be involved in deforestation. " Among those companies, Greenpeace said in a statement, is Asia Pulp & Paper.

Howler monkeys, crocodiles, toucans, parrots and lots of birds star in this 10-day trip to Costa Rica sponsored by the Greater L.A. Zoo Assn. The naturalist-led expedition explores Volcan Poas National Park to learn about active volcanoes, the Monteverde Cloud Forest mountain reserve, Carara National Park on the Pacific Coast and a rain forest at Braulio Carrillo, with an aerial tram that takes you into the tree canopy. A tour of capital city San Jose also is included. When: Costa Rica: Nature's Treasure House runs from Nov. 11-20.

Responding to pressure from Greenpeace this week, toy maker Mattel Inc. said it would direct its suppliers to stop buying wood products from Asia Pulp & Paper, a Singapore company that has clear-cut vast swaths of Indonesia's rain forest. As the environmental group's global campaign against Mattel gained traction, the El Segundo company said on its Facebook page: "Mattel does not support deforestation nor does it contract directly with Sinar Mas/APP. We purchase packaging materials from a variety of suppliers and it is not the normal course of business to dictate where suppliers source materials.

Environmentalists have launched a global campaign against Mattel Inc., the world's largest toy company, as part of a decade-long effort to force multinational corporations to purge their operations of any links to rain forest destruction. On Tuesday, Greenpeace activists in turquoise vests rappelled down the face of the company's 15-story headquarters in El Segundo and hung a giant banner depicting a frowning Ken doll with the message: "Barbie: it's over. I don't date girls that are into deforestation.

The gig : Dr. Gary K. Michelson, 62, is a billionaire inventor of surgical devices and a retired orthopedic surgeon who has devoted an estimated $300 million of his fortune to an assortment of causes. Topping the list: animal welfare, medical research, online textbooks and tropical rain forests. An early influence: Michelson vividly recalls the childhood event in Philadelphia that set him on his path to medicine: His grandmother suffered from a crippling spinal deformity that made it impossible for her to distinguish between hot and cold in her extremities.

The San Diego Zoo is taking over a research facility in one of the most remote and biologically diverse places on earth: the Amazon rain forest of Peru. Few places on the globe have had as little contact with the modern world, researchers said. The Cocha Cashu Biological Station is accessible only through a flight into the jungle on a small plane and then a two-day trip by boat up the Amazon River. It's a perfect place to study unruffled nature, including more than 1,000 species of birds, 200 of reptiles and amphibians, 125 of mammals.

Rev up the engine and hit the road with “ Drives of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Most Spectacular Trips,” a new coffee-table book from National Geographic ($40, hardcover) that explores highways and byways around the globe.  Some of the trips are long-distance odysseys on the far side of the planet, such as the Silk Road across the vastness of central Asia. Many are easy drives for Californians , such as the Gold Rush trail along the rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and California Highway 1 along the rugged coastline of the Big Sur region.