A senior wildlife official with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) was arrested this week amid charges that he organized the executions of up to 10 endangered mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park last year. The official is also accused of cutting down protected trees to convert them into charcoal. WildlifeDirect, a wildlife conservation NGO that works in the park, suggested that Mashagiro had orchestrated the killings of the gorillas to distract rangers from the charcoal production, which was destroying the gorillas’ habitat, and to discourage the rangers from protecting the gorillas.

Last month, the New Security Beat reported on a new agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda, and Rwanda to protect the mountain gorillas’ rapidly diminishing habitat. The initiative was one of the few promising developments for the gorillas over the past several months.

In early March, rebels who had taken control of the park’s Gorilla Sector—home to half of the world’s approximately 720 gorillas—threatened to kill any park ranger who attempted to enter it. According to local officials, the rebels have set up a parallel gorilla administration in the sector, charging tourist groups to view the gorillas. The park rangers had hoped they would be permitted to enter the Gorilla Sector following a January 2008 peace agreement between the Congolese government and the rebel groups, but the rebels have continued to forbid them from returning to the area.

Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced an unprecedented joint effort to save the critically endangered mountain gorilla on February 20, 2008. As part of the 10-year Transboundary Strategic Plan, the countries will develop and adhere to a consistent set of conservation policies and laws in Virunga National Park, which overlaps the three countries and is home to more than half of the world’s 700 remaining mountain gorillas.

Today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Colombia’s Macarena National Park is being deforested and polluted by illegal coca farms. After being driven from farmland by U.S.-sponsored aerial fumigation, coca growers have invaded Macarena and other national parks, where fumigation is illegal. In August 2006, six workers manually clearing coca in Macarena were killed by a bomb detonated by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Recently, Colombia has begun to shift away from aerial fumigation toward manual eradication, which is more effective but poses significant risks to the workers and the security personnel guarding them.

Coca farming gives rise to a wide range of negative environmental effects, including “chemical dumping, deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution, a shift to mono-agriculture, bio-diversity loss, and a potential loss of cultural eco-knowledge,” according to American University’s Trade and Environment Database.

A New York Times article from 1989 demonstrates that, sadly, coca trafficking has been causing violence and environmental destruction across South America for decades.

Last month, the Brazilian government announced it would step up measures to combat illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, including deploying Brazilian soldiers and police officers to regions that have recently suffered heavy deforestation. Last week, it made good on that promise, as Brazilian police confiscated 353,000 cubic feet of lumber from eight illegal sawmills in the state of Para—one of the biggest loads ever seized.

China has begun to reverse the high rates of desertification that have plagued it for decades, reported China Daily on January 24. Thanks to the efforts of communities, NGOs, and local governments, China’s deserts are now shrinking by 7,585 kilometers a year, in contrast to their annual growth rate of 10,400 square kilometers in the late 1990s. Yet 400 million Chinese remain affected by desertification: Erosion—particularly due to wind—can cause violent sand storms, forcing people from their homes and threatening the economies of major Asian cities including Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo. Human health effects include respiratory and eye infections. For more on the health effects of desertification, see “Desertification and Environmental Health Trends in China,” a research brief by the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum (CEF).

In August 2007, CEF and water NGO Circle of Blue assembled a group of desertification experts and photographers to take a five-day car ride from Beijing into eastern Inner Mongolia in northeast China, one of the regions that has suffered most from desertification. On their drive into the ocean of sand, the team gathered stories, photos, and video to put a human face on China’s desertification crisis. The result of their trip is a multimedia report, “Reign of Sand,” which explains that the primary causes of China’s increasingly frequent and severe sand storms—most of which originate in Inner Mongolia, home to the largest grasslands on earth—are the ecological mismanagement of this region and deepening drought in northern China.

By CEF Program Assistant Linden Ellis.

Today’s Washington Post reports on the discovery of a new species of flowering palm tree in northern Madagascar. The tree—which, when in bloom, sends a 30-foot-tall mass of fruits and flowers sprouting from the top of its trunk—is so unlike any other known palms that it has been assigned its own genus. The discovery of this tree is “helping to highlight the predicament Madagascar faces as population growth, poverty and poor land management conspire to destroy the last vestiges of that island’s ecological magnificence,” writes reporter Rick Weiss. According to the article, approximately 90 percent of Madagascar’s 10,000 plant species are endemic to the island, yet one-third of the country’s unique vegetative cover has disappeared during the past three decades.

But the situation is perhaps not as dire as Weiss makes it out to be. For instance, a successful population-environment program in Madagascar has helped preserve the country’s remaining rainforest while improving the health of the Malagasy people.

In an editorial in The New York Times, noted author and former Wilson Center speaker Jared Diamond argues that the world’s growing population “matters only insofar as people consume and produce.”

A new guide from MEASURE Evaluation provides a set of evidence-based indicators that integrated population-health-environment (PHE) projects can use for monitoring and evaluation.

WomenLead in Peace and Stability, a new publication from the Centre for Development and Population Activities, profiles 15 women from war-torn nations—including Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nepal—who have worked to build sustainable peace in their countries.

Tensions are high between those who support the construction of a new township for former Nairobi slum-dwellers, and those who argue the development will jeopardize the future of Nairobi National Park.

I recently traveled to Ethiopia to attend “Population, Health, and Environment: Integrated Development for East Africa,” a conference sponsored by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) and LEM Ethiopia. The conference was attended by more than 200 development practitioners from around the world, including many from Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia.