I told you so :-( Damn Dam

[TwoTankAmin]

This just about says it all

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0418-hanc ... hotos.html

[jsalas623]

Wow now that is horrible!!!

[jp11biod]

gut-wrenching...

[rob rensen]

Indeed horrible images

[exasperatus2002]

Money makes most people turn a blind eye. Seeing this gives that "run to the grocery store & stock up on bread & milk" feeling like people do when theres a big storm coming. Only my lfs stink & dont carry much of anything but ugly Hypostomus and the occassional abn.

[N2Biomes]

More of the same

Video from Amazon Watch:

http://amazonwatch.org/news/2012/0119-b ... dents-away

[CUPfishhead]

That is soooo sad!!! Hope they take a lot of plecos off their ban list to atleast try to save them from becoming completely extinct!!!

[Andersp90]

Does anyone know what the effect of the dam will be? How many km of river will be lost?

Are we going to lose some of the known pleco species?

I wonder if this Pseudaancistrus found near Altamira will dissaper.

[sidguppy]

That is soooo sad!!! Hope they take a lot of plecos off their ban list to atleast try to save them from becoming completely extinct!!!

they specifically put them ON that list to make them worthless and hence make their biotope worthless
because at first the native people could make a living by catching and selling those fish
but that living depended on the forest being intact

once they make the fish worth zero cash, they can go on with the building, because if the fish are worth nothing, the forest doesn't need to exist anymore; it's just a bunch of lumber to harvest and drown afterwards.

in short order: the Brazilian government doesn't give a shit about species of fish.
they cause a lot of trouble and ban a lot of fish, that's just window dressing. politics.

it's to spin the media, like "look at us! we ban several fish species, which means we take conservation seriously! because those fish keepers are THE BAD GUYS"

and once the media -always complicit when it comes to money and politics- has swallowed it hook, line and sinker and looks the other way; the Brazilian government 'nukes' another couple of million acres of rainforest with dam project number 287.

it is careful planning, spinning the media, make em believe all kind of lies and then beat up some natives, eradicate the now worthless forest and build another dam.

and it works,
proven method.

greed will always win over environment as long as we have system based on infinite growth on a planet with finite resources.

[Mike_Noren]

Does anyone know what the effect of the dam will be? How many km of river will be lost?

The entire river will be diverted in cement tubes, bypassing and drying out the entire Volta Grande, a distance of about 60 kilometers.

Are we going to lose some of the known pleco species?

Yes, several, including Hypancistrus zebra.

I wonder if this Pseudaancistrus found near Altamira will dissaper.

I don't know which species that is, but if it isn't found further upstream or in other rivers then yes, it will likely disappear. Empirically 60-80% of species which occur in an area are no longer there ten years after the construction of a dam.

[unblinded]

Sidguppy pretty much sums it up. It's all about the money. Piss on the rest of it if it's not lining the pockets of the government & making the rich richer.

[rob rensen]

[MatsP]

they specifically put them ON that list to make them worthless and hence make their biotope worthless
because at first the native people could make a living by catching and selling those fish
but that living depended on the forest being intact

Having spoken to the chap from IBAMA that made the list in the first place, I can assure you that the "conspiracy" to do this is not there. It's purely "incompetence". This is why the fish are now ON the list of allowed exports - there never was a BANNED list, there was a list of allowed exports. Hence no one actively banned fish from Rio Xingu (or other rivers). What happened was that the IBAMA decided to actually check what was exported [mainly because H. zebra was being overfished, but also several non-catfish were suspected to be problematic].

So once you start checking carefully, and not letting fish out under the wrong name (e.g. all peckoltia species were allowed, no questions asked, so "Peckoltia zebra" was fine, but call it properly, Hypancistrus zebra, was not being allowed out - and actually looking inside the box to check what the content is, rather than just looking at the shipping list), then the consequence is that anything not on the list will not be exported.

Bear in mind also that the last effort to save the river was successful for a short while, and driven by the local fishermen. Unfortunately, the next level up overruled the "environmental impact study is flawed" judgement that stopped the dam. I'm sure political pressure was applied at that time.

--
Mats

[racoll]

What's more worrying, and what people may not realise, is that this dam is hardly a one off.

Major hydroelectric projects are planned throughout the tropics, from the Mekong to the Salween to the Irrawady, to Angola, to the Western Amazon.

These will certainly get a lot less attention than the Belo Monte dam, but are no less damaging, even the smaller ones. See:
Proliferation of Hydroelectric Dams in the Andean Amazon and Implications for Andes-Amazon Connectivity. PLoS ONE, 2012.

[Andersp90]

Are we going to lose some of the known pleco species?

Yes, several, including Hypancistrus zebra

Has anyone made a list of the species that will be lost??

[MatsP]

Has anyone made a list of the species that will be lost??

You mean an environmental study? Yes. Is it a complete environmental study done correctly? Well, that's a darn good question... There has been legal arguments about that, including resignation of the top boss of IBAMA over the discussions in this matter. Of course, the top boss resigning was followed by a new boss that signed the necessary license (one presumes because the boss was selected by politicians, and they could "pick" someone that would agree).

Probably not. One problem is that a lot of the Hypancistrus in this section, along with several other fish, aren't actually formally species - because there has been no scientific description of them. And of course, the exact nature of the consequences of the project will probably take dozens of years from the completion of the dam until they are fully understood - what will happen to water levels, water temperatures, breeding grounds, polution, sediments, water flow/oxygen levels, and many other things is hard to predict with great accuracy - and will the fish be able to move upstream to other parts of the river, and if so, will they outcompete some other species that currently live there, will predators change, etc, etc. Evyerone that understands the ecology of the river agrees that it will be changes to what lives in the river and by all likelyhood bad - the discussion is really "What changes, and how bad will it be?"

--
Mats

[MatsP]

What's more worrying, and what people may not realise, is that this dam is hardly a one off.

Major hydroelectric projects are planned throughout the tropics, from the Mekong to the Salween to the Irrawady, to Angola, to the Western Amazon.

And the Congo as well as Chile and Argentina have large projects planned too. The Congo one is to supply SOUTH AFRICA with power - just a few thousand miles away...

Just about every large river in the world is a potential target. Part of the problem is that it's considered "green", which, particularly in tropical regions with greatly varying levels of water flow, it certainly isn't, because of the methane that is released when the dam fills up and vegetation on the side of the river is broken down, releasing methane and CO2. Methane is a much worse "greenhouse gas" than CO2, and there will be literally many tons every time the water level goes up in the dam. Because it is the tropics, plants grow very quickly on the side of the dam when the water level goes down...

--
Mats

[Andersp90]

Has anyone made a list of the species that will be lost??

You mean an environmental study? Yes.

I was thinking more in the lines of a hobby list - one that shows the L-numbers that are likely to disappear.

[OlePaulsen]

Yes. Check the article made by Janne Ekstrøm. Its written in the Amazon magazine and here.
www.ms-verlag.de

[Andersp90]

Thx for the link, but I am not sure what to do once I have pressed the link?

My German is pretty poor.

[Suckermouth]

Just about every large river in the world is a potential target. Part of the problem is that it's considered "green", which, particularly in tropical regions with greatly varying levels of water flow, it certainly isn't, because of the methane that is released when the dam fills up and vegetation on the side of the river is broken down, releasing methane and CO2. Methane is a much worse "greenhouse gas" than CO2, and there will be literally many tons every time the water level goes up in the dam. Because it is the tropics, plants grow very quickly on the side of the dam when the water level goes down...

--
Mats

Let's not forget the carbon sequestration ability of trees and thus the ability of the Amazon rainforest to offset CO2 emissions by absorbing it.

[TwoTankAmin]

I actually posted that link because I felt it supported my contentions in the paste year or two that the eradication of species would happen long before the dam was completed. I suggested the initial phases of dam construction would throw so much crap into the river that the fish would be at risk long before they got close to making electricity.

[Mike_Noren]

Has anyone made a list of the species that will be lost??

No, there has been no study on the effects on the fish.

The environmental impact study didn't with a single word discuss the effects on anything living under the water surface, and an Independent Expert Panel (pdf) report didn't go in to specifics (and didn't distinguish between local extinction and global extinction).

You can sort of make a list by checking for which species are only found between Altamira and Belo Monte, but a lot of the species are still undescribed and their distributions are poorly known. Besides H. zebra the only traded catfish from the area that I know of is

Scobinancistrus aureatus

, but I'm sure there's a bunch of L-numbers too.

I hope Brazil gets heavily crtiticized over this at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development later this year, but considering how environmental organizations have stared themselves blind on climate change I suspect they'll give Brazil a pass.

[Andersp90]

So is the L14 going to disaper?

In that case I better be buying a group soon..

[Mike_Noren]

So is the L14 going to disaper?

Statistically it's got a 20-40% chance of still existing 10 years after the construction of the dam.

Most species probably wont go extinct right away. Species die hard, they usually cling on to existence long after one'd think they could not possibly survive - this is known as "extinction debt", or "walking dead species". Most of the species in the affected area will likely join the extinction debt, and fade out slowly, over decades.

[Andersp90]

So is the L14 going to disaper?

Statistically it's got a 20-40% chance of still existing 10 years after the construction of the dam.

Most species probably wont go extinct right away. Species die hard, they usually cling on to existence long after one'd think they could not possibly survive - this is known as "extinction debt", or "walking dead species". Most of the species in the affected area will likely join the extinction debt, and fade out slowly, over decades.

Is it not possible that the L14 and L48 distribution is large enough for some of the population to be outside the range of the slow water?

[Mike_Noren]

Is it not possible that the L14 and L48 distribution is large enough for some of the population to be outside the range of the slow water?

Yes it is possible. That's the kind of thing one'd wish the environmental impact study had investigated.

[Andersp90]

Lets hope so.

[MatsP]

Thx for the link, but I am not sure what to do once I have pressed the link?

My German is pretty poor.

You could go with the English version here:
http://www.amazonas-magazin.de/index.php?id=1874

--
Mats