by Tom Doggett

Reuters

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Interior Department said on Wednesday it would make more than 190 million acres of federal lands in 11 western states and Alaska available to energy companies to develop geothermal energy resources for generating electricity.

"These federal lands ... hold a huge energy potential," said Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

He said the geothermal areas that will be leased could provide 5,540 megawatts of electric generation capacity by 2015, enough to meet the power needs of 5.5 million homes.

Tax breaks for geothermal energy that were passed by Congress this month will help support the use of the renewable energy source.

Geothermal energy comes from heat sources deep in the earth that generate electricity with few carbon emissions.

Direct use of geothermal energy supplies heat for buildings, greenhouses, aquaculture and other activities.

The United States is already the world leader in producing electricity from geothermal energy. Twenty-nine geothermal power plants currently operate on federal lands in California, Nevada and Utah, with a total generating capacity of 1,250 megawatts, enough to supply the needs of 1.2 million homes.

Lands within the National Park System, such as Yellowstone National Park, would still be unavailable for leasing under the final geothermal plan.

Half the geothermal leasing revenue and royalties would go to the state where the lease occurred and the relevant county would get 25 percent. The other 25 percent would go to a federal fund for investing in geothermal development.

The department will publish details of its geothermal leasing plan in Friday's edition of the Federal Register of government regulations.

By Sujoy Dhar

Reuters

KOLKATA, India - The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India's Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food, experts said Monday.

Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world's largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers' natural habitat.

The Sundarbans, a 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq mile) area of low-lying swamps on India's border with Bangladesh, is dotted with hundreds of small islands criss-crossed by water channels.

"In the past six months, seven fishermen were killed in an area called Netidhopani," Pranabes Sanyal of the World Conservation Union said.

"Owing to global warming, the fragile Sundarbans lost 28 percent of its habitat in the last 40 years. A part of it is the core tiger reserve area from where their prey migrated."

But as sea levels rise, two islands have already disappeared and others are vulnerable. Wildlife experts say the destruction of the mangroves means the tigers' most common prey, such as crocodiles, fish and big crabs, is dwindling.

Kimani, a huge bull elephant, can be seen with his collar containing a sim card, Friday, Sept. 26, 2008 in the Ol Pejeta conservancy near Mt. Kenya. Save the Elephants has set up a project where they placed a mobile phone SIM card in an elephants collar, then set up a virtual 'geofence' using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)

By KATHARINE HOURELD
Associated Press Writer

The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.

The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect both a growing human population and the wild animals that now have less room to roam. Elephants are ranked as "near threatened" in the Red List, an index of vulnerable species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already reluctantly shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see if he could break the habit.

So they placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani's collar, then set up a virtual "geofence" using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers.

They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began. Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago.

It's a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees. Basila Mwasu, a 31-year-old mother of two, lives a stone's throw from the conservancy fence. She and her neighbors used to drum through the night on pots and pans in front of flaming bonfires to try to frighten the elephants away.

Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She beat it back with a burning stick. Another time, an elephant killed a neighbor who was defending his crop.

"We had to go into town to tell the game (wardens) to chase the elephants away or we're going to kill them all," Mwasu remembered.

But the elephants kept coming back.

Batian Craig, the conservation and security manager at the 90,000 acre Ol Pejeta conservancy, says community development programs are of little use if farmers don't have crops. He recalled the time when 15 families had their harvests wiped out.

"As soon as a farmer has lost his livelihood for six months, he doesn't give a damn whether he has a school or a road or water or whatever," he said.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, said the project is still in its infancy — so far only two geofences have been set up in Kenya — and it has its problems.

Collar batteries wear out every few years. Sometimes communities think placing a collar on an elephant implies ownership and responsibility for the havoc it causes. And it's expensive work — Ol Pejeta has five full-time staff and a standby vehicle to respond when a message flashes across a ranger's screen.

But the experiment with Kimani has been a success, and last month another geofence was set up in another part of the country for an elephant known as Mountain Bull. Moses Litoroh, the coordinator of Kenya Wildlife Service's elephant program, hopes the project might help resolve some of the 1,300 complaints the Service receives every year over crop raiding.

The elephants can be tracked through Google Earth software, helping to map and conserve the corridors they use to move from one protected area to another. The tracking also helps prevent poaching, as rangers know where to deploy resources to guard valuable animals.

But the biggest bonus so far has been the drop in crop raiding. Douglas-Hamilton says elephants, like teenagers, learn from each other, so tracking and controlling one habitual crop raider can make a whole group change its habits.

Mwasu's two young daughters play under the banana trees these sultry evenings without their mother worrying about elephants.

"We can live together," she said. "Elephants have the right to live, and we have the right to live too."

On the Net:

http://www.olpejetaconservancy.org

http://www.savetheelephants.org/