Editor's Note: We're following the climate summit in Copenhagen but we're not taking sides – we're reporting the facts. As part of our Planet in Peril report, Anderson traveled to the rainforest to examine the impact of logging, agribusiness and construction on the world's largest rainforest. Don't miss more of his Planet in Peril reporting on Sunday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET.

Anderson Cooper | BIO
AC360° Anchor

The Amazon rainforest is the largest in the world and covers nearly 70 percent of Brazil. The rainforest produces about 20 percent of the Earth's oxygen and plays a big role in controlling the climate of the entire planet. The Amazon also is home to more species of plants and animals than any other ecosystem on Earth, 30 percent of the world's total.

About one-fifth of the Amazon has disappeared in the past three decades. The causes are many: Logging, both legal and illegal; construction of homes and roads; and agri-business clearing land to plant crops or graze cattle.

The Brazilian government says the situation is getting better and that federal police are cracking down on illegal logging, in particular. But critics say there aren't enough agents on the ground and that more land needs to be put under federal protection.

Sanjay Gupta | BIO
AC360° Contributor

Lake Chad once was the sixth-largest lake in the world, but in 45 years it has shrunk to half the size of Rhode Island – only 10 percent of its earlier size.

The shallow body of water borders four countries: Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria – and provides water to 20 million people.

In Nigeria, the shrinking lake has a huge effect on human health – farmers find it more difficult to siphon water into irrigation and they have a harder time growing food, which means people become more vulnerable to diseases like malaria and yellow fever.

Scientists say water diversion (irrigation and new dams on nearby rivers) and drought are equally to blame for the shrinking lake levels.

Keep Reading...

Evidence of deforestation near the Congo Arriba river in Panama's Darien Province, April 2008.

David Ariosto
CNN

Hunched over a campfire in eastern Panama, Embera tribesman Raul Mezua chanted a song his grandfather taught him when he was a boy.

The words are memorized, passed down from an aging generation to a new group of tribal youths.

"The song means a lot to me," Mezua told CNN, the fire's dying embers splashing a red glow across his face. "But I don't know what it means."

It's not just the song but their language and culture that Mezua and his tribe fear losing as deforestation from logging and cattle ranching threatens the rainforest that is part of their identity.

But recent trends could usher in a welcome reversal for Mezua and his tribe. Rural workers are migrating toward cities in search of jobs, and forests are re-emerging where now abandoned farms and cattle ranches once flourished, according to a 2009 report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Keep Reading...

Anderson Cooper | BIO
AC360° Anchor

The Amazon rainforest is the largest in the world and covers nearly 70 percent of Brazil. The rainforest produces about 20 percent of the Earth's oxygen and plays a big role in controlling the climate of the entire planet. The Amazon also is home to more species of plants and animals than any other ecosystem on Earth, 30 percent of the world's total.

About one-fifth of the Amazon has disappeared in the past three decades. The causes are many: Logging, both legal and illegal; construction of homes and roads; and agri-business clearing land to plant crops or graze cattle.

The Brazilian government says the situation is getting better and that federal police are cracking down on illegal logging, in particular. But critics say there aren't enough agents on the ground and that more land needs to be put under federal protection.

U.S. Department of State

OFFICIAL NAME:
Independent State of Papua New Guinea

Geography
Land area: 462,860 sq. km.; about the size of California.
Cities: Capital–Port Moresby (254,158). Other cities–Lae (78,038), Mt. Hagen (27,789).
Terrain: Mostly mountains with coastal lowlands and rolling foothills. The largest portion of the population lives in fertile highlands valleys that were unknown to the outside world until the 1930s, but that supported agriculture some 10,000 years ago, possibly before agriculture was developed elsewhere.
Climate: Tropical. NW monsoon, Dec.-Mar.; SE monsoon, May-Oct.

People
Population (2007 est.): 6.3 million.
Annual growth rate (2006): 2.6%.
Languages: Three official languages are English, Tok Pisin, and Motu. There are approximately 860 other languages.
Education: Years compulsory–0. Literacy–49.3%.
Health: Infant mortality rate–54/1,000. Life expectancy–57.0 yrs.

Government
Type: Constitutional parliamentary democracy.
Constitution: September 16, 1975.
Branches: Executive–Queen Elizabeth II (head of state, represented by a governor general); prime minister (head of government). Legislative–unicameral parliament. Judicial–independent; highest is Supreme Court.
Administrative subdivisions: 19 provinces and the national capital district (Port Moresby).
Major political parties: National Alliance (NA), People's Progress Party (PPP), United Resources Party (URP), PNG Party (PNGP).
Suffrage: Universal over 18 years of age.

Read More...

Dr. Sanjay Gupta | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Located in the South Pacific, the Carteret Islands are fighting a losing battle against the ocean. It's estimated the six islands will disappear into the water by 2015. Papua New Guinea plans to relocate the Carteret's 2,000 residents.

But a debate centers on what is causing these islands to disappear: Is global warming to blame, or are the islands sinking into the sea, or have the residents permanently damaged the reefs that help to protect the islands from the ocean?

Anderson Cooper | BIO
AC360° Anchor

In Alaska and across the Arctic, the average amount of sea ice has been decreasing during the past few decades. This could be huge trouble for polar bears, which live and hunt primarily on sea ice.

About 4,700 polar bears live in Alaska, U.S. officials say. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recommended the polar bear be placed on the Threatened Species list.

Alaskan residents also are dealing with a changing environment. Temperatures in the state, which is twice the size of Texas, have warmed more than 3 degrees in the past 50 years and residents are seeing the expensive consequences of melting permafrost, which causes soil erosion and some flooding. Scientists say what happens in the state, one-third of which lies within the Artic Circle, is a harbinger of what might occur in the contiguous U.S.

Anderson Cooper | BIO
AC360° Anchor

The ice sheet that blankets the largest island in the world holds about 630,000 miles of ice. But NASA estimated in 2005 that the ice sheet was losing about 200 gigatons per year – roughly 200 times more than the amount of water Los Angeles uses every year.

At a research camp on the ice sheet, scientists say temperatures are up 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 30 years, more than double the global average. The researchers at Swiss Camp are studying how fast the ice is melting and the way it is changing locally and what impact that will have on the world.

Program Note: Today, a report about the discovery of the origin of Malaria was released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Dr. Nathan Wolfe, an epidemiologist, authored the report. Wolfe leads the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI), which has been working with the  Cameroon government, Limbe Wildlife Sanctuary and the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund/Ape Action Africa to learn more about common diseases of wild animals and to explore the origins of human diseases in order to predict and prevent them. Read these dispatches from members of Wolfe's research team in Cameroon. And tune in tonight to hear from Dr. Wolfe – a so-called virus hunter – and to learn more about the discovery. AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Much of the research performed by GVFI takes place in a Chimpanzee sanctuary in Cameroon.

Anderson and virus hunter Dr. Nathan Wolfe in Cameroon.

From cattle ranching to the frontlines of research

Ahmadou Nana
Vet, Global Viral Forecasting Initiative – Cameroon

I grew up in a family of cattle ranchers. This probably explains my choice of career as a vet. The love I have for my profession has led me to work in veterinary clinics where I have worked with pets, in commercial animal production and also in the wildlife sanctuaries managed by Ape Action Africa/CWAF and Limbe Wildlife Centre where I currently work with GVFI.

The thing that worries me most since I entered the world of research is the permanent need for us to avoid zoonotic epidemics and pandemics, especially as many of our populations depend on hunting and raising of animals and don’t know the risks that they face in handling animals without precautions.

My daily routine involves collaborating with the sanctuaries who collect blood samples and feces from the animals. I then bring them to the lab for processing and testing. I also head to forest areas to collect samples from animals hunted in villages in the hope of making discoveries that could save human or animal lives. I have much hope and am convinced of what I do because one day I know I will have participated in saving many lives.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
New solutions to old problems

Joseph Le Doux Diffo
Rural Site Researcher, GVFI – Cameroon

I began working on wildlife years ago when I was doing my masters at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon in 1999.

I did research on the intestinal parasites of wild and pet monkeys of Cameroon and identified numerous parasites apparently similar to those found in humans. I also worked on reptiles, studying the fauna of Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon.

After meeting Dr Nathan Wolfe from GVFI I started work on lizard malaria and this was the beginning of a long period of interesting research including a trip to the Malaria Diagnostics Centre of Excellence in Kisumu, Kenya.

Working with wildlife sanctuaries and with hunters in remote forest areas of Cameroon was the next step. Collaboration with sanctuaries includes collecting blood and feces from primates to search for malaria and viruses. I now share my working time in the field and in the lab doing sample processing and primate blood slide readings.

In Cameroon, my hope is to help communities change their habits through healthy hunting education and move them out of the risk of infection of viruses from wildlife.

As a Cameroonian who knows how people manipulate bushmeat in remote areas, I am certain our ancestors  suffered from these viruses. We still face the same problems today. Our hope is to gain enough information from these studies to prevent new infections for future generations.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Conservation and health – making the connection

Matthew LeBreton
Ecology Director, GVFI

GVFI has been working with the Cameroon government, Limbe Wildlife Sanctuary and the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund/Ape Action Africa to learn more about common diseases of wild animals and to explore the origins of human diseases.

We screen for diseases in the animal sanctuaries to help make decisions about which animals should be kept together and to help make decisions on treatment for certain diseases.

Having close to a hundred chimpanzees requires a constant veterinary presence in the sanctuaries. Much of the diagnosis and treatment of disease is done by sanctuary vets with many years of experience. However there are many new techniques that will help us explore disease and the origins of disease in these animals. As these treatments become available, we can continue to make significant breakthroughs in animal care and in knowledge of human disease.

Endangered species are particularly at risk from disease.

Just last week researchers discovered that the virus SIV (Simian immunodeficiency virus) reduces lifespan and birth rate in wild chimpanzees.

As many chimpanzee populations become reduced and fragmented due to hunting and deforestation, the role of disease caused by SIV, malaria parasites and ebola in wiping out small populations should not be neglected. These discoveries help put these problems back on the radar and bring the fields of wildlife conservation and health closer together.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Veterinarians working at the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon.

Rescue, rehab and release – fighting the bush meant and illegal pet trade in Cameroon

Simone de Vries
Project Manager, Limbe Wildlife Centre

The Limbe Wildlife Centre (LWC) is a rescue, rehabilitation and release project situated in the South West Province of Cameroon, on the edge of the small fishing town of Limbe, within the Mount Cameroon ecosystem. This is an ecosystem that, according to some, boasts the second highest levels of biodiversity in Africa.

Forest elephant, chimpanzees, drill monkeys, red-eared guenons, and Preuss’s guenons are a few of the endangered species that can be found on the slopes of Mount Cameroon. However despite this high level of biodiversity the entire area of the Mount Cameroon ecosystem is not legally protected. And it suffers from illegal logging and high levels of poaching for the bush meat trade that is currently ravaging West and Central African rainforests.

In Cameroon the level of trade in bush meat is especially high. As more and more animals are hunted and removed from their forest homes, the state of ‘empty forest syndrome’ has been coined to describe many of its forests.

Contrary to popular belief, however, the bush meat trade does not simply enable poor local people to eat protein. Rather much of the meat is smuggled to, and sold in, large cities, such as Lagos, Yaoundé, Johannesburg and even London, as a delicacy for those wealthy enough to be able to afford it.

The bush meat trade is also linked to the illegal pet trade, whereby the infant chimpanzees, gorillas and other primate species, that are too small to have a value as a meat source are – having watched their entire families being killed for meat – sold as pets.

The LWC’s very existence is as a direct result of these illegal practices. The LWC tries to come up with solutions for what to do with the infant primates when they are lucky enough to be seized by customs, police or conservation officials. By providing a sanctuary for these individuals, with enclosures that have outdoor spaces and extensive climbing structures, the LWC is able to create family groups.

In doing so the long process of rehabilitation is begun. Our long-term goal is to make sure these animals are returned to the wild, therefore we work to make sure suitable forest homes are found. The second aim of the LWC is to use these captive animals as tools to drive conservation education programs for the local communities.

The Limbe Wildlife Centre has its own veterinary facility (vet room/ diagnostic laboratory) and employs a veterinary surgeon and a laboratory technician / vet nurse, who are both responsible for the day to day veterinary care of all the animals.

Thanks to many donations of equipment the vet facility has, in recent years, developed into one of Cameroon's finest. Currently the in-house diagnostic laboratory has the capability to perform basic haematological, parasitological and microbiological analysis, while for other analyses, such as malaria and SIV, we cooperate with the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative. This joint effort ensures that a high standard of medical care can be given to all of the animals resident at the LWC, which hopefully one day will be returned to the wild.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rescuing primates in Cameroon

Babila Tafon
Manager/Vet, Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund/Ape Action Africa

I have been working with rescued wild animals in Cameroon for nine years. At Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund/Ape Action Africa we work to make sure Cameroon’s primates have a healthy future. Through our work with the government, local communities and ecological groups around the world, we hope to show people the amazing diversity of wildlife in Cameroon and explain exactly why it should be protected.

We've established a variety of programs to achieve sustainable protection for habitat and wildlife and that will promote long-term biodiversity. We focus on education, primate rescue, rehabilitation, reintroduction, and conservation breeding and we seek to introduce permanent conservation initiatives to areas with high biodiversity. Our goal is to create, through the release of wild-born captive primates, a viable self-sustaining population of primates.

While such a program is challenging, through our work with GVFI, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), Bristol Zoo Gardens (United Kingdom) and Givskud Zoo (Denmark), we are making progress to help these important animals.

There are few people with similar experience and such extensive practical knowledge of veterinary care for rescued wild primates in central Africa.

Program Note: To learn more about Malaria and how to help people vulnerable or infected by the virus, visit Impact your World. Impact Your World.

Mosquitoes, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, may transmit malaria to humans.

James L. A. Webb, Jr
Professor, Colby College

Malaria is the oldest of the human infectious diseases. Over tens of thousands of years, as early humanity expanded in tropical Africa and across tropical Eurasia, malaria parasites took advantage of our human propensity to migrate and our social need to congregate.

Malaria traveled with infected hunters and adventurers across mountain ranges and deserts, and after the domestication of animals, malaria traveled more quickly, galloping across grasslands and plains. It became the principal disease burden of Eurasia as well as tropical Africa. And much, much later, thanks to the technological ingenuity of human beings, malaria sailed with infected passengers on shipboard across the oceans, rode the rails across the continents, and then flew aboard aircraft from one hemisphere to the other. It became a global disease.

Malaria has etched highly varied patterns into human history. In some times and places malaria has appeared as a seasonal affliction and in others as a year-round burden. It has been a debilitator of general populations and a killer that targets young children and non-immunes. For these reasons, our cultural assessments of malaria's significance have been highly diverse, and different societies have 'known' malaria in very different ways.

Malaria remains such a common disease that only imprecise estimates of its impacts are possible. The broad and inexact contours, however, tell the big story.

An estimated 2.4 billion people are at risk of infection. An estimated 300 to 500 million people suffer bouts of the disease each year. Perhaps 90 percent of these occur in tropical Africa. Malaria kills somewhere between 1.1 and 2.7 million people per year. Of these deaths, approximately one million are children in tropical Africa between the ages of eighteen months and five years.

In the past, malaria was erratically distributed over humid and arid landscapes, along coast and in forest, across cityscapes and rural landscapes, in sub-arctic, temperate, subtropical, and tropical zones. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, malaria lost its hold on the northern temperate world, and across those liberated landscapes cultural knowledge about malaria, too, slipped away.

Today, malaria is an almost forgotten disease in much of the western world. What was once a global affliction-the primary public health disaster in the United States of America during the nineteenth century, the principal disease of British India, the core challenge of the modernizing Italian state in the twentieth century, and the elusive target of the first global eradication campaign of the World Health Organization-is now broadly regarded as a 'tropical disease.'

Humanity's Burden traces the movements of malarial infections – in deep time from tropical Africa into Eurasia; later from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas; and relatively recently the retreat of malaria from the temperate zones to the tropics. It sketches the profound impacts of malaria on the evolution of human history and shows that malaria has affected virtually the entire range of human societies-from gatherers and yam cultivators in tropical Africa with low levels of technological sophistication through a range of subjects and citizens in contemporary states.

Editor's Note: James L.A. Webb, Jr. is Professor of history at Colby College, where he teaches courses in world history, African history, ecological history, and historical epidemiology. He is currently writing a book on the history of malarial infections and interventions in modern Africa. He is the author of Humanity's Burden: A Global History of Malaria (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800-1900 (Ohio University Press, 2002), and Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600-1850 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

Researchers compared malaria DNA from infected chimps in Cameroon and Ivory Coast with human malaria.

Stephanie Smith
CNN Medical Producer

Nathan Wolfe is a hunter, but he doesn't carry a gun. His prey are invisible to the naked eye.

Wolfe leads expeditions into the mysterious world of viruses and pathogens.

"They are everywhere," said Wolfe, a microbiologist who speaks of his targets - infectious organisms - with the giddy lilt of a teenager on a first date. "We have the potential to explore a completely new biological world and go out and really find new things all the time."

One bug has been Wolfe's singular obsession for more than a decade, arguably the biggest menace to humans: malaria.

"If you think about HIV virus as a singular hurricane event, malaria is like the hurricane that's been hitting for thousands of years - constantly," said Wolfe, who heads a research institute called the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.

Keep reading...

Program Note: Tonight, Dr. Nathan Wolfe joins us on AC360º at 10 P.M. ET to discuss his remarkable findings on the origins of malaria.

The green job sector may not be big enough to jumpstart the employment.

Samuel Sherraden
Special to CNN

After the release of a miserable June jobs report, President Obama stood with a group of green company CEOs and told reporters that "men and women like these will help lead us out of this recession and into a better future."

But if the White House puts too many eggs in the green recovery basket, we may all be disappointed. The green sector is simply not large enough or competitive enough to be a major engine of job creation.

The CEOs who stood with Obama lead smart, innovative and, in many cases, rapidly growing firms. But green firms in the United States are small and employ relatively few people.

Applied Materials, one of the larger companies at the meeting and a producer of solar cells, employs 13,000 people worldwide and only 6,000 in the United States. Hara, a smaller company at the table, uses computer models to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Hara employs 30 people in the United States.

Keep reading...

In addition to being the keyboardist for the Rolling Stones for the last 27 years, Chuck Leavell writes that he is 'passionate about what trees and forests do for us.'

Chuck Leavell
Environmentalist, Author and Musician

In an age where we often hear about the alarming worldwide effects of climate change, global warming, and greenhouse gases, it is easy to forget that some solutions lie within our grasp.

Trees, particularly in urban areas, provide numerous benefits. They improve air and water quality, conserve water and reduce storm runoff, help reduce heat caused by buildings and pavement, and absorb carbon. It is up to us to ensure these trees are providing the maximum benefit and that we do our part to keep them healthy.

That's where research comes in. On July 19, America's largest fundraiser for tree research, the STIHL Tour des Trees, will kick off from New York City. Cyclists from across the world gather each year to travel more than 500 miles across different routes through the United States to benefit the Tree Research and Education Endowment (TREE) Fund and to raise awareness for the need for research to keep urban trees and forests healthy.

I am passionate about what trees and forests do for us. My wife, Rose Lane, and I are tree farmers in Georgia, carrying on a tradition of good stewardship of the land that her grandparents passed down to us and that was begun by earlier generations of the family more than 100 years ago. We do our best to care for the land in a responsible way, to set an example for our two daughters and two grandsons about caring for the earth.

In 1999, the American Tree Farm System selected us as the National Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year. That was a great honor, and we began wondering what more we could do. I became more involved with national conservation efforts, working with local governments and Congress to educate our lawmakers on environmental issues like sustainable forestry and biodiversity.

Trees and wood are the most wonderful natural resource we have. Our forests give us materials to make our homes, our schools, our churches, materials to make books, magazines, newspapers. I wouldn't have a piano to play if it weren't for the resource of wood, nor would my pal Keith Richards have his guitars or Charlie Watts have his drums. Trees are natural, organic, and most importantly, they are renewable.

According to Leavell, 'trees, particularly in urban areas, provide numerous benefits' such as improving air and water quality.

Many people say, "Well, we should save all the trees and build our things out of plastic or aluminum.” What they don’t consider is how much more pollution it causes to make those things. Plastic and aluminum don’t grow naturally, and they don’t grow back.

Across the country, tree farmers like me plant millions of additional trees, but it's imperative that we as a nation care for the ones we have, too. A January study led by the United States Geological Survey found that in the past few decades, tree death rates in the western U.S. have more than doubled – even in forests considered to be healthy.

Supporting organizations like the TREE Fund and the American Tree Farm System that enable education and research into the health of our nation's trees is more important now than ever before. We need to learn everything we can about our nation’s most valuable resource in order to save them for future generations.

I try to live by an old Haida Indian expression: "We don't inherit the land from our parents, we borrow it from our children." The beauty of sustainable forestry is that it is not just about doing something good today. The positive effects may not even be seen for many years to come. But for our children and our grandchildren, the work done by the cyclists this week on the STIHL Tour des Trees to benefit the TREE Fund's research will affect generations of trees, and people, for many years to come.

For more information on the STIHL Tour des Trees, please visit www.stihltourdestrees.org.

Editor’s Note: Chuck Leavell is an environmentalist and author who has also spent 27 years anchoring the Rolling Stones on keyboards. He has performed with everyone from the Allman Brothers Band to Aretha Franklin to Alanis Morissette. Chuck and his wife Rose Lane are among the 10 million private citizens who own and manage the largest single chunk of U.S. forestland and keep our forests thriving. He is a board member of the U.S. Endowment for Forest Communities and recently co-founded the earth-first Web site Mother Nature Network, MNN (www.mnn.com), the everyman's eco-guide to environmental news and information.

Ted Danson says a closed sign on a beach led him on a 20-year quest to save the world's oceans.

Ted Danson
Special to CNN

Today, Monday, June 8, we recognize the first U.N.-sanctioned World Oceans Day. The event comes after years of pressure from conservation groups and thousands of activists who clamored for everyone to know and understand what's happening in our oceans.

I became an ocean activist in 1987. It was the fifth year of "Cheers" and my family moved into a neighborhood that was on the water, in Santa Monica, California. One day I took my daughters to the beach to go swimming, but it was "closed" and I couldn't answer my daughter's question why.

That's really how it started. That and "Cheers" was paying me a lot of money and I felt I had better be responsible with it. So, I started to get involved.

It turned out in our new neighborhood there was a fight to keep Occidental Petroleum from drilling 60 oil wells on Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angeles. They wanted to slant drill into the Santa Monica Bay. The fight was led by a man named Robert Sulnick and we became great friends and found a way to beat them.

Keep reading

Dr Fred Boltz
Conservation International

Today, Conservation International will present Anderson Cooper with our most prestigious award – the Global Conservation Hero Award – in honor of the entire team responsible for CNN’s Planet in Peril Series.

It’s the first time that we’ve ever given the award for journalism. Previously it has gone to some very powerful people – the former head of the World Bank and to the CEO of Wal-Mart – for the huge strides that they have taken in protecting the environment.

This year’s award reflects the major achievement of Planet in Peril which has fearlessly engaged the American public in issues that the mainstream media had previously been reluctant to cover.

The key to the show’s success – and to the award that we are presenting to the team that made them – is their incredible determination to tackle huge and complex subjects head-on and to make them accessible to ordinary people. Whether it is the spread of diseases from wildlife to humans or the conflicts developing over natural resources that sustain us all, the shows made connections between what is happening in some of the world’s poorest nations and what is happening right here in the US.

And now, more than ever, it is critical that people in this country understand how completely connected the US is to the rest of the world. At the end of this year the governments of the world will meet in Copenhagen to agree a plan for what needs to be done to address climate change, and the US will be one of the most important players in that debate.

The very places highlighted in Planet in Peril – like the forests of central Africa and South America– are among the most vital components in the efforts to address climate change because forests remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store vast quantities of it. In fact, the destruction of the world’s forests puts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year than all of the worlds transportation put together – around a fifth of all CO2 emissions.

The more forests we lose, the harder it will be for the earth’s natural systems to cope with humanity’s CO2 emissions – and that means we will have to spend more on reducing CO2 emissions or deal with even worse climate change. But the more connected we all feel to these far-away places, and the more we realize how vital it is to conserve them, the better our chances of protecting the world from the worst potential outcomes of climate change.

Planet in Peril has taken millions of people in the US a few steps closer to understanding the connections that exist between the average American, the rest of humanity and the world that sustains us. If the world’s politicians can really grasp this too, then perhaps the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen at the end of the year will achieve what Conservation International is calling for to avoid dangerous climate change, and will put protection of the ecosystems that help prevent climate change at the heart of the world’s new plan to confront this challenge.

To find out more about Conservation International here.

Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more on how viruses spread from Dr. Nathan Wolfe on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

In this clip from Planet in Peril: Battle Lines, Anderson Cooper talks to Dr. Nathan Wolfe about disease transmission.

Lake Kara is the largest of the six lakes in Band-e-Amir.

Editor’s Note: This week, Afghanistan opened its first official national park. It’s called Band-e-Amir and was officially announced by the country’s National Environmental Protection Agency. This designation affords legal protection to the lakes and surrounding landscape – about 230 square-miles – and ensures its sustainable environmental management. The land is mostly dry grassland and desert highland habitat with six lakes. Estimates suggest approximately 5,000 people live in the 14 villages that make up the region. The Wildlife Conservation Society has been working with local organizations to set up the management of the Band-e-Amir.

Dr. Peter D. Smallwood
Country Director, Wildlife Conservation Society-Afghanistan

“You’re working WHERE?” I’m running the Wildlife Conservation Society’s project in Afghanistan.

“But… is there any wildlife LEFT in Afghanistan?”

This is a fairly typical start to conversations I have on my short trips outside of Afghanistan. Even here in Kabul, when I meet up with other NGO workers, they always ask: is there any wildlife left? The answer is yes.

Afghanistan is roughly the size of Texas, but is much more diverse than one would expect for a landlocked country of this size, sandwiched in between Iran and Pakistan. Typically, one thinks of the deserts of Kandahar and Helmand when thinking of Afghanistan, but there’s much more to this country: high mountains and alpine valleys in the north east are home to Marco Polo Sheep (like the American Bighorn sheep, only bigger), Ibex (wild goat), and the illusive, legendary snow leopards hunt them. Great Brown bears roam those mountains too.

There are beautiful forests in the steep eastern mountains: evergreen forests, some with pistachio and old walnut trees mixed in. Markhor goats and Asiatic black bear live here, along with Persian leopards and several other cat and fox species. There is a lot of wildlife left. And much of it is in trouble. It’s the usual trouble: habitat destruction, overhunting, overgrazing of the grasslands, crowding out the wildlife.

The next, obvious question: does this work really make sense in Afghanistan? Even if they are too polite to ask it out loud, I can tell that they’re thinking it. It’s a fair question. After all, the majority of our funding comes from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) –that’s money from the US treasury. Your tax dollars. A national park seems nice enough, but it seems like a luxury the country can’t afford right now. Does it really make sense to be spending your tax dollars on this?

It does make sense, for reasons that go far beyond conservation. One of the things Afghanistan needs is economic development: legal, sustainable economic development. Tourism is a great opportunity. The villagers of Band-e-Amir are quite poor, but they recognize the potential of tourism. WCS, together with other organizations, has been assisting local entrepreneurs in building small shops, restaurants and hotels. Mostly, we’ve been providing guidance: locating the facilities in a good place, out of the environmentally sensitive zones and flood zones, just around hill to preserve the natural appeal of the best photo shots, etc. We have deliberately kept our material assistance small: when the local entrepreneurs invest their own sweat equity, you know you’re on the right track.

In the short term, the local people will benefit from Afghan tourists. But that will provide them with the step to reach up to more lucrative international tourism. That’s not just the dream of a starry-eyed conservationist; a European firm was in Bamyan last year, trying to get permission to build a small, well-appointed hotel at Band-e-Amir. On Earth Day, Deputy Ambassador Francis Ricciardone spoke eloquently of the potential for international tourism, in Bamyan and several other areas. Afghanistan was once a destination for international tourist, and it can be again.

The National Park helps Afghanistan in another way: one of the things this country needs is a stronger sense of national identity. Band-e-Amir will help. It’s already a tourist destination among Afghans. The growth of internal tourism to Band-e-Amir means more of all the different peoples of Afghanistan coming to the same place, to enjoy this great natural beauty. Even for those Afghans who do not visit it, Band-e-Amir is so distinctive, Afghans will easily recognize pictures of it as “our” national park. These symbols are important here, because the effort to strengthen national unity needs all the help it can get.

Finally, national parks are great way to conserve a country’s biodiversity, and help it to more sustainable, community-based management of their natural resources. It really is a way to help the Afghans to do well by doing good.

It may sound almost silly at first, but it’s true: I am in Afghanistan, helping them conserve their wildlife. It is both an idealistic and a very pragmatic project, all at once. I’m fortunate to be a part of it.

To see photographs of the Band-e-Amir, check out this photo gallery.

Ayub Alavi , Protected Area Specialist at the  Wildlife Conservation Society-Afghanistan contributed to this post.

Lake Kara is the largest of the six lakes in Band-e-Amir national park.

Another lake in the park.

Wildlife Conservation Society's scientist Chris Shank with two Afghan park guards.

A person stands at the top of one of the travertine dams that make up the series of six lakes.

To learn more about the park, go here.

Researcher BJ Kirschoffer. Courtesy: Polar Bears International

Michael Schulder
CNN Senior Executive Producer

That icicle hanging beneath BJ Kirschhoffer's nose is exactly what you think it is. Polar Bear researchers officially call them snotsicles. And it's what you get when it's about 50 below zero and you're outside for eight hours straight. The mission is to record what few have ever witnessed: hibernating Polar Bears emerging from their dens with their cubs. Human beings are not made to survive in 50 below zero. Neither are video cameras. But the ingenuity of BJ Kirschhoffer,  Director of Field Operations for Polar Bears International, and the research team at Brigham Young University, helped capture one of the most remarkable scenes you'll ever see in the natural world. You can view it exclusively on CNN by clicking to the rest of this story.

Researcher crawling into den – after the bears left. Courtesy: Polar Bears International

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

When someone begins a sentence with the words: "Most dens I've been in ..." you know you're talking to a Polar Bear expert. The expert, in this case, is Tom Smith of Brigham Young. He describes Polar Bears as “highly honed seal killing machines” whose dens are like “crypts,” as small as three feet tall, four feet wide, and five feet long. This for an animal that is a couple of feet taller and as much as three times heavier than Shaquille O’Neal.

The condensation from the Polar Bear’s body heat and breathing quickly freezes, encapsulating the interior of the den in a solid layer of ice. Professor Smith and his fellow researchers have never found evidence of a breathing hole or any other fresh air source in any den. How these animals survive the carbon monoxide levels that must exist in their dens is a complete mystery. Professor Smith does not have claustrophobia, but, he says, "I'd be psychologically damaged after spending an hour or two inside a Polar Bear den."

A MOTHER’S WORK

Only pregnant Polar Bears hibernate. They gorge themselves on more than a hundred pounds of seal fat during the fall, use their powerful paws and claws to dig their den up to three feet deep in the snow around the end of October, give birth around the first of the year, and emerge with their one or two or three cubs generally in March. We’ll get to why these giant creatures who’ve been roaming the tundra for 200-thousand years are suddenly threatened, and the rare video shot just weeks ago. But first, something that’s rarely been mentioned in public. The medical value of Polar Bears.

POLAR BEAR PHARMACEUTICALS, INC.

When Harvard Physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein look at Polar Bears, they see possible cures for osteoporosis, diabetes, and kidney failure. They describe the potential in their fascinating new book “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity.”

Dr. Chivian points out that humans would lose about a third of their bone after remaining immobile for five months. Yet denning Polar Bears, who, like us, are mammals, don’t lose any bone mass after their long, still, yearly hibernation. So every elderly person, every post-menopausal woman, anyone at all who’s at risk of osteoporosis, may have a personal stake in the survival of Polar Bears. How do the Polar Bears do it? According to Dr. Chivian: “Denning bears have compounds in their blood streams that inhibit the break down of bone associated with immobility and that may someday allow us to effectively treat, and perhaps even prevent, this largely untreatable disease." But they must be studied in the wild.

Polar Bears "don't eat, drink, defecate or urinate during those five months in their dens," marvels Dr. Chivian. And yet they don't starve, don't become dehydrated, don't suffer any problems from not defecating, and don't become ill despite not urinating. If we are unable to rid ourselves of urinary wastes, after a few days, we die."

Researcher Tom Smith in the Arctic. Courtesy: Polar Bears International.

And finally, as we’ve mentioned, when those pregnant Polar Bears prepare to hibernate, they gorge themselves on seal blubber. Brigham Young’s Professor Tom Smith notes that Polar Bear newborns weigh about one pound. They emerge after three months of weighing about 30 pounds because of the high fat content of their mothers milk. Whole cow’s milk in the grocery store is 3 percent fat. A Polar Bear mother’s milk is 30 percent fat. And yet, Polar Bears do not get diabetes. Dr. Bernstein, of Harvard: “Obesity related type II diabetes is essentially epidemic in the U.S., afflicting more than 16 million Americans….If Polar Bears go extinct, we may lose with them vital clues about how to combat this disease.”

THE ELEPHANT IN THE DEN

It was Harvard’s Drs. Chivian and Bernstein who led us to U.S. Geological Survey’s Steve Amstrup, one of the godfathers of Polar Bear Research in the U.S., who, in turn, led us to his collaborators on the ongoing Polar Bear den study, which leads us to the Elephant in the Den – the key subject we haven’t yet explored here. The impact of climate change on the survival of Polar Bears.

What scientists know for sure is that climate change has been reducing the amount of solid arctic sea ice that has always been the Polar Bears’ stomping grounds, making it more difficult for them to hunt for seals and forcing many pregnant Polar Bears to build their dens on land – on the tundra - closer to human populations and Alaska’s oil drilling industry and infrastructure. Amstrup, Smith and their collaborators at The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Polar Bears International are spending their winters in a 50-below zero climate to see whether proximity to people affects the denning habits and survival abilities of Polar Bear adults and cubs. Nobody knows why this cub froze to death just outside its mother’s den, but it’s a reminder of how fragile these powerful creatures can be before they grow up.

A frozen Polar Bear cub. Courtesy: Polar Bears International

THE RISING

Now that you have the background, the video you’re about to see will be all the more awesome. Before you click it, let us orient you. Beneath that snow drift, on a landscape BYU grad student Rusty Robinson describes as “unforgiving beauty” is a Polar Bear mom and at least one of her cubs. After five months, with no space to move around, no fresh air to breath, and confined to a den encapsulated by a solid sheet of ice, a black nose emerges. Given the depth of packed snow and ice it must break through, it may be the strongest nose on earth. The rest needs no explanation.

Exclusive video of a polar bear mom busting out of its ice-encased den after winter hibernation. The cub tags along. Courtesy: Polar Bears International.