Month: October 2020

Białowieża forest is the last large forest that still stands, as a part of the primeval forests that once forested the majority of Europe.

It was one of the last refuges of the European bison (or Wisent), and the last wild one was shot in 1921. Thankfully, they were reintroduced shortly afterwards, and there are now at least 700 living wild in this forest.

Wolves were intentionally persecuted from 1946, which lead to a successful eradication by 1960. Thankfully, though this forest is close to more forests too the East, so wolves were able to naturally recolonize. Hunting continued, though in a disorganised and not trying to eradicate them, until 1989 when it was strictly banned.

The last bear was killed in 1879, so well outside living memory.

That is why it was so exciting that a bear was caught on a camera trap last year.

This epic journey, like that of a bear traveling from the eastern bear population to meet with wild Spanish bears, shows that these big predators will make epic journeys, especially when dispersing from their birth home range.

It is essential that new roads are all built with underpasses, as well as building underpasses under current roads. Apart from reducing the number of human deaths in the roads, it also allows for larger single populations which can cope with the pressures of disease, poaching hunting and even global warming.

Despite Iceland actually having less ice by far than Greenland (a strange marketing ploy to get people to settle there centuries ago), it is very much arctic nation and and therefore it does occasionally get visits from polar bears.

Polar bears are capable of phenomenally long swims, so if they don’t reach land eventually they will drown. However as Iceland as fall within the Arctic it is not uncommon for ice flows to come within easy reach of the land. While Iceland does not have a permanent population of bears, being as it does not fall within the usual range of arctic sea ice, one of the strange impacts of global warming is that it is in places extending the sea ice- and this appears to be bringing you closer to Iceland which means that these their visits may become more common.

A bear visited in 2016, another one in 2010 and two visited during 2008. Unfortunately ignoring the behavior of the bears completely the Icelandic rules state that any bear should be shot on site. Indeed on several of these occasions not only where the drugs necessary to tranquilize the Bear close at hand but it was argued to this shouldn’t be done anyway.

With polar bears clearly threatened by the loss of the Arctic ice,if global warming is throwing them a lifeline by increasing the ice in parts of the Arctic where it did not exist before, humans must not shoot the bears in areas that they used to not exist. There is a little adjustment that they can make as their ice world disappears, we must not take away any small positive that occurs (even if this is only temporary).

I wrote a while ago about a groups attempt to to put in place a number of programmes in order to avoid future outbreaks of illnesses such as covid-19.

Illnesses such as covid-19 tend to emerge from rainforests and other similar ecosystems. As such their suggestion was to globally spend $20-30 billion dollars a year on 3 activities. 

• Halt deforestation (and replant large recently deforested areas)
• Halt the wildlife trade, particularly bush meat, the main avenue into human population
• Closely watch for emergence of new viruses

As such it is fascinating to see warnings from more scientists along the same lines. A UN summit next month will be told that there is now a clear link between habitat destruction and emergence of new diseases and viruses.

Almost a third of illnesses in the human population of emerge from these places,and it is calculated that perhaps as many as 6 epidemics could hit the world a year if forest destruction continues at the rate it is currently going.

This new report is linked back to the one I talked about above. What is encouraging about this link is that as it is being discussed in the UN it will draw countries attention to it. Furthermore finding $20 to 30 billion from all the countries in the world far is less. It could also be sold to which consumers as a means to halt rainforest destruction and save wildlife species.

Indeed if so right this could potentially be paid for by the the top 50 also wealthiest countries in the world without them really noticing the cost (particularly if pushed now: with these countries reeling from the extraordinary cost of fighting covid-19, 1 billion a year could seem like chicken feed in comparison).

I have written in the past about a fascinating type of bacteria that was found on a Chinese rubbish stump number of years ago.

Plastics are a fantastic material because they breakdown very little, therefore giving strong materials for not much money. The problem is that many of the uses that these plastics have been put to, are single use. Once that use has occurred you can do nothing but out the plastic in the ground, and wait perhaps 100 millennia for it to be broken down.

As such this Chinese bacteria was something that everyone was very excited about. If the bottles can be broken down, perhaps the resulting material can be reused easily and cheaply.

It does appear that this is the case. With the adjustments made this happens on a timescale that is financially acceptable.

One of the problems that his been a continual issue with recycling, is the need to have very pure resources: if someone fails to split up rubbish properly, an entire batch of rubbish maybe unrecyclable.

But this problem maybe it’s an end with this method as it works effectively amongst mixed sources of rubbish.

We’re getting closer to to being able to recycle plastic fully which should save huge amounts of oil from ever being needed. While this process is not yet ready for mainstream, it should be in the next few years so keep an eye out for progress in this field.

I will hopefully right on this again as we move forwards, but I hope that this discovery is not leveraged in to billion to dollars, it will stop this discovery must not spread slowly- it must appear almost around the world in one go, and importantly this must not miss out Africa. if this Discovery has the magnitude that is expected it must be allowed to have the impact that is necessary in the space of a decade not a lifetime.

The UK government has recently outlined plans to put in place laws that are supposed to eradicate illegal deforestation all products bought in the UK.

Obviously in a perfect world this would be a fantastic move. However, surprise surprise we do not live in that world.

The deforestation in Brazil and the deforestation in Indonesia is not illegal, are from it it has the support of it’s countries government. In other words, this legislation allows each country around the world to decide how much deforestation they wish to allow. 

What I am saying, is the British government does not wish to combat deforestation, merely deforestation that the government has not approved. Under these rules, we may move where we buy our wood from, but we will continue to support deforestation around the world. By this policy, no deforestation would ever be illegal if the government in each case allowed it. This means that after a coup, a country could be legally deforested!

What a waste of time.

Fires in the pantanal Wetlands are running a 200% of the rate of those same fires in 2019. With almost every action that Jair Bolsonaro takes, something that could be predicted to make the problem worse, the world seems to not be making itself heard.

It is a well-known fact what causes forest fires, just as it is well known how how ill this is such as coronavirus spread through the population. It therefore should be of no surprised, that Brazil is doing so poorly. 

Tribesmen who need to be evacuated from the fires are taken to the nearest city. There is a great deal of fear and ngo and countries around the world, that many of these tribal members will therefore fall ill from coronavirus because of their increase contact with people from outside.

This could lead to a horrific case for the tribes, where is their members return a substantial number of their members died as they contract this horrific virus.

Jair Bolsonaro has not exactly shown a good pattern of looking after all his citizens thus far, the majority of his actions has greatly improved life for the ultra rich and the middle class. Life has become far harder for the poor, and tribesmen have been hit hardest to all.

His protection of the natural environment of Brazil has been disastrous. There is much talk of the Brazilian rainforest collapsing in the near future.

In a comparison of the number of cases in each country, the three countries doing the worst host more than half of the world’s coronavirus cases. First is the USA with 7.7 million cases second is India with 6.8 and then third (though rapidly catching up) is Brazil on 4.9 million.

Given the population of the USA is about 300 million, and the population of Brazil is about 200 million they’re not doing very well. India may well be second in cases, but with 1.3 billion people living there this isn’t surprising. Now of course we should bear in mind, despite how hard coronavirus hit China it only lists having 85000 coronavirus cases (placing it 47 the in the list of countries coronavirus count) which may well be a dramatic under count-statistics coming out of China are notoriously unreliable.

However what I’m trying to say is that if the USA and Brazil had populations on a par with India, they would have a case count of over 30 million cases and 32.5 million cases respectively.

Why does this matter? Because the leaders of these two countries have regular express doubts in accepted science.They have particularly attacked the science of global warming, and attacked any attempt too slow it’s effect.

Other countries around the world should take heed: electing leaders who ignore the real state of the world is not good for your country. One can only hope that enough of the damage is clear in the homeland of these leaders, so when they come up for re-election they fail in their bid. We cannot waste another 4 years, before the whole world starts to take global warming seriously. In a similar way having the most wealthy country in the world run by someone who ignores the science of the extinctions were facing affects the seriousness with which the USA deals with these things: the majority of game hunting is done by wealthy Americans, with a decent number of people from Europe and Asia mixed in. Many of the places which have game hunting do not have the populations to support it, obviously this must change otherwise the animals in question will go extinct.

Frankly, Coronavirus has just been another delay and we really can’t afford anymore. Scientists have been telling us for years that the longer we take to make adjustments to fight global warming the more severe the adjustments will have to be.

The British government has stated that they wish to end illegal deforestation. This this is a good aim, to be sure, however it obviously isn’t anywhere near enough.

The deforestation that has gone on in Indonesia over the last few decades has been totally legal, someone has said that land can be turned into palm plantations, even if someone else has said that land is supposed to be in a national park.

Frankly the government is on the wrong side of this argument. The people understand the deforestation must stop, indeed the majority of British people have understood this for years, and in most countries where deforestation is continuing there is more than enough deforested land to be used for the purposes they want it.

Other than McDonald’s these 21 signatories also include including Unilever, Tesco, Lidl, Nando’s, Nestle, the convenience food maker Greencore and the chicken producer Pilgrim’s Pride.

Now with some of these companies such as Unilever have been accuse of creating the need for deforestation.

Regardless of what the British government does they must be held to this signature demand. 

The government should be leading, though at the moment they seem to have given up their leadership role on the climate change fight and the fight to halt the loss of wild species and wild areas.

Furthermore the government’s plans on these rules, would only apply to big companies: medium and small companies would be allowed to carry on.

This simply isn’t good enough,quite apart from anything this would allow the big company is to simply employ locals to do the dirty work for them.

The government suggested that by dealing with illegal deforestation first they can reduce the rate of deforestation dramatically, and indeed by replanting forests that have been degraded forest cover can grow. While this is true it isn’t enough. Often legal deforestation does not follow a sensible pattern.

One example of this is Herakle farms, a British owned company that raised 100 square miles of rain-forest in the last intact area of the Congo. They had all the permits, but this area simply shouldn’t have been used.

A recent survey by WWF suggested that 67% or 2 in 3 people wanted the government to do more to combat deforestation, both so-called legal and illegal.

Some of this group though does not meet the the requirements of some of the others.for instance McDonald’s has said that they will eliminate deforestation from their food chain by 2030 however that is way too late.

I found it odd that the article ended buy palm all alliance saying that we needed to be careful and allow the small scale deforestation by people to grow foods- however it has been palm oil companies that have got locals to set up farms for that in many regions and this small-scale work has started the deforestation,the palm oil company has then moved in and deforested more.

Introduction

Before I get into this article I want to make a few points clear. Firstly I recognise I’m not an American, that is why I’m writing an article about this rather than voting. Secondly the concept that non Americans don’t have a right to have a view is insane, not least because even if the UK will not be one of the hardest hit by climate change, I do not want the UK to become a chain of islands, something that is not inconceivable if run away climate change does occur (as this is likely to lead to significant sea level rises). Indeed, to the contrary a majority of Americans do believe in science and indeed in global warming – Trump is in the minority and Americans must recognise the severity of this issue and vote him out on the basis of his denial or scientific facts on this. Having said that, on with the article.

This article is not, I repeat not, about bashing Donald Trump. I do not think he should be president, but I do not live in America and if Americans want to choose someone who appears from the outside to be the most unsuitable man in history for the job so be it.

Note: this article is far longer than normal. I have worked through a number of issues facing the USA and world at the moment. I also wish to make clear, I am happy for this article to be reposted elsewhere or linked if people would like. I know this blog has a few American readers. If you repost, please repost in full, credit me and include a link back to this blog.