Hello everyone! We survive
So, the website was hacked. Nothing was stolen, from what I was told they were just able to delete the website. Thankfully we back up, so we have survived.
We have added a significant extra layer of protection which should make it impossible for the same problem to arise (it had nothing to do with the attack on Facebook and WhatsApp). While we do on occasion have sharing buttons, that is the extent of our link so we were safe.
Bigger news, many red list countries have been upgraded allowing travel. These countries include
Afghanistan, Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chile, Congo (Democratic Republic), Costa Rica, Cuba. Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, French Guiana, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mayotte, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Paraguay, Philippines, Réunion, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Zambia and Zimbabwe
For those looking, the vast majority of these are in Africa. This is despite the fact that the whole of Africa have had fewer cases than just the UK. In terms of deaths, Africa have had almost 180,000 compared to the UK who had 137,000. However, if you remember that much of Africa has far more rudimentary healthcare – many of these deaths would not have occurred, were the sufferer a resident of Europe.
Why is this good? There is a broad wealth of wildlife, living across much of Africa. In many countries, the money that these tourists bring accounts for a large portion of the economy. There have been many countries where places once used for photographic safari are potentially being turned into places for hunting – just to stay afloat.
This website itself, was set up as a marketplace for wild travel, so we have made no money at all. This means that we cannot be as active as we would like. I hope that this will change in the next few months and years. Do look at the places we list. We are going to be adding indicative pricing over the next few weeks. Just to make clear, my family will be booking flights to south Africa in the next few days . We have meant to go for several years, but this has been delayed by red list status. We cannot go till next summer, but when we visit we will aim to list the public reststops of the kruger on the website as well. This will add the cheapest and cheaper lodgings to the luxury lodgings that we currently have listed.
Lastly, we have been working on a members area! This will include all sorts of things, including the ability to interact with me, and the ability to help the website fulfil its rather lofty goals. Our site exists to simplify wild travel, and to try to make protecting wilderness financially better, than destroying it, where ever we can. This members area will help financially support both the work of this website, and the fledgling work of the YouTube channel of the same name. When this goes live, we will upload a video we put together on the Otters of Mull. We also have a similar video on red squirrels in southern Scotland, and the Boar of the forest of dean.
Anyway, I should sign off. A number of interesting articles coming in the next few days. Thank you to everyone who visits the website, with your support, I hope that we can make a difference to the survival of wildlife, whether it lives in wild places or alongside those of us far from wilderness.