Month: May 2022

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Amazon researchers have created a huge photo database including more than 150,000 images from camera traps

Increasing amounts of research in wilderness habitats is done by camera traps. These can be left taking pictures for days or weeks or even years. As the Camera is silent it often does not get noticed at all (unless it needs to illuminate the scene.

150,000 pictures is a huge amount of data and it is entirely possible that analysis will identify more useful information that has not as yet been noticed.

A wide variety of wildlife is represented from jaguars to spectacled bears. indeed 317 birds mammals and reptiles are represented in this treasure trove. Collaboration and sharing of collected pictures and similar will only become more important as the ability and tools to analyse the data improves. Collaboration has greatly improved over time but still needs to get better.

In places like the Amazon, we also have significant issues – Jair Bolsonaro the current president of Brazil has been against established science throughout his term. If he is re-elected (and if he is it is likely the end of the Brazilian rainforest) then this information is likely to be horded, as it will show how stupid many of his statements are

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The Swedish government has decided to cull as much as half of the wolf population – why?

Wolf numbers in Sweden started to fall after a law in 1789 allowed commoners to hunt moose and deer, led to a lack of food for the wolf population. It is thought that there were no wolves in the South of Sweden by 1800, and they had vanished from the north by no later than 1900.

However, unlike the UK, Sweden is on mainland Europe. This means that countries bordering Sweden can have very different wolf policies – allowing wolves to naturally return. This happened in 1980s when 3 Finnish-Russian wolves crossed over the border and migrated to the south. These 3 (with occasional new migrants( has grown to 480, mostly in central Sweden.

Conservationists have argued that 300 wolves is the bare minimum for a healthy population. Those who study wolves suggest that wolves have a density of between one every 4.6 squire miles (12 square km) and one every 46 square miles (120 square km). Sweden has an are of 173,000 square miles suggesting a carrying population of between 3700-37000 wolves.

200 is therefore roughly 5% of the minimum carrying capacity of Sweden. Remember that most of Sweden remains heavily forested, and therefore perfect habitat for the wolf. These forests are also shared by 3000 bears.

What these numbers show, is that the current number of wolves in Sweden – 480 spread across roughly 40 packs, is absolutely fine.

The government minister did not give a figure as to how big she thought the population should be, but said that while Sweden must meet its EU obligation to not eradicate the wolf, she supported people “who live where wolves are, who feel social anxiety, and those who have livestock and have been affected”. Now it should be noted that these two policies are not compatible. For many farmers, the only number of wolves that they will be happy with is zero – they will always feel nervous with any wolves still staying wild.

It should be noted that the countries hunting lobby is powerful, and have argued that the wolves eat moose (which they want to be able to hunt) and kill their dogs if they get close enough.

I have experience of the wilds of Sweden. There is a Swedish bear hide listed on this site. Our visit gave us 6 bear sightings and a wolf, and when we went south to the centre of the wolf range we also saw some elk (moose) being harried by a wolf – exciting, even if the sighting was very brief. There is a great deal of money that flows into Sweden for ecotourism, and the potential of this is far higher than the money gained from hunting

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Spotted hyenas in the Serengeti are changing their behaviour as the rain patterns change

Spotted hyena mothers are finding that they have to travel further to find food. The hyenas are having to travel long distances, more and more regularly as the rain changes mean that the huge migration herds arrive later.

What is fascinating is that researchers have found that they are spending no less time with their cubs.

Now it should be noted, that many of the remaining wild hyenas live in far more fragmented habitats, and in these places the issue may be more serious. Never-the-less, for the time being what is clear is that these highly adaptable animals are currently adapting to changes bought about by climate change with relative ease.

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Global Warming Policy Foundation is being challenged for its charity status – it is not a charity, it is a lobby group for fossil fuels

For those of us who are sane, the Global Warming Policy Foundation is an embarrassment to the UK.

Its stated aims are aims are to challenge “extremely damaging and harmful policies” envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming.

This challenge seems highly justified.

Continue reading “Global Warming Policy Foundation is being challenged for its charity status – it is not a charity, it is a lobby group for fossil fuels”
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A new whole earth image is taken, first in decades. Why this is not suspicious

The blue marble is a famous image that was taken of the earth as the lunar craft made its way back. Why does this matter? Whole earth photos are taken rarely as you have to get a great distance from earth to be able to take them (see calculation below). Yet in 2015 the first was taken for quite some time by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).

Image was taken by NASA
Continue reading “A new whole earth image is taken, first in decades. Why this is not suspicious”
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The manned wolf is being seen increasingly often in the Amazon rainforest

The manned wolf that looks rather like a fox on stilts. It is found throughout South American Savannahs

Not actually a fox or a wolf, the manned wolf exists in its own genus.

Living on open savannahs the manned wolf is unfortunately facing the loss of most of its habitat. Though we hear about the loss of the Amazon rainforest the most, all other ecosystems in South America are also under threat.

Continue reading “The manned wolf is being seen increasingly often in the Amazon rainforest”
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Tesla has been cut from the S&P 500 Environmental Social and Governance Index, what have they done (SARCASM)

So in theory an Environmental Social and Governance Index is important. This allows customers and investors to look at a company, and by looking at the size of one number they can tell if the company is doing well in these ways or badly. At least that is the theory.

Clearly it is not working in practice. The reason given for Tesla’s removal was claims of racial discrimination and crashes that are supposedly linked to its autopilot system. In the same rewriting, Twitter will be added to the list, alongside Oil refiner Phillips 66. Chevron and and delta airlines are also being dropped.

One of the main factors for Tesla’s dropping is the fact that it does not publish details related to its low carbon strategy or business conduct code.

Now, if you were being generous you could suggest that the company is following its rules without using its head, but this I believe is wrong.

It is true that an electric car has a higher carbon footprint in manufacture – batteries are energy intensive to create. What is also true, is that at the moment, even while giving fossil fuel cars every advantage possible (most calculations of their emissions treats petrol as though it appears on the side of the road, and ignores the extraction refining and transport which can as much as triple the carbon emissions for a tank of fuel) an electric car saves more carbon than the extra that it emits in manufacturing within the first 5000-10000 miles.

Now to put this in context, Exxon is listed in the top 10 on this list! Apparently, having concrete ideas on how to reduce your carbon footprint gets recognized but having already lowered it (and indeed the impact of your products reducing emissions by hundreds of tonnes over their lifetime is ignored).

Now, just to push the point home, Ark invest founder Cathie Woods slammed this removal. Cathie Woods is not only seen as incredibly effective an investment manager, but has been very clever in investing in clean companies. Indeed when asked for a quote she said “Ridiculous, not worthy of any other response”

Some commentators have suggested that this is just the Index protecting itself – several oil companies and similar are high on the list; Tesla creates an existential risk to companies like this.

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One of the four remaining viable west African Lion habitat has been badly treated but perhaps it is now on the mend.

West African lions are heavily endangered with just 400 members remaining. While the west African population of the Asiatic lion is less at risk than the Gir forest population – being spread over 4 unconnected sites, it would be impossible for an epidemic to wipe out the whole population, or indeed some sort of freak flood or other dangerous weather.

The west and central African lion is close to extinction, however what is important is that despite living in Africa, this lion population is part of the Asiatic lion subspecies, and is not remotely the same as the eastern or southern lion, but is the same as the Indian lions and the now extinct Barbary lion
Continue reading “One of the four remaining viable west African Lion habitat has been badly treated but perhaps it is now on the mend.”
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Can the Malaysian tiger be saved?

If is easy to think that we should not be saving subspecies, but instead investing money in conserving other animals that are still threatened.

Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to look at it. Malaysia tigers only exist in a small strip between Malaysia and Thailand. The dense rainforest here has been standing in its current form for longer than the Amazon or the Congo.

In the 1950s there were 3000 tigers, yet in just 70 years this number has been reduced to just 200.

Subspecies are different – obviously, and their differences actually make a difference in the species survival, as well as its success. Introducing a subspecies from another area can have unexpected effects. If the subspecies is lost, then a different subspecies is likely to fill the niche better than none.

Tiger subspecies while extremely closely related, have evolved for millennia to be suited to their environment. If we take this to its extreme can you imagine reintroducing Sumatran tigers into the frozen wastelands of Siberia? The Amur tiger can measure 3m from head to end of tail, where as a Sumatran tiger only measures 2.4m

My feeling is that we should be moving from concentrating on specific species to ecosystems. it is certainly harder to generate the interest, but by looking at it on the ecosystem level we recognize that we need the apex predators for that ecosystem – whether they are a subspecies version of the tiger leopard or something else.

See Animals Wild