Month: November 2023

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Is global warming true – YES, and expert shows

As if it is needed, here is a list of evidence that global warming is true, laid out by someone with a doctorate in the subject material. Do share with friends who have suggested that there is not. 

It is simple, the world is warming and we are causing it by burning fossil fuels. We are responsible and so we can do something about this.

At a time, when there is a high probability that someone who denies all obvious facts on this subject, is leading the race to return to the white house, we need to stop debating facts and fix the problem.

USA, you are currently a pariah around the world, because you cannot pass meaningful climate action. You have 4.23% of world population, emit around 16 tonnes per head on average – which amounts to 14% of global emissions or around 1/7. It is true that China  (29.18% of global emissions), however India emits just 7.09% of global emission. Yet the per capita emissions of these countries are 7.44 in China and just 1.89 tonnes in India.

The UK, a similarly developed country, only has emissions of 5.6 tonnes per head

We’re hoping to return to a more normal amount of blogposts in the near future. Time is currently going into building a database of species of the world.

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Many species pages are going live

For those who visit this website regularly, there will be periods where it looks like I am not active. While there are periods where I am away from the computer, more often than not it is because I am concentrating on other aspects of the website. In recent times, I have been working hard on the list of species that the website lists.

The long-term aim of the website, is still for it to become a one-stop shop for wild travel. We continue to work towards this. Do look at the Species watch page.

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5 Northern buff-cheeked gibbons released back into the wild

Gibbons are lesser apes – lesser than the great apes, anyway. This means that they generally need far less space per individual. Unfortunately, so much of their forests have been lost, that they are increasingly isolated in small scraps of the forest, unable to socialize or breed.

It is becoming clear that in many parts of the world, the survival of specific animals is going to rely on humans regularly translocating animals – that is, we will have to treat the whole population as one large population, and connecting artificially by transporting the animals. The success of this, is perhaps most noticeable in South Africa, where there are many small reserves. Cheetah survive in these reserves and the surrounding areas, but find it hard to connect with their own kind. By regular translocation, the cheetah population grew substantially, as well as their health. In other countries lions leopards, and many other species are likely to require this in the near future.

Each had been kept as pets, with one handed over voluntarily, and the other 4 were seized. While the park is not vast (covering around 200 square km) it would be able to support a significant number of this endangered primate.

There needs to be a change in these countries so that it is no longer acceptable for people to keep these as pets.

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Elephant death mystery solved, but no nearer to a solution

In Zimbabwe, elephants started dropping dead, no-one knew why. This has now been solved, but were not any nearer to ending the problem, and now its spreading.

It is unfortunately a fact, that in the majority of instances, sudden deaths from an unknown illness are impossible to prevent until we know more.

In total, 300 died in Botswana with another 35 dying in Zimbabwe just 2 months later. 50 more elephants have died since in Botswana.

It turns out that these animals have fallen as a result of an obscure bacteria, and scientists are concerned that it could spread to other species.

Should something similar happen amongst, say the lions of an area, we could quickly see all the lions die.

It took 3 years but a wildlife veterinarian at the Victoria Falls wildlife trust has worked out what happened. Although initially thinking it was anthrax, it was spreading in a strange way, and killing to many animals.

It turns out that a bacteria called Pasteurella Bisgaard taxon 45 was responsible. It is relatively rare, and had not been known to kill elephants. Unfortunately, in previous heatwaves, similar issues have been known to jump the species barrier and kill large numbers of antelope – particular during a heat wave. This bacteria caused blood poisoning, and mostly killed recently weaned young, which are generally weaker anyway.

It is unfortunate that outbreaks like this are so easily linked to high temperatures, as our behaviour means that these high temperatures occur more often – so deaths like this may become a way of life. Given the slow rate of reproduction in elephants, this could threaten populations if not dealt with rapidly.

The same bacteria is thought to have been responsible for 200,000 saiga antelope dying on the steppe of Kazakhstan in 2015.

Oddly, this bacteria is thought to live happily in the mouths of a variety of animals from elephants and antelope, to lions tigers and even chipmunks. If all it takes for this bacteria to become deadly is an increase in temperature, we have a hard task ahead of us.

Currently, there are 350,000 savannah elephants in Africa, but this number is already declining by around 8% a year (around 26,000 animals each year, or the equivalent of twice the total elephant population of the Kruger national park – one of the largest in the world. While it is possible to turn this around it is not easy.

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