Author: Tim

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Whales are at 95% lower population than historical. This means they no longer fertilize the oceans

Whaling caused all sorts of issues. Many whale populations were decimated, and while some have recovered to some degree, few are anywhere near their population before humans started hunting them.

While we expect the human population to allow the whales to return to their former glory, this experiment may allow humans to fill their niche in the food chain for the time being

One of the things that has been missed is the incredible impact that they have on the ocean environment.

A new experiment aims to put these nutrients into the water and see if it restores dwindling fish populations. Although the nutrients that they release are usually found in the depths, the pressure means that they have to come to the surface to release their waste. This waste creates food for phytoplankton, which then is eaten by fish.

This experiment will happen off the coast of Goa, and will consist of taking rice husk waste from local factories and putting it out at sea, mixed with other nutrients. While this first experiment will be small in size, if it works it can be repeated. This will provide large amounts of food for fish, as well as absorbing carbon dioxide

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Issues, hopefully resolved, and future progress

This website was set up to do a few things.

It was set up to highlight important wildlife news. While it is always possible for it to do more of this, I believe that it is succeeding on this front to some degree.

The next aim was to simplify wildlife travel. This is obviously far harder. We have begun, but with Covid having put paid to most wildlife travel for the last few years, this is yet to take off in any meaningful way. We aim for the website to make it easier to find interesting wildlife and to be able to go and visit it.

We have a few destinations that are live, however there are millions of potential wildlife destinations around the world (ranging from the huge to the tiny). It is obviously not possible for these to all be listed by one person (or even one organisation).

This is where our latest phase comes in. We are building members areas. Now there are 2 different groups of people who we wish to cater for.

MEMBERS The first is those who live alongside wildlife: We wish to help these people gain a positive impact from living near wildlife. The aim is that whether their primary occupation is to do with the wildlife or not, they can make money from it. We are building a page builder for anyone to list their wild place, and start hosting visitors – in return for money which can offset any damage done.

AFFILIATE MEMBERS This is for anyone else who wishes to save the natural world. This membership will cost a little bit a month, but will give a range of benefits. This includes discussion forums, but also includes the ability to help the website grow by listing places which you have visited (and the people you encountered) and therefore helping us protect it by giving it a financial bonus – which will be lost if the wildlife is lost.

The software has had a bit of a conflict which is what has resulted in the pause in posts, but we hope we have solved this problem. If we have, we hope to go live with our members areas in the next few days, and be able to partner with you all in a more practical way

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Only 12 Asiatic cheetah are left in the wild!

At the minimum, the Amur leopard population fell to as low as 30 individuals. The Asiatic cheetah is therefore far closer to extinction. At the current time there are thought to be 9 males and 3 females left in the wild. Given that in 2010 there were around 100, while this is still a highly threatened species clearly the threats to their continued existence have not gone away.

There is some debate about how genetically distinct Asiatic cheetah are. However, if fully lost, it may be able to import African cheetah to refill the ecological niche. Saving the last few would always be preferable however
Continue reading “Only 12 Asiatic cheetah are left in the wild!”
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I am disgusted to be British after the latest move in parliament – hunting trophy import ban to be axed, but if we are ending the ban the British government must take responsibility

The British government promised to ban the imports of trophies in to the UK, yet they have given up after “wealthy peers” lobbied against the move and so it was dropped.

I have written on this issue many times over the last few years, as it was raised as an issue over and over again.

Should wealthy individuals be allowed to go and shoot members of an endangered species? I would argue no, never. However, we do not live in a perfect world. There are places where few tourists will go. If these incredible places can be protected by sustainably harvesting a small number of endangered animals I would argue that this is the lesser of two evils.

Continue reading “I am disgusted to be British after the latest move in parliament – hunting trophy import ban to be axed, but if we are ending the ban the British government must take responsibility”
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“Net zero is net stupid” the latest foolish line from Nigel Farage

The Brexit referendum is now 6 years in the past. The continual calls from Brexiteers for “remoaners” to forget it and get with the program, have been gradually quietened as it has become clear that Brexit was won through a series of lies and promises – promises which have virtually all been broken.

The Conservative Party manifesto for the 2015 general election did say “We are clear about what we want from Europe. We say: yes to the Single Market.”

This was an important point that was made several times before the vote, yet after the vote everyone claimed that of course we all knew we had to leave the single market. While many would argue that it is too soon to see what damage Brexit will do (even though this was often said the other way before) It is clear that we were lied to, in order to leave. Before we actually completed the negotiations more than 50% of the population were expressing a desire to not leave.

Continue reading ““Net zero is net stupid” the latest foolish line from Nigel Farage”
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What will the Ukraine war have on wildlife?

I do not know how many of my readers follow current affairs closely, though I follow them.

Whether the Ukraine invasion is to have a long lasting effect on the environment in Ukraine, this picture shows that at least in places the damage is significant

Are wars good for wildlife, or are they bad?

Unfortunately, it completely depends.

I suspect that on the whole, it depends on the wildlife in question. Several times during wars, it was thought that the European bison had been lost – due to soldiers having to camp in remote forests that they still survived. It is not surprising that soldiers with little to eat will take Bison that they encounter (one bison could feed a large number of soldiers). Indeed, it is certainly the case that many herbivores have been lost in this way.

Other species are different.

Mountain gorillas multiplied greatly during the period of the civil war. In similar ways, the Iron curtain that crossed Europe – along the edge of the Soviet Union, had a no mans land on either side of the barrier. This Green belt which ran for thousands of km across Europe, while not wide was never-the-less wide enough for animals to use. Indeed, it is thought that wolves and bears used this route as a highway – allowing them to recolonise land they had been exterminated from.

So, what do we think? Well, partly it depends on how long the war goes on. At the current time, it does not look like Russia will be able to last for long enough for this to have any big effect. If instead this was to go on for years, it might be a very different thing. This is because Ukraine lies between the Eastern Europe and the Carpathians, and the west. Should hunting in Ukraine cease for a few years, it is likely to accelerate the movement of wolves and bears and lynx from east to west. This process is likely to happen over time anyway, but a protracted war could accelerate it.

As I said above, though, it is highly likely that this conflict will not last long.

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Return of the bear wolf and lynx to France and western Europe

The recovery of wolves bears and lynx over the last several generations in western Europe has been nothing short of astounding.

In the 1960s the population of the iberian wolf did not number more than a few hundred, yet now there are 2500. Similarly, bears got very low but now more than 300 roam – though this still has some way to go. The Iberian lynx was not heavily hunted, yet was still almost wiped out due to human introduced diseases wiping out most of the rabbits in Spain.

France destroyed its wolf population completely, though they are back, having crossed from Italy about 20-30 years ago. Bears were similarly almost wiped out, except a tiny relict population in the Pyrenes. Unfortunately, this population has not done well and is essentially only there because of bear translocations from further east. Similarly, Lynx were eradicated by 1900 though this has been reversed by reintroduction projects. There are a couple of zones where lynx are found (a reintroduction project in Switzerland returned them to part of france), However, there is not going to be more than 130 lynx in the whole country and the population does not seem to be growing.

Italy retained a wolf population, though in the 1970s there was only 70-100 left. Nowadays, 1000-2000 wolves roam the country, and it is roaming members of this population that seeded the population in France. 80-90 bears remain in Italy (the Marsican bear), and while this is a more healthy population than that in France, it is still not enough to be secure. Lynx were eradicated but have been reintroduced, though they are not thought to have established a population that would be secure longterm without continued translocations.

Scandinavia could in some ways be thought of as a strong-point for all three animals in western-Europe, though there are still views that are not helpful. The encouraging thing here, is that the wolf is able to return from Russia. There are no more than 500 wolves in this area, and Norway has a relatively strange view of the wolf, with human hunting elk very popular, wolves are seen as a nuisance and kept at a minimum. Norway has a similar view of the bear, with them being far more common in Sweden. Lynx are widespread in this part of the world.

Why should we champion the return of these animals? They have the capacity to rebalance environments, as well as allowing forests to operate properly – in the UK, as we are missing these predators, replanting forests are often hindered by deer grazing them to much. There are other reasons though. These animals can be a big tourist draw, allowing people to make a good income, often in places where there is little other economic potential. In the UK, return of wolves and lynx would save hundreds of human lives each year by reducing deer collisions on our roads.

Will their recovery continue? I hope so, though it seems to very much be an area where progress is two steps forwards and one step back.

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Re-wilding in the UK

Currently, 70% of the land in the UK is given over to agriculture. Of this, just 15% is used to grow crops for human consumption. A further 22% goes towards feeding livestock. The rest is given over to livestock grazing.

This means that we give over 44% of the country to livestock, and a further 15% of the country to feed the livestock.

If growing food in a lab does indeed take off, 59% of the UK would suddenly be freed up – lab grown meat done properly could have a near 0 carbon footprint, and can be created in close proximity to the shop that will sell it -further reducing or eliminating the transport carbon footprint of food.

Now, assuming that this is to happen we would still need to keep some livestock. This would be needed to harvest cells. Never the less, we could still see a reduction of more than 99% of the livestock and land required. I do not believe that I am the only person who would be far happier satisfying my desire for meat, without the climate implications or indeed the fact that animals have to die to satisfy it (I am not a vegetarian, but over the last few years we have made efforts to reduce our meat footprint).

This would free up more than 50% of the country. What could we do with this?

Well my argument is that this land could be given over to rewilding. With this amount of land, we could suck up vast amounts of carbon a year. 50% of the UK is roughly 120,000 square kilometres. Now roughly speaking, forest suck up 500g per square m per year, or 500 metric tonnes per square km. Therefore, the UK could suck up 60 million tonnes a year. Now it is true that this is not huge compared to our emissions and we might have some other uses, never-the-less I am sure that I am not the only person that is frustrated by the lack of wilderness in the UK. Even just 10% of the gained land being given over to rewilding could make great progress in returning wilderness to the UK.

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Much of the Amazon deforestation will cause destruction of the land that is being taken

In much of the Amazon rainforest destruction is in order to increase the amount of land that can be farmed.

There is not mass starvation in Brazil, in fact to the contrary most of the crops grown will be sold abroad. Never-the-less if is irrelevant as the land will not be usable for crops for very long. The area will rapidly switch to desert

Great areas are being deforested in order to grow crops.

The problem is, that the rainfall is largely caused by the rainforest. Therefore, by cutting down the rainforest you remove this rainfall.

Not only is rainforest destruction a dangerous thing for the community, but the land will be worthless within a short time of it being deforested.

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Chimpanzees medical treatments seen again

I hope all the people reading this are aware of the intelligence of chimpanzees. Indeed, this intelligence has been known for some time. Altruistic acts have been recorded in studies – going back to Jane Goodall’s seminal first study in Gombe stream.

This time, scientists have observed chimpanzees in Gabon applying insects to each others wounds – in the same way that we would use medicine. Now while medicinal uses have been seen before this is the first use of this sort that has been seen.

Back in 1965 Jane Goodall started to see in her studies, the use of various plants as medicines. In this instance, there was a specific leaf that they would eat when not feeling well – importantly, the leaf was not chewed as is normal. when researchers did tests on the leaf, they found it contained a specific chemical which was capable of killing a range of bacteria, fungi, and nematodes

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