Corruption – Page 7 – See Animals Wild

April 7, 2021July 1, 2022

Rooting out corruption is necessary to halt the illegal wildlife trade

From the top to the bottom, there are members of the force that are fighting to stop the wildlife trade, which are perpetuating it and indeed financially growing rich on the back of it.

Police, prosecutors, airlines and even diplomats are involved in the smuggling of rhino horn in south east asia. The sanctity of the diplomatic bag is incredibly important, however, when it is being used as a way to smuggle animal parts out of the country things need to change.

March 25, 2021March 23, 2021

HSBC is voting on stopping funding coal? about time, but not action for 19 years

Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that conservationists approach to fossil fuel companies were not working.

The problem is that there is a great deal of money to be made from fossil fuels. Companies like tesla hint at a world where this ceases to be the case, and the speed that the electric car market is growing, is incredibly fast. Indeed many people have commented on the fact that the growth curve of electric cars is clearly following the curve of many other disruptions from computers to mobile phones.

March 23, 2021March 23, 2021

Nigeria is becoming the clearing house for poached animals from throughout west Africa: they must stop it

Between 2015 and 2019 30 tonnes of ivory and 167 tonnes of pangolin scales were seized. This equates to roughly 4400 elephants dead, and 167,000 pangolins. As in other places, the illegal wildlife trade tends to bring in crime, with the same gangs handling humans drugs minerals and weapons..

March 21, 2021March 23, 2021

Liberia has huge areas of intact rainforest: some of the last in west africa. Now its under threat

After the civil war, the Liberian government made a sensible decision in giving communities control to conserve the rainforests around their villages.

Despite this exploration companies have started turning up with permits to explore. These are often dubious, but it is quite common that by the time a permit has been proved false, it is too late.

March 19, 2021March 23, 2021

The palm oil giant Wilmar is making clear its deforestation commitments mean nothing

An area of around 1500 football pitches has been cleared on an oil palm plantation during last year. The concession is managed by PT Medcopapua Hijau Selaras a supplier to Wilmar. Wilmar is the worlds largest palm oil trader, and includes amongst their customers huge companies such as Kelloggs nestle and unilever.

Rather than denying the deforestation occurred, Wilmar has claimed that less land was cleared than is claimed (this is a foolish claim to make as we have satellite pictures from before and after), and then claims that they are not responsible anyway and that the clearing was done by smallholder farmers.

March 17, 2021March 23, 2021

Indonesia has recently changed its rules, designating large areas once protected forests for food production

I wrote the other day, about the ability of brewing palm oil, rather than creating huge estates to grow it. Perhaps these two issues could be combined to solve both problems

Well a few months ago, Indonesia changed its regulations which would allow large areas of protected land to be cleared for food production.

March 16, 2021March 23, 2021

The Ugandan environmental authority allows clearing of Bugoma forest

Sugar cane companies managed to get the rights to the land on which this forest stands in controversial circumstances, yet they were given the right to clear the land.

Bugoma forest is an area which supports many chimpanzees and monkeys. Through a corrupt sale it is now going to be lost

Home to both around 5000 chimpanzees and Mangabeys, under the “common good of the citizens of Uganda act” from 1998, areas like this are held in trust and may not be leased out or sold by the government.

March 11, 2021July 1, 2022

A forest is replanted after minister is found to have illegally cleared it

This story is extremely encouraging. Around the world, large plantation companies often encourage small holders to clear the land and then buy it from them.

This area of deforested land was within a protected area, and should never have been cleared

The idea that this behaviour of getting other people to clear the land is permissible is insane. I personally would like countries to punish illegal clearance by always requiring full reforestation at the cost of the guilty party – this would likely end the scourge of illegal deforestation (then we must start working on so called legal deforestation)

March 5, 2021July 1, 2022

Why do electric car emission calculations include everything but combustion engine cars only the fuel they use?

There is a constant attempt to make electric cars sound less clean than they are. Now, for a start, in order for these calculations to work at all, the most polluting electricity is usually used. Next the amount of energy used to create the car and the emissions in this process is added.

Is the balance of carbon emissions we are told are created accurate? no of course not

February 27, 2018December 3, 2023

New species of Orangutan

The Tapamuli Orangutan has recently been discovered. There are only thought to be 800 of these animals left and they are only found within the Batang Toru Forest of North Sumatra. It is thought that they have been a separate from the Borneon Orangutan for 674,000 years (despite living on Sumatra they appear to be more closely related to the Orangutans of Borneo than of Sumatra). As well as having such a tiny population they also live in an area of roughly 1000 square kilometres (386 square miles). This is the first great ape species to be discovered since 1929 when the Bonobo was discovered.