Wildlife and conservation new, wild travel information and links for booking
Across the world many governments make money by allowing hunters to take a certain percentage of their population each year. In most countries this percentage is worked out carefully, so as to not damage the population in the long run.
In Brazil, one of the main drivers of deforestation is for pasture for beef. It is therefore completely foolish for those in developed countries to eat Brazilian beef – if we do, we are paying them to do the world (and therefore us) incalculable harm.
Importantly, these people can wait. If we have a moratorium on grazing on newly deforested land, the land owner can wait a few years or a decade then its value jumps. This move was taken after it became clear that “cattle laundering” was going on.
Mongabay, one of the best websites about the natural world, has had one of its writers sued. This happened after the reporter in question reported on illegal deforestation by a Peruvian cacao company.
For this company, it appears that this is a decision that they have taken, having sued several other outfits in recent times. The suit has been thrown out. The company had also sued the 4 members of the local environment ministry, including the one which lead the prosecution of the company. This suit has been lost, but the company is appealing.
This sounds like extreme wrong-doing. If you are prosecuted and found guilty, clearly those who prosecuted are right.
Increasingly, companies that are involved in illegal acts will sue anyone who uncovers it – wrongful judgements can move them forwards, and even if not, the court process can keep everyone tied up for years – if anything survives of the forest at the end of that, it is surprising. The judgement for the original crime of destroying forest, was clear and final with 3 sentenced to prison for the “crime of illegal trafficking of timber forest products and aggravated obstruction of justice”. They also had to pay fines of over $4 million.
Unfortunately, despite overwhelming evidence all of the sentences were overturned by the supreme court – freeing the way for the attack on Mongabay. Indeed, 4 days after the original publication a notarized letter arrived requesting the article be corrected – in particular, claiming false claims were made in the article. Mongabay Latam published an article refuting each point in turn. Some of the points were absurd, with the company complaining about the turn deforestation being used – as they had not been found guilty of this. More foolishly, despite forest destruction being deforestation by definition, the website had only quoted one of the officials prosecuting.
This back and forth continued, but suffice to say their arguments are stupid: talking about logging and deforestation are completely interchangeable.
Stupid moves in court must be publicized, as only ridicule and financial loss will force companies like this to behave.
Thankfully, this website is not a big enough thorn to have to face similar suits, but that may come.
A Papua court ruling, is a win for local governance and against national governments. All over the world, most remaining wildernesses are not devoid of human population to the contrary, most of these areas are inhabited by indigenous people.
What does indigenous people mean? Well in most contexts it means people who arrived and settled before European colonisation. What has become increasingly clear is that the explorers that we learn about are rarely the first humans to arrive in newly discovered countries. Indonesians and Norwegians are both known to have crossed large oceans and settled on newly discovered lands.
Often these native people have lived in harmony in the local ecosystem for thousands of years.
This is why indigenous rights are so important. It is however important that this is done right – indigenous lands becoming places with casinos is not the idea.
In this instance, two palm oil companies sued after their lease was invalidated. The combined area is not small, being bigger than New York city. This clears the way for Indigenous groups who used to live within this area, to reclaim their former lands.
Indonesia has a particularly hard path to walk. Made up of thousands of different islands, with vast areas of rainforests, it is hard for the central government to make good decisions.
We as consumers need to make this easier, by reducing our consumption and therefore requiring less resources
Back in 2019, the conservative government passed a law banning the import of trophies from animals hunted abroad.
Despite their status, various wild species are hunted in the wild and in theory this law would stop this.
Now, you might notice that it is now almost 2022, so what happened? Well it was announced in 2019 queens speech but has not been brought forwards by the conservatives who are currently in power (and suggested the law in the first place). Worryingly, they have not actually announced a timetable of when they will try to enact this law! Given it has been 3 years before they announced it, no firm timetable being in place would suggest that this is still not a certainty. Delay is particularly concerning, as many Conservative supporters are wealthy, so it is reasonable to think that wealthy donors are the reason that this law is taking so long to come into place.
Continue reading “Is the government finally going to ban hunting trophy import”At 35 degrees Celsius the human body can no longer regulated temperature effectively. Indeed even healthy people sitting in the shade at this temperature turn to last not much more than 6 hours.
If we have 4 degrees of global warming, half of the population on earth will fall into the dangerous category of extreme heat.
Currently, Brazil India and Ethiopia are the hardest hit by extreme heat, but at 4 degrees Celsius, this will increase dramatically impact in large parts of Europe as well as lots of other parts of the developed world.
The scary statistic is that even if we hit 2 degrees of warming, this will still put more than 1 billion under this horrific heat condition.
Continue reading “At the moment the world’s current maximum temperature rise would make life impossible for 1 billion people on the planet”With the improving covid situation worldwide finally we can return to visiting wild areas of the planet. Not only has the tourist industry missed this basil so it has had a terrible impact on conservation efforts in many parts of the world.
This is because in many cases there is not enough money to protect animals without out.the tourist dollars that they bring in. Since covid start there have been very few tourists arriving in many of these countries.
Yet this situation is changing. Now, many countries in Africa are considered completely safe. There have been less infections across the whole of Africa than have been reported in the UK – now while some of this may be down to poor health care (there are slightly more people who have died from covid in Africa than the UK), clearly your risk in Africa is far lower than your risk in the UK.
My family will be travelling to Kruger in South Africa in August! Obviously I hope for this to create many stories for this site and videos for the sister YouTube channel.
My other aim is to be able to list all of the public rest stops on the website after this trip.
What does this mean?
Currently we only list the private reserves along the borders of the Kruger. These are fantastic ways of seeing wildlife. You will be pampered indeed spoilt, by the wonderful treatment you will receive.
However, even amongst wealthy people, the cost of these lodges can become prohibitive – a one week safari in some of these places can run to $10,000 or more per person.
Of course on this website we wish to cater for people who have large amounts of money, however we are not in this category and we want to cater for everyone.
Self-drive safaris are something that many people greatly enjoy. With a little bit of research you can quickly become competent at finding the animal to yourself (sighting maps in each rest stop help). There is something liberating about entering an area so large, and being able to go where you like as you like, exploring whichever part of the park you prefer.
On self-drive safaris your accommodation is different. Generally you have the choice of setting up your own tent, taking a hut, or in some places a mid option is a a fancy safari tent. These obviously very in price, but even in the most expensive you are likely to be spending less over your whole holiday then you would for one night on a private reserve.
For those who could afford it I would recommend to do a self-drive safari with a couple of days on a private reserve at the beginning or end of your trip.
DO CONSIDER BOOKING TRIPS ABROAD. THESE RESERVES WILL BE LESS CROWDED THAN NORMAL, AND WE CAN STOP RESERVES BEING TURNED INTO HUNTING AREAS IF WE RETURN SOON ENOUGH.
All of the partners on this site have very reasonable policies on cancelation if this is necessary because of Covid.
There is also the advantage at the moment, that most airlines have a simple policy of cancellation if advice suggests that travel is not wise.
There is an impressive wealth of cats living in India. From the Indian tiger (known throughout the world) to the Asiatic lions last home- the gir forests of west india (the asiatic lion once roamed across Asia, throughout southern Europe, across northern and western Africa – therefore there are probably more “Asiatic” lion in Africa than in Asia), 12,000-14,000 leopards remain in the country. The snow leopard also still roams mountains within the country. It also still has a population of clouded leopards. In other words, in terms of big cats, it has all species except Jaguar.
Continue reading “South African cheetah to be introduced into India”The Kazakstan population of these antelope has more than doubled in the last 2 years from 334,000 to 842,000. In 2015 there was a mass die-off and distressing images of the steppe strewn with bodies made the rounds. Thankfully, the mothers give birth to twins every year, so their ability to bounce back is impressive.
Back during the Soviet era there were many millions of these antelope, but with increasing development in their range a return to those days is highly unlikely.
With numbers like these of remaining individuals, one would be forgiven for thinking that these species is not critically endangered, or perhaps even endangered. However, these terms are applied based on percentage fall in the size of the population. Saiga antelope have suffered a 90% decline in their population at the end of the 20th century.
So long as there is not another mass die-off and poaching is kept under control, these animals are likely to recover, and continue to be the base of an extremely large food chain.
The Tapanuli Orangutan lives on Sumatra but are thought to be more closely related to Bornean Orangutans. Numbering around 800 members, they had a far wider ranging habitat until recently. They are now restricted to about 1000 square km – about 2.5% of their former range.
What is harder, is that these Orangutans are not naturally mountainous animals, but have been driven there by the hunting that has so decimated their numbers.
Continue reading “The Tapanuli Orangutan is still threatened with extinction, despite only recently being discovered”