Category: Habitat destruction

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Australia is risking several of the most pristine marine environments

Australia has an incredible range of wildlife. Indeed, a great number of people visit Australia because of this. From their fascinating land mammals -kangaroos and koalas, as well as many more, to the great barrier reef and the wide array of other sea life.

They also have areas of Australia which are already almost unusable, because the temperature is too high. You would think therefore, that conservation would be a high priority. Unfortunately under the current government that is very much not the case.

Rowley Shoals is one of the most intact reefs in the world

From mining projects and farming, wildlife is shown to have low priority. In recent times, a firm was given permission to dump material from dredging inside a marine park (and submerging parts of a coral reef – something that will kill it.

Continue reading “Australia is risking several of the most pristine marine environments”
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Lockdown has shown the perils of overreliance on tourism: what to do

Uganda has suffered during lockdown. As much as 7% of the countries population works in tourism, a sector which has been either totally shut down, or greatly reduced over the last few years. Several other countries like Tanzania have suffered in a similar way.

To protect some of the most special wildernesses in the world we need a better system

How can we expect countries to protect huge ecosystems if the income to protect them can dry up with no warning?

Continue reading “Lockdown has shown the perils of overreliance on tourism: what to do”
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Will our fight with Covid push the human race to tackle global warming?

Can the human race use the lessons learnt during the Covid epidemic to start addressing climate change as the existential threat that we know it is? Estimates vary as to what the Covid epidemic has cost, but economists estimate roughly $28 Trillion. Now while that sounds huge, it is only about 1/3 of global output annually. Given that Covid has taken place over around 2 years, that means an output reduction of less than 20%.

Now it is true, that governments around the world have spent vast amounts money propping up economies and trying to avoid as much of the pain as possible.

Climate change is predicted to cost about $23 trillion per year by 2050!

In other words, economists are predicting that in 28 years, we will have to find almost the price of fighting Covid – every year (remember that the Covid costs have been spread out over 2 years).

CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?

We are marching towards a future, where we pay out almost the whole cost of COVID every year, to mitigate the effects of climate change.

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It is becoming more and more clear, that Trumps move to delist wolves was too soon and completely uncontrolled -perhaps by design?

I have written about issues that have arisen from the delisting of wolves in America. Given their absence from a large portion of the USA, the suggestion that they have recovered is insane. Unfortunately, putting states in charge takes the decisions of what a sensible ‘harvest’ is, away from scientists and puts it in the hands of local governors.

Wisconsin has already killed 1/3 of the wolf population based in the state. The fact is, that Wisconsin stated that their aim was to have a stable wolf population, something clearly not successful.

As you can see wolves have not been allowed to spread into currently available territory, let alone return to their historic ranges.
Continue reading “It is becoming more and more clear, that Trumps move to delist wolves was too soon and completely uncontrolled -perhaps by design?”
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Sainsbury has stopped selling all or some beef from Brazil along with 5 others

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.

Cattle laundering means we can no longer tell which meat from Brazil is safe to eat
Continue reading “Sainsbury has stopped selling all or some beef from Brazil along with 5 others”
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Could Bialowlieza forest be destroyed by forests on borders?

Around the world we are in a period where there are lots of people struggling where they are. Whether due to weather or war or crime, there are significant numbers of people who are on the move. Perhaps the most famous is the border wall that Donald Trump ran on. Given that almost all of the people who are illegally in the USA arrive legally and then fail to leave, cutting off the stream of people fleeing violent crime in central America will make little difference to what is going on.

As elsewhere, the wilderness either side of the USA border wall is likely to be badly damaged
Continue reading “Could Bialowlieza forest be destroyed by forests on borders?”
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Should being sued be a sign you are doing the right thing?

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.

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Often locals lose their forests against their will, sometimes this balance is corrected

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

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