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The country of Indonesia consists of many islands. Due to their relative size, these islands have led to many subspecies of animals adapting.
In the past tigers existed on at least three of these islands. These animals once lived on Java and Bali, but now there is only a small population in Sumatra.
In Java this leaves the the largest predator population consisting of the leopard – this is why it is so concerning that these leopards are being poached.
For as long as people have studied the carbon cycle, forests are considered essential carbon sinks. Unfortunately as we damage them, their ability to absorb carbon reduces.
A new study has confirmed, that large parts of the Amazon rainforest have crossed this line.
There are many threats facing the great apes of Africa, from habitat destruction and fragmentation, to hunting for bush meat. Unfortunately, it is now thought that Chimpanzees gorillas and Bonobos face a still greater threat (assuming humans avoid killing off what remains of their population) the loss of about 94% of their remaining habitat due to forest die off from the warming that we are creating.
Even under our most rosy scenario, they stand to loose 85% of their range.
The same studies suggest that as areas become unsuitable, there are likely to be other that become suitable. Unfortunately, dealing with slow adapting animals this will not help at all without significant assistance from humans.
What is even more scary is that this loss would occur by 2050.
I find this horrifying. I have not been able to yet visit any wild great ape populations, and now it looks as though their future is severely limited. It also looks like, by the time my children have children the huge forests of Africa teeming with wildlife, will be no more.
We must act now!
Human communities which live alongside great ape populations must benefit. Of course these communities must not grow and crowd out the wildlife, but if a similar system can be set up that worked for the mountain gorillas, perhaps many of the great apes could be saved and at the same time, pull millions of Africans living in poverty, into more sustainable and profitable lives.
This is not something that must be left to African governments. Indeed, it also must not be just left to tourism. Governments around the world, need to help in this work.
As well as replanting and recovering rainforests across the globe, the human population as a whole needs to work together to save the remaining tropical rainforests which are so precious to our future and that of our descendants.
A French company Biotope is working on sustainable cohabitation between chimpanzees and local communities in the highlands of western central Guinea.
The west African Chimpanzee once numbered around 2 million. Currently there are roughly 500,000, but without urgent action that number is liable to move quickly down to close to zero.
Conservation for its own sake is all very well for those people living on the other side of the world. For those who live close by it is a different matter. Ending the population explosion that is occurring in Africa, is essential both for the human and wildlife populations that share this continent. Similar programs could do the same thing in south America and Asia.
I am well aware that even if successful, this website will only be part of the solution, but I hope that with your support we can do some good.
I have been writing about Jair Bolsonaro for quite some time. Indeed, those who have been reading this blog for years will know that I became concerned in the run up to the election.
He has a quite bizarre approach to many things. Indeed, his ruling style is very like Donald Trump. He doesn’t care about Brazil, merely that “his” people do well out of his presidency.
It is quite something, that academics and activists have come together to warn that with the increased attacks on the environmental protections, the Brazilian rainforest would not survive a second Bolsonaro term.
Continue reading “Amazon rainforest: can it survive Bolsonaro?”While Australian government ministers are fighting hard against, there are increasing calls from Australian environmentalist groups for the great barrier reef to be added to the list of ecosystems in danger.
It is frankly insane that this is still a discussion. Of course the great barrier reef is in danger.
Indeed, it is endangered by a number of things
Continue reading “Australian Environmentalist groups want the UN to put the Great barrier reef on the ‘in danger list’, will the government listen?”It is frankly bizarre, that there is not huge support for green energy. Who benefits from the status quo? Well the power companies do, but few others do. Of course, one group that does continue to gain are the fossil fuel companies.
So what would Bidens emissions cuts do? He has made it a goal of the USA, that by 2030 80% renewable energy use by 2030!
Continue reading “Biden has unveiled his clean energy plan”According to the African wildlife foundation estimates, there are 15000 to 20000 bonobos left in the wild. Bonobos or pygmy chimpanzees are thought to genetically be closer to humans, certainly their appearance – they are thinner, have thinner faces and a more noticeable crop of hair on their head, but are horrifically threatened.
Yet it would appear that even this estimate is too high.
Continue reading “Can we save bonobos, the great ape most similar to humans? They are more endangered than we thought.”The UK government is in the process of changing the rules for property developers. At the moment, a range of wildlife from red squirrels, pine martens, mountain hares, water voles, adders and slow worms have special status.
There has been much hesitation about insect based meats. For millennia in the west we have not eaten insects and so for us the idea is repulsive.
How about feeding the cows the insects? The efficiency of this is lower than if we were to eat the insects ourselves, but a study by the WWF has found that this move would reduce the Soya imports that the uk needs by a fifth by 2050.
In 2019 1 million tonnes of Soya were used, which are thought likely linked to deforestation.
Now this change will need legislation, as currently it is not legal to include insect protein for pigs and poultry. A rapid move by the government could mean that the UK leads the world in this move.
Tesco (a leading supermarket in the UK) worked on this report with WWF and has already put its money where its mouth is by supplying seed money to Entocycle among other similar moves.
We could easily have insect farms in the UK, so this could end up cutting cattle feed carbon footprint by roughly 20%.
Farms need to cut their footprint as well as the rest of the economy in the UK, it is possible that meat without the animal is coming soon, however in the meantime this would allow farms to make their own cuts in line with the rest of the country.
Current prediction is great apes will lose 80% of their habitats by 2050
Of the great ape species, 3 out of the 4 non human species live in Africa. This is why it is so alarming the current estimates are that by 2050 great habitat will have reduced by 80%.
This is also a huge concern for the rest of the world. An 80% reduction in rainforest cover in Africa could make halting global warming impossible.
Obviously there are multiple strands of global warming and halting species loss. Unfortunately this could sink both problems into impossible or near impossible to solve.
Furthermore, there are other sad facts about this idea. Farmland rarely benefits the people who live in its vicinity. The huge plantations of Indonesia have destroyed the rainforests but they have not lifted living standards, indeed in many places they have eradicated the ability for locals to live – forcing them to leave their home.
Game reserves require significant staff to look after the guests. Furthermore, there are a great deal of resources that can be extracted without destroying the trees above. This allows locals to increase their standard of living, while at the same time allowing the rainforests to stay standing and the wildlife that lives there to continue to thrive.
It would seem that it should be possible to dig deep mines under rainforests without cutting the forest down first. Obviously we come back to the problem of poaching that might increase with the mine workers, but the simple fact is that most mines do not disturb the surface (except for the mine entrance). It likely increases mine costs, but given the wealth of minerals that are thought to lie under the Congo rainforest it should be more than worth it.
I do not want to have to explain to my grand children, why there are no great rainforests left in Africa. I have only visited one rainforest (that of the Udzungwas in East Tanzania), but apart from the environmental services that these places provide there are many parts of the planet which rapidly turn to desert if you remove the rainforests covering the ground.