Habitat destruction – Page 6

September 4, 2022August 31, 2022

A recent assessment only found as few as 34 wild lions left in Nigeria, how long can they hang on

Lions have been lost from a huge area in Africa. Already extinct in 26 countries in Africa, there are perhaps as few as 15,000 lions left. Furthermore, most of these are in a small handful of reserves.

Between the Selous, Serengeti, Ruaha, Kruger and the greater Kalarhari zambezi transfrontier park are represented perhaps as high as 14,000.

This means that other reserves that still host lion tend to have very small populations with the inherent risks of inbreeding that this brings.

You will notice that on this list of lion ecosystems, none are in west Africa. This is unfortunately not a mistake. Recent analysis of the Genetics of western African lions has proved something that has been suspected for centuries. The west African lion is not the same species as the eastern and southern lion, in fact these populations are relict populations left behind as the Asiatic lion was pushed back into its home in India. In actual fact the “Asiatic lion” or “Indian Lion” once had a huge range that took in much of Europe, north Africa and Asia.

September 2, 2022August 31, 2022

Workers strike as Indonesia increases fee to visit Komodo dragons is increase by more than 18 times to £205

As the largest lizard in the world the Komodo dragons hold a fascination for humans, as it is the only place where lizards still rule

The concern by those who work in tourism with the Komodo dragons seems quite justified. They fear that this enormous increase in price will put off people from visiting, and therefore completely destroy the tourism industry.

It should be noted that this is merely the fee to visit the islands, anything the guides charge is on top of that.

August 30, 2022August 29, 2022

As oil and gas reserves in Europe dwindle, will we destroy Africa?

Most of the historical oil and gas has been used by North America and Europe.

As a result, Europe and America have to take a large amount of blame for the current carbon dioxide crisis that is pushing global warming. While it is true that the majority of the world’s pollution will increasingly moved towards Asia, almost all of the historical emissions come from just these two continents. Having depleted many of the largest Isle and gas reserves around Europe, many European countries are not pushing into Africa. Africa is incredibly rich in oil and gas, and quite reasonably politicians in these countries argue ‘why shouldn’t we extract them and help our country grow’.

It has been shown many times, it is impossible to extract fossil fuels without destroying the land above. Are we going to destroy the lungs of the planet, and we ask them to save us from ourselves

August 24, 2022August 3, 2022

Soliga tribe has been allowed to live inside tiger in a reserved area – and the tiger population doubles!

Around much of the world, as the various European countries expanded their empires, one of the first things that Europeans did, was to create reserves to protect the wildlife, and required the local people to move out.

Many tribes have incredibly small footprints on the ground, ad look after their environment far better than many conservationists would succeed

In many of these places, the local tribes were forcefully thrown of their land, and begrudgingly given small areas often with little value compared to where they lived before.

Now there is a difficult issue: those people who are living their lives in the same way that they have lived for thousands of years, are often fantastic for the reserve. However, in many places these people will turn to harvesting the wildlife in a totally different way, leading to many local extinctions.

India has a range of tiger reserves across the country. Few of them have more than a few hundred tigers, and many just have a few, yet, if this could be replicated, the Indian tiger population might have the ability to double once again

August 22, 2022August 3, 2022

Back on the 10th I wrote about the Tiger recovery, here is more details about the Kazakhstan reintroduction: by 2026?

The Caspian tiger once lived in 12 countries, from the west in Turkey, to the east in central Asia. Seemingly, across this range, they did not have consistent populations but the tigers lived on the shores of lakes in the region, with 15-20 valleys being their strongholds.

The Kazakhstan delta is mostly ready for a return of the Tiger, with just the missing prey base needing addressing, this is well in hand

On the whole, the Caspian tiger lived in relative harmony with humans up until the Russian invasion. The Russians brought with them, the custom of keeping livestock, which brought the humans into direct competition with the tigers. As a result, Russia started paying a bounty for every tiger killed. This was incredibly successful, such that by the 1940 they were exterminated. The hunting was banned in the 1940s but too late to save these tigers.

After this, the tigers former home was taken over and converted into farmland, so the few that survived the hunting, soon lost what home was left.

In the 1990s as Russia fell, WWF started working to help the ecosystem recover. As a result in the late 2000s a satellite analysis was carried out on the area, and one area stood out – a delta of the Lli river in Kazakhstan. It was found that if the prey base was first helped to recover (animals such as boar and deer) then this area could easily support tigers.

Now, it is true that the Caspian tiger went extinct 70 years ago. However, recent genetic analysis has shown that the Caspian and Amur tigers are not distinct enough to be classed separately – they are essentially one subspecies, with a large range. It is true that Caspian tigers tend to have had shorter fur, but tigers are able to adjust in this way, so tigers that are moved to warmer climates will grow less fur and be able to thrive.

Given Kazakhstan being the most advanced of the countries in the area, with relatively high living standards, they should be able to carry out the plan. The delay until 2026 is to allow time for the prey base to build up to sensible levels.

August 19, 2022August 3, 2022

Sweden is often held up as the way to do forestry, but is the bubble about to burst?

Most of Sweden is still covered in forest. I have visited the country, and have enjoyed exploring it. Never the less, an alarming study has shown that most of the forestry – about 97% relies on clear cutting ancient woodland, and then replanting it with monocultures of trees, not all of which are native.

Sweden so called environmental forestry may be nothing of the sort. Clear cutting old growth, and replacing it with non-native monocultures is not the same thing

Clearly Sweden must buck its ideas up, or change fast. I have commented on the low density of bears and wolves. In the past, this has been put down to the countries large number of hunters, but perhaps this is an early warning about what is happening to these forests.

Might this hit the IKEA brand? certainly if they wish to survive, they are going to have to change their behaviour dramatically.

August 1, 2022July 27, 2022

Bramble Cay melomys have become the first mammal lost exclusively to climate change

No one knows how the melomys got to Bramble cay a small island 31 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea, but they did. In 2015 they became the first mammal to go extinct purely as a result of climate change, as their little island home at the end of the great barrier reef sink beneath the waves.

In 1978 a few hundred were counted, in 1998 just 100. In 2002 and 2004 just a few dozen were found. The amount of lady plants shrink by 97% between 2004-2014, and when a survey was carried out in 2014 no specimens could be found.

August 1, 2022July 28, 2022

Large thriving network of settlements thrived in Columbian Amazon before European settlers

Both the Amazon and the Congo have been given the status of totally virgin rainforest, without any human impact. What is becoming increasingly clear is that this is not the case.

Instead it is the case, that the communities which lived here -sometimes in large numbers, lived in balance with the environment.

Pre Columbian settlement evidence in the Amazon

Archaeologists have found vast network of settlements in the Columbian Amazon, spanning hundreds or even thousands of square km, consisting of a main settlement with huge platforms, and smaller settlements spread out around. All are linked by causeways, and canals and reservoirs dotted the land to make agriculture possible.

To be sure, these settlements were low density, but they successfully lived in harmony with the rainforest for centuries.

Oddly, while these communities prospered for 1000 years, they disappeared before Columbus arrived, and it is not clear why.

How should this impact work these days? I am not sure. There are no large groups of modern people who have learnt to live in harmony with their environment, but clearly bush people have. Perhaps we need to follow their example – though the current indigenous people of the Amazon do not live in settlements of large size, otherwise we would have know about these centuries ago,

July 29, 2022July 27, 2022

Cheetah on the brink of extinction again

I don’t know what your feelings towards cheetah, for many of not most people they have vague idea of the cheetah because it’s the fastest animal on earth. My family have a model cheetah, full size, something I’ve always loved – and it built a deep love for these animals. I was lucky enough to see one whole in the Kruger – not many at the time, so very lucky. I hope this time we will see more

However, for perhaps most they know little else. I have written on them many times, I believe they are an essential tool for conservation. Given their size, they don’t generally attack humans, and kill livestock far less. Having a historic range that encompasses most of Africa and much of Asia, there are many places they could be, but instead they face extinction once again.

June 11, 2022June 28, 2022

1 in 5 (1800) reptiles around the world are facing extinction

Impacts on the worlds ecosystems from this many animals disappearing could have disastrous effects. The loss of this many reptiles could cause knock-on effects such as huge increase in the number of insects. As much as 30% of forest dwelling reptiles are threatened by extinction, due to their homes being cut down.

Reptiles are often quite beautiful, but we would also miss what they do- if they ceased to be there

Hunting is also adding an unhelpful pressure, as many reptile species have skins that can be made into items for human consumption.

In some countries such as the UK, it is usually looked down on so much, that you rarely see reptile skins (we have other problems) but elsewhere this is not the same. Reptiles are also very important seed dispersers