Indonesia is a archipelago of islands. Once connected to the Asian mainland, animals were able to make their way along the peninsular. When sea levels rose in the ancient past they were marooned on the islands.
Once they were found on a few islands including Bali and Java. They are now only found Sumatra. Sumatra is thought to have 400 tigers in 2010. This is down from as many as 1000 back in 1978.
San diago zoo estimate the number remaining in the wild at 400-600, but I cannot find any reason for this higher band.
It is possible that the tiger population has increased a bit, but in certainly has not doubled.
El Nino are natural weather phenonium generally occurring between every 2 and 7 years. It would appear that as predicted, the El Nino is getting worse as a result of climate change.
This mass die off released carbon dioxide greater than the annual emissions of a country like the UK or Australia.
The fear is that this will become a common event as the planet warms.
The problem is that with this much carbon released, the Amazon as a whole was flipped from being a net absorber toa net emitter of carbon.
As with many of the other countries on this list, precise population numbers do not seem to be available. What is clear is that in 2010 the tiger population was thought to be in excess of 100. Their current population is around 177 ( the population grew by 50% over the last 2 years).
Rapid growth of the population appears to be possible thanks to an improvement in their habitats health.
Coal power plants have to be a thing of the past as soon as possible. This is because no matter how efficient they are, they are powered by digging up carbon and releasing it into the air.
However for the time being, there are many coal power stations across the world. Vishwanath Haily Dalvi of the institute of Chemical technology in Mumbai India has been looking at how we could assist this process with the suns energy.
By collecting the suns heat energy, and using this to heat the water, the amount of coal needed is reduced by 50%.
This could therefore be a more economic way of reducing emissions from power generation. Given that coal power emits 0.85 pounds of carbon per kwh (about 380g), cutting this in half would make carbon far cleaner. While this may well be expensive to set up, it might allow coal power plants to operate for a few years longer and therefore be worthwhile, as well as offsetting some of the damage from the large number of coal powered stations being built across countries such as India and China.
Bhutan is a mountainous country, thought to have a small population of tigers. Tigers have been photographed thousands of meters up mountains, and is the only country where this is known to happen. In 2014 a census counted 103 tigers, up from the previous estimate of 75.
There appear to be no further census done. It is entirely possible that Bhutans tiger population has increased, but we cannot know.
Montpelier had set aside $33 million for this project, over 2 years. This decision was made, after local officials realized that electric buses would be 6 times cheaper to run. This price included the building of a plant to make the hydrogen.
In terms of cost, it was estimated that the buses (for which the council was given help buying but not for running costs) would cost 3 million euros to run, yet only 500,000 for electric. The per mile price was 0.15 euro instead of 0.95.
Although they were going to be helped in purchasing, the hydrogen buses are also between 150000-200000 euros more to buy in the first place.
The myriad reasons that hydrogen is not a good idea have been obvious for some time. Green hydrogen (much of hydrogen is taken out of gas- obviously a nonstarter if your aim is reducing carbon emissions) requires a great deal of electricity to split water, and it would be far more efficient to just put that electricity in batteries and use them. Another issue is the compression of the gas. The only possible place where hydrogen might be useful is in aeroplanes.
According to Xi Jinping, low-carbon ambitions must not interfere with modern day life! If this is true, then we are unlikely to get the cuts that we need.
Now, it is not unreasonable for a country to want to raise its standard of living. However, China is likely to be hit very hard by climate change. While you do not think of China as a low lying country like Bangladesh, 67,000 square km (about 26,000 square miles) lie 1m or less above sea level – and 67 million people live in this area. It is true that this only accounts for about 5% of Chinas population but given how crowded this country already is, this is likely to cause a lot of issues. More to the point Shanghai is only between 3m and 5m above sea level,
Around the world about 600 million people live close to the sea. Of course we understand that each country must look after its own citizens – but that includes protecting them from global warming. China currently accounts for 26% of global emissions, and the rest of the world cannot cut enough to make their emissions irrelevant.
Now, it is entirely true that the president may be trying to keep his own population on side, but we need the whole world to work on this problem. China accounts for 15% of the worlds GDP, then can not take a back seat.
Rabbits are not native in the UK. They were introduced about 1000 years ago. the first Myxomatosis outbreak in the uk was in 1953. There have been various foolish uses of this disease (the Iberian Lynx is largely only threatened with extinction because it relied heavily on rabbits for food, and these disappeared when myxomatosis was introduced.
Hares are a native species, so it is of greater concern if they are being eradicated. More than 1100 hares have been identified as having died from this, over the last 4 years. Now, as they currently have a population of more than 800,000 individuals, this is not currently a big concern. However if the outbreak has a similar impact to rabbits, then hares could disappear from parts of the UK.
It is already thought to have lost 80% of its population over the last 100 years.
Unfortunately, with our modern habit of farming breeds of wild species, we are giving perfect conditions for new viruses to appear.
For years it has been assumed that it is a mixture of these two reasons that red squirrels survive but perhaps not
Food sources in conifer plantations tend to be smaller, limited to small cones and such like. As such, this suited the smaller red squirrel more than the invasive grey. However this has recently been thrown into doubt.
Where as, in broadleaf tree plantations there are a variety of food sources for pine martens and so red squirrels will not be exclusively predated, in conifer forests with less food to find red squirrels are hunted more often.
This research is based on 5 years of observations from the public and camera traps. It was carried out in northern Ireland, and looked at pine martens red and grey squirrels.
In natural woodlands there is a diverse range of prey and plenty of refuges for red squirrels, however in conifer plantations pine martens will eat far more squirrels because there is little else for it to find.
We therefore need to stop replacing large areas of natural wood with plantations.
If this is true, then the pine marten has even more pressure on it, as it must drive the grey squirrel out so reds can survive. A recent study of grey squirrels dna shows that the UK population relies far more on humans. Far from colonising the country they appear to have been moved by humans and installed in new parts of the country on many occasion. One example, showed this by the fact that the grey squirrels around Aberdeen appear to have originated with the population around the new forest.
Unfortunately below is the last known sighting of a tiger in Cambodia from 2007
AreTiger (Panthera tigris) walking at night, taken by camera trap in Mondulkiri protected forest of Eastern Plains Landscape, Mondulkiri province, Cambodia. WWF-Cambodia has set up a camera trap in Eastern Plains Landscape since 2002, but only two photographs of tigers have been captured. The first was captured in 2004 and the next in 2007.
With no confirmed sightings since, it is thought that the cambodian tiger is gone. There are plans and conversations going on about reintroducing it -hopefully I can write an article on this in the near future.
