Wildlife and conservation new, wild travel information and links for booking
While currently only exploratory, oil projects in the ecosystems of Namibia and Botswana potentially threaten the survival of 130,000 elephants – one of Africa’s last great wildernesses.
The company ReconAfrica is going ahead with its search despite the threats. At the current time, there are roughly 450,000 elephants in Africa, but that is down from millions just a few short decades ago.
Continue reading “Oil fields of Botswana and Namibia threaten 130,000 elephants”In a judgement handed down in 2017, a court ruled that the Indonesian government must unveil their maps showing what land use has been decided where.
The government is still fighting.
It is odd that they are still fighting. In recent years there have been multiple problems where plantations have seemingly been given permission in areas that are also set aside for nature.
Continue reading “Indonesian government is still fighting to hide bad behaviour”Yesterday I was writing about a series of dams that have collapsed in Brazil. We need to remember that there are two imminent threats that we are facing in the natural world.
We need to cut carbon emissions dramatically, we know as the human race that if we do not cut emissions dramatically and very fast, our planet will go through horrific change from the loss of the ice caps (and the resulting sea level rise) to the desertificion of large parts of the planet – some of this previously being rainforest.
If we cannot halt the loss of areas such as rainforests, the problem becomes even larger as we destroy one of our largest carbon sinks.
In the west, we have a responsibility to not only cut our own emissions to net zero in the space of a few decades, we must also help developing countries grow their own economies and increase the standard of living for their citizens without destroying what remains of the ecosystems that still exist.
After the Paris climate accord, there are large numbers of climate activists who are becoming increasingly frustrated.
The rich countries promised dramatic cuts to their emissions. These cuts will change the way the world works. However, as they are so far from business as normal, governments need to take a leading role in incentivising and requiring cuts (carrot and the stick).
In the UK, we did some good things, but they did not last. One example, is the green housing grant. This was ostensibly a program designed to get various trades people back to work by retrofitting buildings all over the country. The retrofit should in turn cut the carbon emissions of the house that they are used for, and therefore can help towards meeting our Paris climate accord. However, the program was closed a year earlier than was discussed, with the government claiming that it had succeeded in what it was there to do – namely boost the economy.
Continue reading “Are the rich countries living up to their promises?”A group of investment funds, which collectively manage $41 trillion have urged the governments of the world to truly act on global warming and to bolster their net zero targets.
The group consists of 457 investors, who currently manage almost a third of the worlds assets.. They called on governments to “significantly strengthen” plans for emission reduction – importantly bringing in net zero targets by 2050 or sooner.
Continue reading “Collection of investment funds urge governments to end support for fossil fuels – but are they? What could their actions do?”Elon Musk has just announced that Tesla will no longer allow buyers to pay in bitcoin. Why is this relevant to a wildlife and environment blog?
Tesla is there to transition the world to sustainable transport, as a goal. of the roughly 4.1 trillion kwh of electricity used in the USA last year roughly 500 went on bitcoin (roughly 1 in 8) or 13%.
It might be a shock to many, but Jaguars were once native to the USA. What’s more despite humans biggest efforts, the eradication was not completely successful. The third largest big cat, after Tiger and Lion, was persecuted along with many other native fauna after Europeans started to settle in the USA.
After the Chernobyl nuclear accident an exclusion zone 2660 square kilometres (just over 1000 square miles) hod to be abandoned.
Now while the area is horrifically damaged by the the nuclear waste, the absence of humans has been such a boon that wildlife populations in the exclusion zone are doing phenomenally well.
The area hosts several dozen wolves, and bears returned for the first time in 2014 – having been absent from the area for more than a century.
Indeed what is fascinating about the area is the clear evidence that the damage caused by nuclear radiation is nowhere near as damaging as the human population.
Whether this can change and we can allow small pockets of wilderness in the heart of Europe is a question that most would answer no. However given how many benefits will genesis like this give to the area around them, perhaps we should be aiming to create more.
In many countries around the world, some conservation success can lead to problems. In Africa halting elephant poaching can lead to rocketing populations, which in turn can lead to not enough space and human elephant conflict.
In some places countries have sold the animals that they no longer say they have the space for.
The problem is that many countries are now doing this merely for the money. Namibia has decided to sell 170 elephants. The problem is is that namibia’s resident elephant population is very small, perhaps 5000 to 7000. More than 80% of the elephants in Namibia are migratory, in that they roam in and out of the country. In terms of the resident population, the 170 elephants represents at least 3% of the permanent population.
While selling animals can be a good way of raising money for conservation, reduction of this size is not wise particularly when elephants are not in a good place globally anyway.
A significant percentage of UK household waste is waste food.
Now it is true that better planning, better reuse can greatly reduce this. However only food that is uncooked can be put in a compost heap. The UK produces about 5 million tonnes of food waste year. If this was collected it could reduce emissions dramatically, as well as potentially creating significant biogas for power generation.
Continue reading “In the UK the government has mandated waste food collection by 2023 – but no funding”