Wildlife and conservation new, wild travel information and links for booking
For those who have been reading this blog for years, you will remember that I have written repeatedly about Jair Bolsonaro.
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.
Continue reading “Workers strike as Indonesia increases fee to visit Komodo dragons is increase by more than 18 times to £205”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.
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.
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.
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.
A quick search tells you that the developed world is responsible for roughly 79% of all historical emissions. What is worse, is that this represents under 20% of the world population.
This means that per person emissions are as much as 16 times more the result of each person living in the developed world than the developing world.
Last year was a case in point. Last year, costs for extreme weather events like droughts floods and wildfires cost an estimated $329 billion, which is approximately twice the total money given by donor nations – in other words, when you take into account the financial damage that our behaviour is causing, the developing world is actually donating hundreds of billions to the rich developed world.
We in the west have had politicians claim for decades, that stopping climate change would cost to much. If we had to pay the full amount, clearly the numbers would be quite different.
Current worldwide pledges on carbon dioxide reduction are no where near enough and would lead to catastrophe.
Last year commonsense was found. It was recognized that global warming of 2 degrees will lead to a horrific situation, and that we need to be aiming for 1.5 maximum degree warming. This has been agreed, but at cop26 the pledges gathered were just enough to limit warming to a maximum of 2 degrees.
Unfortunately, actions taken (those pledges that are actually changing behaviour) fall far behind promises, leaving us on target for 2.7 degrees of warming – the upper band suggests 3.6 degrees of warming is still possible.
Developed countries around the world are not acting fast enough. They are also failing to supply funds promised to help the developing world cut their emissions.
Importantly delay will increase the cost. If we fail to act now, actions in the future could be 10-100 times more expensive
NOT A LEGACY I WISH TO LEAVE FOR MY CHILDREN
As if we need any examples of the contradictory actions of rich governments, the UK government is still giving permission for new had fields to be created.
It is known that if we are to keep warning to 1.5 degrees or less, more than 50% of fossil fuels must remain in the ground. As such this move is foolish.
The government could do as much for consumer bills by bringing back the green housing grants-and funding it properly. Many people in the country can afford to do the work themselves but many more don’t stand a chance.
For anyone who has thought about it, the way that limiting temperature rise has been discussed has been ridiculous. Up till now, hitting 1.9 degrees average warming would be a success, allowing 2.0 would be complete failure.
We need instead to recognize that for any reduction in average global temperatures that we are able to achieve, there is a significant reward.
The work is not done, until the human race is no longer adding pollution to the atmosphere.
We need as a human race, to be replanting vast areas of the planet. We need to be cutting our emissions as fast as possible, and we need to be looking for ways to capture and lock away as much carbon as we can.
Regularly the claim is made that, we may be adding carbon to the atmosphere but we are not changing the number by to great a degree. Well that excuse is now also gone – we have increased carbon emissions by 50%. This means that the planet is entering a condition that it has not been in for millions of years – far before humans arrived.
Why does this matter? There was life back at this time, wasn’t there? Well of course there was. However, last time the carbon dioxide concentration levels were this high, average temperatures were 2-3 degrees higher and sea levels were 15-25m above where they are now. Nowadays 634 million people live 10m above the sea level or less, approximately 10% of the human population – other studies put this number as high as 1 billion. The paper Nature communications 267 million people live on land 2m above sea level or less. Nearly 2 billion live at 100m height or less.
It is reasonable to suppose that perhaps 1 billion would be heavily effected by sea levels rising 25m- needing to move to other countries rapidly. Furthermore places like the UK would get a lot smaller and become more of an archipelago.
Last year there were less than 300 million migrants worldwide, and yet there is a great deal of worry about this. What would it be like if 1 billion people had to emigrate over a relatively short period of time – and this would be permanent – there would be no chance of these people every returning home.
This fails to take account of the fact that there would likely also be a similar number of people who would have to move from parts of the planet which are too hot to support human life any more.
Cutting carbon emissions very fast is now essential, but it is not enough. We also need to be removing billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.
By 2030 all cars sold will need to be electric or some other form of fuel. Combustion engines will be banned, this is good news. However, if the national grid continues to burn fossil fuels, the cars will still pollute, even if their efficiency, and therefore the amount of emissions that they create will have fallen.
This will mean that all power in the UK will come from wind, solar, hydro and nuclear.
One of the big advantages, is that this will shield us from price rises of gas impacting electricity prices. Unfortunately, at this time, many houses will still be heated by gas. This can be replaced over time.
At the moment gas power plants are still very important for keeping the lights on in the uk, but this will disappear over the next 15 years.
While there are still challenges, what we need as a country is to be moving in the right direction as fast as possible. Renewables plus nuclear is already above 50% – renewables supplied 43% with nuclear adding another 16%.
By removing carbon emissions from our electricity generation and travel, each family in the UK will cut their emissions by about 17%. No where near finished, but a very good start.