Having only green-lit beaver reintroduction in the UK in the last decade, there are large numbers of places that they will return to over the next few years.
Plans are afoot to reintroduce beavers into London
Pandas wild status has been upgraded to vulnerable from endangered
There are now roughly 1800 wild pandas and so their status has been moved to vulnerable!
The Tapanuli Orangutan is still threatened with extinction, despite only recently being discovered
The Tapanuli Orangutan lives on Sumatra but are thought to be more closely related to Bornean Orangutans. Numbering around 800 members, they had a far wider ranging habitat until recently. They are now restricted to about 1000 square km – about 2.5% of their former range.
What is harder, is that these Orangutans are not naturally mountainous animals, but have been driven there by the hunting that has so decimated their numbers.
Continue reading “The Tapanuli Orangutan is still threatened with extinction, despite only recently being discovered”A tiny reserve in Nigeria has been shown to be full of wildlife
Afi mountain wildlife Sanctuary is tiny, covering only 38.6 square miles, yet analysis has shown that this reserve has a whole host of wildlife.
Ikea the Swedish flat pack giant has a green reputation but this may be less right than it should be
A large portion of Sweden is covered in forest. While native trees are grown, these vast plantations are actually cut down regularly. Given it may take a few decades for trees to grow to maturity, much of the country is left pretty wild.
While the Swedish people are quite keen hunters, there are significant numbers of bears, and even a small but growing population of wolves.
This is why it is so worrying to find that some of the wood in their products actually came from protected forests in Russia.
It was as much a surprise to Ikea as to us, and they have cut off deals with the company at fault.
This just highlights the incredible difficulty in making sure your products are completely clean. Never-the-less a similar mistake in the near future might have a bigger impact on their reputation, they must increase the level of their due diligence.
Malaysian royal family are a threat to wildlife habitat
A company owned by the Pahang states royal family plans to mine iron ore from a forest reserve that currently hosts a variety of important mega fauna, including tigers elephants sun bears and leopard.
Brazil knows what its doing is wrong, so it is trying to silence those pointing it out
Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters are getting frustrated. The whole world can see that the direction the country is taking is extremely dangerous. Rather than changing tack they have decided to silence the detractors.
Whether environmental researchers, academics or officials, it seems that no one is safe. Increasing numbers of these professions are being forced to seek safety abroad to avoid threats to their lives.
This is not the behaviour of a democracy leader, and it wont work
Grizzly bears are rebounding in the USA, how can this success story continue?
Back in 1975, the American Grizzly bear was declared endangered. With only minor differences, the American Grizzly bear is the same species as the European bear, that lives from Western Spain, through Europe to the Kamchatka bear of far Eastern Russia.
In 1975 the USA lower 48 states grizzly bear population numbered somewhere between 136 animals and 312, so it was essential that it was protected. Nowerdays the same 48 states have a population of around 1500, but given that this number would have been as high as 50,000 when people started migrating to the USA in large number, this recovery is only just getting going.
Could Indian Lions help return the Barbary Lion? Is it even a separate species?
In some ways, recent discoveries should have been made long ago. Asiatic lions historic distribution stretched across Asia, north Africa, and Southern Europe.
Given that the Barbary Lions historic range covered the central part of this huge area, it seems reasonable that the Barbary lion and the Asiatic lion should be closely related. Yet it was only in the last few years that genetic evidence has been shown that this is indeed the case.
Global warming is happening, and even with the cuts promised, we are likely to see significant sea level rises: what is this likely to cost
It is an unfortunate fact, all over the world, that people have chosen to live near the sea. There are many reasons for this, but the basic fact is that this is often the most productive land.
The problem now, though, is that all these peoples lives are liable to change. This is because small rises in sea levels could make them homeless. As much as 1 billion people live at low enough elevation to make this a threat.
Countries like Bangladesh are very flat, and it is estimated that as many as 20 million people within Bangladesh would become homeless by 2050 under current trends (this assumes that we meet our carbon cut targets. There would be many others that would be lost.
Forgetting the hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, there are famous buildings and places which should underline this issue in the west as well.
Buckingham palace would be under water up to the first floor if we fail to act. A temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C would merely bring the water level to the front door. Many other famous buildings such as the pentagon, the tower of London and Tokyo tower in Japan would all be lost.
This is all a long winded way of stating, that even with the dramatic cuts the world is hoping to make over the next few decades, many people on earth are still likely to loose their lives have their lives changed dramatically, in most cases for the worse.
