Uncategorized – Page 13 – See Animals Wild

June 22, 2021July 1, 2022

Students have protested at the Science museum in London over shell funding a climate crisis exhibition

It does seem to be rather self-serving, if you are putting together a exhibition on the threat that the climate crisis is producing, and you allow one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world to fund it.

Much of the exhibition talks about carbon capture and storage (something that has not been demonstrated at significant scale, and yet would have to be catching billions of tonnes of carbon per year if it is to have a chance of helping) as well as nature based solutions.

The police cleared the building at the end of the day, ending what had been intended to be an overnight occupation.

It certainly seems that shell is trying to whitewash their company (should that be greenwash) and this should not be allowed. Rather, shell should be spending thousands of times more money on actually solving the climate crisis. Furthermore, ideas like carbon capture should not be allowed to be touted, until it has been demonstrated at scale. Finally, there is another problem. As far as the climate crisis is concerned, any captured carbon should be locked away for millions of years, yet at the moment the majority is either used to help with oil and gas extraction, or is turned into synthetic fuels – neither of these help in any way with forestalling the continued move towards run-away climate change.

SHELL MUST DO BETTER.

June 5, 2021July 1, 2022

Holiday absence

Hello!

I have been away with my family, and for the time being this is a one man show. I am hoping that as restrictions on travel list, it might become a bigger enterprise – with your support. We have some wildlife destinations already listed but hope to greatly expand this.

Our holiday was in Devon in the south west of the UK, close to the river otter.

This river is famous in the UK as back in 2008 a family of beavers appeared. They became quite a popular attraction.

May 10, 2021July 1, 2022

Killer whale sighting off Cornwall

John Coe (an old and very well known killer whale) and Aquarius, have been sighted off the coast of Cornwall.

A rare sighting in the south of the UK, this British pod of Orca is heavily endangered. With no calves sighted since 1990 the sightings are only likely to get rarer still.

One of the main causes, is human pollution, due to chemicals such as PCB that wash into the seas of the UK. These can lead to poor health and infertility in the animals in our waters.

This video clip above comes from ITV news, and is hosted on youtube

April 28, 2021August 29, 2022

In the UK the government has mandated waste food collection by 2023 – but no funding

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.

March 9, 2021July 1, 2022

Further threat for Nairobi national park

The first national park to be formed in Kenya would appear to be under threat. Consisting of only 45 square miles, it is unique around the world as the wilderness comes deep into the city, allowing you to view many wild species with skyscrapers as a backdrop.

There are few places in the world where you can see wild lions against a city backdrop

Wildlife populations have crashed in the last 70 or so years. In the past huge migrations would bring 30,000 wildebeest to visit each year, and animals such as zebra have had population falls of approaching 50% in just 9 years.

February 3, 2021July 1, 2022

Help me spread the word

The aim of this blog has always been two-fold. The first is to raise the profile of important goings-on in the natural world conservation, and highlight exciting and alarming news.

The second, perhaps more significant aim, is to simplify wild travel and to increase the number of people doing it. I realize at the moment for the majority of people travel is the last thing on their mind. However, the huge reduction of tourism numbers is hitting protected areas around the world.

I have added social media buttons to the posts. Please do consider sharing articles of interest. In the last few days we have added the ability for people to request to work with the website, and in the long-term this is what is going to be necessary if our goals are going to be met. If you find articles that interest you, do share them.

Likewise, as the epidemic comes under control and people can travel, please do highlight our site to businesses working with wildlife. We are particularly keen to grow our “in the shadow of mankind” listings. These are wildlife that lives alongside humans, not in a reserve away from us. Animals living in this sort of situation, cover almost all species, but as you can imaging these are the most at risk. If the site can increase visitors to these places, perhaps they will remain wild?

Please help spread the word, help the site grow to try to meet the huge task we have set ourselves, as we cannot do this on our own. Also to note, we have recently added a translation plugin- I hope that this is of use. Unfortunately, the translated versions will not get picked up by google, word of mouth is likely to be the best way around this.

February 3, 2021July 1, 2022

5 viable northern white rhino embryos have been created

The Northern white rhino, an animal that existed in the DRC and parts of the world like that, still had numbers of about 2000 in the 1980s. Unfortunately there are now only two.

The BBC seven worlds one planet series, included a short clip about the last 2 northern white rhinos, With thousands living wild, just 35 years ago, can we save these animals?

Humans are belatedly trying to do something about this, and have managed to create 5 seemingly viable northern white rhino embryos.

These can then be put in the surrogate Southern white rhino mothers, giving the ability to increase the population from the current 2, to a potential 7.

February 1, 2021January 28, 2021

CO2 has only been pushed 400 parts per million by humnas, so why should we care

Climate denialists (which is a more accurate word than climate skeptics) would continue to claim well there’s only 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide, that can’t be caused for the global warming. However looking at historical data, in 1750 around the time that the industrial revolution in the UK got going and we started burning significant amounts of coal, the carbon dioxide concentrations at that points were around about 280.

In other words carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and now roughly 50% higher than they work historically.

January 31, 2021January 28, 2021

Some of the plans Biden has, for positive Carbon emission changes

Biden is making it a rule that all government vehicles should be electric from now on. Given that across the country the government owns hundreds of thousands of cars and other vehicles, and this change alone will reduce global emissions by several tonnes per vehicle each year. More to the point, this requirement would guarantee significant income for electric vehicle made that could meet requirements. How many of these, would be supplied by Tesla would be interesting, however it still something that would encourage other manufacturers to work harder on filling this space.

January 30, 2021January 28, 2021

Pittsburg still fully supports the Paris climate accord, as do the majority of Americans so who does Ted Cruz support?

Ted Cruz foolishly highlighted Donald Trump’s comment about how he was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh not Paris. This is obviously a foolish comment, as the Paris climate accord is not in place to protect Paris, but the whole world. Ted Cruz also attack Pete Buttegig on cancellation of keystone pipeline, suggesting this decision is somehow anti-democratic despite more than 80 million people voting for the Democrat climate policy. Just to note: Ted Cruz’s argument is foolish as there are far more jobs in clean energy than fossil fuels in America, even more so around the world.