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I wrote a while ago about a groups attempt to to put in place a number of programmes in order to avoid future outbreaks of illnesses such as covid-19.

Illnesses such as covid-19 tend to emerge from rainforests and other similar ecosystems. As such their suggestion was to globally spend $20-30 billion dollars a year on 3 activities. 

• Halt deforestation (and replant large recently deforested areas)
• Halt the wildlife trade, particularly bush meat, the main avenue into human population
• Closely watch for emergence of new viruses

As such it is fascinating to see warnings from more scientists along the same lines. A UN summit next month will be told that there is now a clear link between habitat destruction and emergence of new diseases and viruses.

Almost a third of illnesses in the human population of emerge from these places,and it is calculated that perhaps as many as 6 epidemics could hit the world a year if forest destruction continues at the rate it is currently going.

This new report is linked back to the one I talked about above. What is encouraging about this link is that as it is being discussed in the UN it will draw countries attention to it. Furthermore finding $20 to 30 billion from all the countries in the world far is less. It could also be sold to which consumers as a means to halt rainforest destruction and save wildlife species.

Indeed if so right this could potentially be paid for by the the top 50 also wealthiest countries in the world without them really noticing the cost (particularly if pushed now: with these countries reeling from the extraordinary cost of fighting covid-19, 1 billion a year could seem like chicken feed in comparison).

I have written in the past about a fascinating type of bacteria that was found on a Chinese rubbish stump number of years ago.

Plastics are a fantastic material because they breakdown very little, therefore giving strong materials for not much money. The problem is that many of the uses that these plastics have been put to, are single use. Once that use has occurred you can do nothing but out the plastic in the ground, and wait perhaps 100 millennia for it to be broken down.

As such this Chinese bacteria was something that everyone was very excited about. If the bottles can be broken down, perhaps the resulting material can be reused easily and cheaply.

It does appear that this is the case. With the adjustments made this happens on a timescale that is financially acceptable.

One of the problems that his been a continual issue with recycling, is the need to have very pure resources: if someone fails to split up rubbish properly, an entire batch of rubbish maybe unrecyclable.

But this problem maybe it’s an end with this method as it works effectively amongst mixed sources of rubbish.

We’re getting closer to to being able to recycle plastic fully which should save huge amounts of oil from ever being needed. While this process is not yet ready for mainstream, it should be in the next few years so keep an eye out for progress in this field.

I will hopefully right on this again as we move forwards, but I hope that this discovery is not leveraged in to billion to dollars, it will stop this discovery must not spread slowly- it must appear almost around the world in one go, and importantly this must not miss out Africa. if this Discovery has the magnitude that is expected it must be allowed to have the impact that is necessary in the space of a decade not a lifetime.

The UK government has recently outlined plans to put in place laws that are supposed to eradicate illegal deforestation all products bought in the UK.

Obviously in a perfect world this would be a fantastic move. However, surprise surprise we do not live in that world.

The deforestation in Brazil and the deforestation in Indonesia is not illegal, are from it it has the support of it’s countries government. In other words, this legislation allows each country around the world to decide how much deforestation they wish to allow. 

What I am saying, is the British government does not wish to combat deforestation, merely deforestation that the government has not approved. Under these rules, we may move where we buy our wood from, but we will continue to support deforestation around the world. By this policy, no deforestation would ever be illegal if the government in each case allowed it. This means that after a coup, a country could be legally deforested!

What a waste of time.

Fires in the pantanal Wetlands are running a 200% of the rate of those same fires in 2019. With almost every action that Jair Bolsonaro takes, something that could be predicted to make the problem worse, the world seems to not be making itself heard.

It is a well-known fact what causes forest fires, just as it is well known how how ill this is such as coronavirus spread through the population. It therefore should be of no surprised, that Brazil is doing so poorly. 

Tribesmen who need to be evacuated from the fires are taken to the nearest city. There is a great deal of fear and ngo and countries around the world, that many of these tribal members will therefore fall ill from coronavirus because of their increase contact with people from outside.

This could lead to a horrific case for the tribes, where is their members return a substantial number of their members died as they contract this horrific virus.

Jair Bolsonaro has not exactly shown a good pattern of looking after all his citizens thus far, the majority of his actions has greatly improved life for the ultra rich and the middle class. Life has become far harder for the poor, and tribesmen have been hit hardest to all.

His protection of the natural environment of Brazil has been disastrous. There is much talk of the Brazilian rainforest collapsing in the near future.

In a comparison of the number of cases in each country, the three countries doing the worst host more than half of the world’s coronavirus cases. First is the USA with 7.7 million cases second is India with 6.8 and then third (though rapidly catching up) is Brazil on 4.9 million.

Given the population of the USA is about 300 million, and the population of Brazil is about 200 million they’re not doing very well. India may well be second in cases, but with 1.3 billion people living there this isn’t surprising. Now of course we should bear in mind, despite how hard coronavirus hit China it only lists having 85000 coronavirus cases (placing it 47 the in the list of countries coronavirus count) which may well be a dramatic under count-statistics coming out of China are notoriously unreliable.

However what I’m trying to say is that if the USA and Brazil had populations on a par with India, they would have a case count of over 30 million cases and 32.5 million cases respectively.

Why does this matter? Because the leaders of these two countries have regular express doubts in accepted science.They have particularly attacked the science of global warming, and attacked any attempt too slow it’s effect.

Other countries around the world should take heed: electing leaders who ignore the real state of the world is not good for your country. One can only hope that enough of the damage is clear in the homeland of these leaders, so when they come up for re-election they fail in their bid. We cannot waste another 4 years, before the whole world starts to take global warming seriously. In a similar way having the most wealthy country in the world run by someone who ignores the science of the extinctions were facing affects the seriousness with which the USA deals with these things: the majority of game hunting is done by wealthy Americans, with a decent number of people from Europe and Asia mixed in. Many of the places which have game hunting do not have the populations to support it, obviously this must change otherwise the animals in question will go extinct.

Frankly, Coronavirus has just been another delay and we really can’t afford anymore. Scientists have been telling us for years that the longer we take to make adjustments to fight global warming the more severe the adjustments will have to be.

The British government has stated that they wish to end illegal deforestation. This this is a good aim, to be sure, however it obviously isn’t anywhere near enough.

The deforestation that has gone on in Indonesia over the last few decades has been totally legal, someone has said that land can be turned into palm plantations, even if someone else has said that land is supposed to be in a national park.

Frankly the government is on the wrong side of this argument. The people understand the deforestation must stop, indeed the majority of British people have understood this for years, and in most countries where deforestation is continuing there is more than enough deforested land to be used for the purposes they want it.

Other than McDonald’s these 21 signatories also include including Unilever, Tesco, Lidl, Nando’s, Nestle, the convenience food maker Greencore and the chicken producer Pilgrim’s Pride.

Now with some of these companies such as Unilever have been accuse of creating the need for deforestation.

Regardless of what the British government does they must be held to this signature demand. 

The government should be leading, though at the moment they seem to have given up their leadership role on the climate change fight and the fight to halt the loss of wild species and wild areas.

Furthermore the government’s plans on these rules, would only apply to big companies: medium and small companies would be allowed to carry on.

This simply isn’t good enough,quite apart from anything this would allow the big company is to simply employ locals to do the dirty work for them.

The government suggested that by dealing with illegal deforestation first they can reduce the rate of deforestation dramatically, and indeed by replanting forests that have been degraded forest cover can grow. While this is true it isn’t enough. Often legal deforestation does not follow a sensible pattern.

One example of this is Herakle farms, a British owned company that raised 100 square miles of rain-forest in the last intact area of the Congo. They had all the permits, but this area simply shouldn’t have been used.

A recent survey by WWF suggested that 67% or 2 in 3 people wanted the government to do more to combat deforestation, both so-called legal and illegal.

Some of this group though does not meet the the requirements of some of the others.for instance McDonald’s has said that they will eliminate deforestation from their food chain by 2030 however that is way too late.

I found it odd that the article ended buy palm all alliance saying that we needed to be careful and allow the small scale deforestation by people to grow foods- however it has been palm oil companies that have got locals to set up farms for that in many regions and this small-scale work has started the deforestation,the palm oil company has then moved in and deforested more.

Introduction

Before I get into this article I want to make a few points clear. Firstly I recognise I’m not an American, that is why I’m writing an article about this rather than voting. Secondly the concept that non Americans don’t have a right to have a view is insane, not least because even if the UK will not be one of the hardest hit by climate change, I do not want the UK to become a chain of islands, something that is not inconceivable if run away climate change does occur (as this is likely to lead to significant sea level rises). Indeed, to the contrary a majority of Americans do believe in science and indeed in global warming – Trump is in the minority and Americans must recognise the severity of this issue and vote him out on the basis of his denial or scientific facts on this. Having said that, on with the article.

This article is not, I repeat not, about bashing Donald Trump. I do not think he should be president, but I do not live in America and if Americans want to choose someone who appears from the outside to be the most unsuitable man in history for the job so be it.

Note: this article is far longer than normal. I have worked through a number of issues facing the USA and world at the moment. I also wish to make clear, I am happy for this article to be reposted elsewhere or linked if people would like. I know this blog has a few American readers. If you repost, please repost in full, credit me and include a link back to this blog.

The Badger cull expansion is a stupid move, and shows that the UK government doesnt use the best science and experts to decide its actions.

For many people who go on safari to Africa the one animal that they wish to see is leopard. This is unfortunate, as out the big five it is the hardest to see. There are of course many parts of Africa where black rhino are very rare, and indeed white rhino are only founded significant numbers in South Africa.

However there are many days we went on a game drive in the Kruger national park, and saw lion rhino buffalo and elephant with ease. A day with a leopard sighting with something special. Nocturnal, solitary and highly secretive shepherds are not generally animals you see lazing about (unless driving along a river bank you find one stretched out along a branch above your heads).

In India the leopard similarly difficult animal to spot.

A black leopard often tops the list of impossible animals to spot. Black leopards or as they are often called black panthers, are caused by a recessive gene in the parents. As such, in general people estimated that roughly 1-in 1000 leopards are born black.

Indeed when a black leopard was sighted last in Africa a photographer specifically flew out from the UK to photograph it.

As such the below photograph is something very special. Female leopard with its black partner, that have been paired for perhaps 7 years. What is fantastic about this picture though is that it shows then both look in the same way behind one another like the black leopard is a shadow of the common leopard. The photograph of spent 6 days waiting for the perfect picture (to look at the original article search mymodernmet website: picture by Mithun h)

Apex predators are extremely important for ecosystem survival, as they control the numbers of smaller species. Unfortunately these species are doing poorly as a whole. Below I have concentrated on on the biggest cats as they have a huge impact on the ecosystem that they live in. Unfortunately all are declining rapidly.

Lions: as the 20th century began it’s thought lion still numbered around 200,000 (numbers and now 20,000 if that, with that number having dropped by about 10,000 in the last 20-years), 

Tigers: at the turn of the 20th century it was thought there were around 100000 tigers (current estimate is between 3200 and 3900 animals, a minimum of a 96% reduction in numbers, with three now extinct including the Caspian Balinese and Javan- while recent genetic analysis suggests the Caspian tiger was merely the Western portion of the Siberian tigers range, there is no habitat to put it back into) beyond these three extinct tiger subspecies, South China tiger has not been seen in the wild for several decades and is also thought extinct and a Sumatran tiger is also critically threatened by the loss of its habitat. 

Leopards: being secretive, leopards are one of the hardest animals to quantify accurately. The encyclopaedia Britannica what’s the population of leopards in Africa at 700000, however this is probably a vast overestimate did other conservation organisations consider this an absurd estimation. One thing that has been noted, is that the habitat for the leopard has fallen by 75% since 1900. Current estimates for leopards living wild in South Africa ranged from 5000 to 10000,which suggests that the continent population cannot be above 200,000,having looked at the populations of leopards in various countries in Africa it is unlikely that any more than this.

Jaguars: appear to have done the best the best, with their population of 60,000 animals thought to be around 2/3 of what it was in 1900. However is President jair bolsonaro of Brazil has his way this could change rapidly, as the Amazon rainforest is the refuge for the majority of this remaining population. Encouragingly in places where are conservation work is done the jaguar population is still capable of growing, not all hope is lost provided we stop destroying their habitats.

Snow leopards: the fifth big cat, it is the undisputed king of the Himalayas. 2016 a thorough assessment suggested that there was between 4000 and 8000 snow leopards left in the world. WWF has a current estimate of around 4000-6500 worldwide. Being secretive it is very hard to get a precise figure.

Unfortunately this is an even bigger problem looking at historical populations. It’s unclear what the historical number of snow leopards were, however it seems reasonable to suppose that they’re largely unchanged. It is true that we have had all sorts of impact on the environment in these mountains, however given how little time we spend high in the Himalayas it is clear that at the very least the reclining snow leopard numbers is vastly smaller than that of the other big cats (though this is not because humans have behaved better, merely that it is too hard for us to get there regularly, and therefore we can’t pressurise their population the same way we have the other biggest cats.