Category: Uncategorized

Between the sudden loss of virtually all tourists, and the removal of game rangers and wildlife guides, there has been an alarming spike in the amount of poaching that has been going on in Mozambique (among other destinations). One of the problems with covid-19 is it has essentially ended much of the formal economy. For a variety of reasons one of the easiest things to turn to to when the formal economy collapses is poaching for sale to people in your local vicinity.

As with the horrific poaching of elephants in the Selous in the last decade, it also hit the Niassa reserve across the border in Mozambique. In total Mozambique lost around 48% of its wild elephants. Thankfully elephant poaching in Mozambique was largely booked to an end by mid 2019.  One of the issues with poaching, is that the poachers of generally well armed, and therefore their presents makes tourism dangerous. This reduces the money coming from the wild area and therefore increases the pressure on locals to use the area for hunting instead.

Across Africa and elsewhere that has been an increase in the amount of poaching rhinos, though for various reasons this is being kept relatively low. One is that a lockdown has closed down the routes that these horns would have been taken on, so they cannot be got out of the country or profited from. A second reason is that with the last shutdown of the the formal economy many of the poaching gangs have resorted to running alcohol and tobacco as these markets have been shut down during the covid-19 lockdown.

Elephant poaching that doesn’t generally take place in the same past has fared far worse,they have been far more elephants killed recently than in normal times.Having said that with elephants the biggest concern is to lose ground won recently-we do not want to go back to the poaching rates between 2010 and 2014. the ivory markets the illegal are doing fantastic business in China and Vietnam and they are using the reduction in the number of rangers to increase their supply of raw ivory.list of course is bad for the countries that were hosting the elephants, as they have to try to stop the poaching from killing off the reason tourists come to their country

Pangolin poaching as with elephant and rhino has been affected by the pandemic, however it is thought to be far less positive. Pangolins are small, and therefore it is perfectly possible  to stockpile hundreds of tons of pangolin scales,to be shipped to Asia when the lockdown lifts. As with many other poaching problems, the best long-term solution is the education in the markets these goods are destined for. There has been much success in places like China where are far fewer people want rhino horn then they did in the past.a similar effort must be made on penguins before any of the 8 species are wiped out permanently.

In Colombia a careful study of jaguars being hunted by humans has seen a dramatic increase this year. Usually Columbia loses 4 or 5 animals in a full year but by July they had already lost 7 this year. It is likely that jaguar hunting has increased across it’s range even if we do not have data from any other places it lives.Bolivia is usually a hub for jaguar parts to be sold, however we have no idea what is going on because the people monitoring the situation have had to withdraw during the outbreak.

Giraffe poaching has had its biggest incident in Uganda for quite some time with 7 killed in one national park.

Encouragingly, national park workers within the Mozambique borders have recognised the need for looking after the people who surround their reserves and have done wonderful work in supporting the community during the covid-19 outbreak.

Let us hope that this enlightened attitude in Mozambique is copied around the world.

It is essential that as the situation recovers tourists return to Mozambique and other wild places, if they are to remain wild into the future.

With one of the worst outbreaks in the world rapidly catching up with the state of the American outbreak in Brazil is quite scary. President jair bolsonaro has continually mocked coronavirus as the little flu and despite being ordered by various parts of the Brazilian authorities to wear a mask has continually refused to do so and downplayed the need of those in the public.

I’m going away with my family for the next two weeks. There are many articles scheduled over that period, however the holiday is largely wildlife orientated I felt it was saying what I’m doing.

Generally if you wish to go on a wildlife holiday people travel abroad, and while there is a great deal of fascinating wildlife all over the world, there is also a surprisingly large amount on our doorstep.

We are heading to three wild parts of the country. 

Firstly we are heading to the forest of Dean, I’ve talked about this in past and hope in the near future to put together something that will help other people go and experience the boring forest of Dean for themselves. I hope that we manage to see some.

Then we are hot heading to Cardigan bay where we will hopefully watch the dolphins

Finally we are heading down to Devon for a weekend to visit the River otter and see some of the signs of beavers-and perhaps if we’re lucky the beavers themselves as well.

There are many articles that I have written that haven’t been published, so I will put those up.if anything big happens I will try to put up a posting while I’m away,but otherwise this is why I’m not commenting on what is happening at the time.

Tim welby

One-hundred million years ago the earth was very different. The landmasses were in very different places. Largely covered by dense sweaty rain forests and vast deserts.

Despite Iceland actually having less ice by far than Greenland (a strange marketing ploy to get people to settle there centuries ago), it is still very much an arctic nation and and therefore it does occasionally get visits from polar bears.

While there are still some people arguing that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas that causes warming, for all those not in denial this has been known for at least several decades.

Methane is a far more powerful warming gas, roughly 30 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Methane is a gas that is caused by a number of different factors. It is potentially one of the biggest impacts that cattle have on the environment as they release a great deal of methane during their digestive processes.

However a bigger cause of methane buildup is its release from things that are breaking down, be they animal bodies or simply dead plant material.

There are many wild places of great note around the world. While a large number of these are hugely remote, and therefore protected by the difficulty of reaching them, some were originally protected when remote, but are now increasingly enclosed by settlements.

Raccoon dogs, a species from Asia, have been found living wild in the UK in recent times.

Despite being a dangerous animal, likely to attack humans, up until early last year they were bred in the UK as pets. Thankfully now only existing animals can be sold, they cannot be bred.

They are capable of doing significant damage to the British countryside and any sighting should be reported.

A met office map showed a swarm of ants on its weather predictions because the size of it was so large it looks like cloud. Measuring around 50 miles across over Kent and Sussex, it’s not surprising it was mistaken for a weather event.

It’s not the first time that something like this has happened, but it is still amusing to see insects appearing on weather maps.

While coronavirus is unlikely to decimate wildlife populations, a lack of rangers and guards stopping the killing of recovering species could undo 50 years of work.

Without guards and rangers, a couple of months in the Kruger uncontested by a rhino poaching gang, could see the world losing thousands on rhino.