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Emperor penguin colonies are situated in some of the hardest places on earth to reach, so as you can imagine it is hard to send researchers to study them in person. However given the vast size of the colonies, and the staining of the ice by their droppings, this research can increasingly be done from space.

the new emperor penguin colonies discovered this way boost their numbers but at least 20%. 

The new discoveries were made with an upgraded camera that allowed better resolution showing the smaller companies that had been previously missed. There are now 61 known emperor penguin colonies around Antarctica. While this is a lovely big increase from past known numbers, the colonies that are now known about are spread relatively evenly around the coast, which means that while there may be a few small colonies left to be discovered it is unlikely that there will be any big ones left as there isn’t the space.

Pine martens are arboreal Hunters, who are very at home in the forests of the UK (and europe). Once rather common they have been hit by a double whammy of the loss of their native woodland and forests,and gamekeepers persecuting them due to their habit of taking game birds.

However one of the advantages of pine martens is that being skillful hunters in the trees, grey squirrels cannot survive in their presence. Red squirrels on the other hand and are smaller and lighter and far more agile allowing them to live in the vicinity of pine martens. Indeed where it not for the persecution of these animals it is highly unlikely that grey squirrels would have ever become established in the UK, and even now the pine Marten is by far and away the simplest way of eradicating grey squirrels, and saving our native reds. Apart from grey squirrels and red squirrels being capable of living in the same place, grey squirrels do significant damage to forest that they live in, and really should be removed. The hope is that this population will breed and spread, and we’ll start the gradual march South that will push the grey squirrels out of the UK.

To this end last year 18 pine martens were translocated from the Scottish highlands to the forest of Dean. Pine martens do not breed every year and are generally quite susceptible to changes in their environment.

As such the fact that 3 of the females have had kits this year is hugely encouraging,and should hopefully give the green light for further translocations in the near future.

We can only hope that this is the first step in the recovery of the second rarest predators in the UK and that it is the first moved towards the repopulating large parts of the UK. There is much need for restoration of the uk wilderness, it is exciting to see a move in the right direction.

It is unfortunately true that at the moment there is a great deal of effort by unscrupulous scientists that undermine well known facts.

Lithium ion batteries are a phenomenal invention, and it is quite true that they have changed the world. Their ability to to power cars and lorries and a whole host of other movable gadgets is highly impressive.

However there are a whole range of situations where these are probably not the best solutions for energy storage. Lithium ion batteries are relatively expensive, need careful controlling of heat and cold and I made from limited resources that often come from parts of the world that are are having unrest.

Flow batteries work rather differently. As the name suggests, the system consists of two tanks and generates its charge and discharge by moving the chemicals between the two. They have very few disadvantages apart from the extra space they need.one of the main advantages particularly for house battery storage is the fact that they lose little to no capacity over decades. The company creating leads batteries have also calculated that they take 37% less carbon dioxide emissions to create.

We will have to watch the of are market of flow batteries to see what happens. they are unlikely to ever replaced lithium-ion batteries in cars and other moving objects. However in in home batteries they make a great deal of sense, and it seems a good thing that there is finally some competition in this space.

In America stimulus payments to fossil fuels companies amount to $58 billion, yet only spent $25 billion on renewable energy projects.

Some countries include Australia Canada, and France have attached strings to bailouts which require carbon reduction.

Despite 17% carbon dioxide reductions during the shutdown, the rebound has been almost as fast, with carbon emissions only lying 5% below last year’s level.

In the EU they are working hard try to make sure this doesn’t happen, with France have been set aside £13 billion and Germany £35 billion. Despite the the self-inflicted damage that the British are having to pay for due to brexit they have also set aside 3 billion pounds.

Time will tell whether these recovery subsidies will continue or whether governments around the world live up to their promises and stop giving large amounts of money to support fossil fuel companies. Many fossil fuel projects would fail without government support, and if governments made sure that they amount of money they were saving on fossil fuel commitments were invested sensibly in to clean energy we alternate the country would continue quite happily.

Currently roughly speaking you pay $1 per watt to install solar energy. Even if we do that straight switch to pounds, that is one £1000000 per gigawatt. Of course once installed that is 1 gigawatt every time that the sun shines, at a rate of perhaps 8 gigawatt hours per day. If governments around Europe in the world spent similar amounts of money on supporting and building solar and wind farms instead of fossil fuel projects we could likely green the grid in the space of very few years.

What I’m trying to say is that the government’s insistence on working with fossil fuel companies to get the economy going again does not make sense.while in the short-term this may get a few jobs back in the long term these jobs are not going to exist. Green jobs on the other hand are quite different, let’s hope that governments continue their push towards clean energy and stop investing in the past.

UK government has pledged to stop funding fossil fuel projects abroad, having spent 3.5 billion pounds since the Paris climate change deal. They have promised to stop this,but what if rather than simply stopping these funds demanding that they go into clean green power generation? 3.5 billion could buy a significant area of solar panels or wind turbines and if intelligently invested could make sure that the right form is used in the right area so it’s not damage the local environment.

This is an area where everyone can make a difference. You can bet fossil fuel companies have sent their people in to lobby the government for subsidies to get back to business. If as citizens of those countries if enough of us write to our representatives, they will hear that things are changing. The financial balence has changed, already clean green industries are better for jobs, cheaper and better for people who live around them. We must not allow the fossil fuel representatives be the only one lobbying the governments of the west.

20 to 30 billion each year seems like a vast amount of money, and it is, but not set against the 5 trillion dollars that is the estimated cost to the world (furthermore given the number of advanced countries in the world this could be as little as 1% of their government spending).

By directing this 20 to 30 billion dollars into a small number of activities we could reduce the risk of a repeat too close to zero. 

The jobs that would have to be carried out for this money are

• Stem deforestation
• Halt the wildlife trade,one of the ways that new viruses get into the human population (help develop alternatives)
• Closely watch new viruses appearing

Given the huge benefits by saving rainforest and replanting them, there is a significant overlap between this outcome and halting and reversing climate change. Taking this into account drops the price to a maximum of 18 billion dollars worldwide per year.

There are thought to be around 1.5 million species of virus in the worlds wildlife, of which perhaps 700,000 are similar enough to make the leap to humans and be dangerous.

Many of these viruses originally live deep in the rainforest, protecting humans from them.as we cut down the rainforest we are exposed and they have the ability to work into the human population. This has happened multiple times over recent years, though thankfully covid-19 has been the first to lead to significant loss of life.

Before suggesting that this much money annually is way too much, 18 billion is 1 to 2% of the military spending of the top 10 countries in the world, therefore clearly affordable.

The idea that we could spend just 1% to 2% of what we lost to Coronavirus, to avoid further similar outbreaks. Seems a pretty good deal. Given our current behaviour as a species, a further outbreak is highly likely in the next decade or two. If we assume that this whole cost is purely to reduce the risks of further virus outbreaks, the the halting of rainforest destruction, and recovery is a total freebie- something that we otherwise have to find the money for elsewhere. likewise, water reserves are saved by this, as well as the rain causing behaviours of large rainforests.

It would seem that by saving humans from future viruses, we could also save large numbers of species from extinction and ecosystems from destruction. This also plays into the fight against climate change.

There are few bits of positive news in the world of conservation so those that come up must be celebrated. At world conservation day recently, they were celebrating the recovery of mountain gorillas and tigers (particularly Indian tigers).

The speed at which carbon neutral power generation is coming online is it celebrating at such a rate that even coal mines currently in use are more expensive sources of power than solar and wind energy.

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.