Wildlife and conservation new, wild travel information and links for booking
Coral reefs are thought of as those found in shallow water, in warm places. Indeed, many of them are found here.
However, it is becoming increasingly clear, that this is not the only reefs in the sea. Given the amount of carbon that a reef can absorb, it is essential for us to learn to conserve this one quickly.
Continue reading “Largest ever, deep sea coral reef found”There are a variety of different industries which need to stop using carbon. The hardest, is transport. While electrifying aircraft is incredibly hard, we have already worked out everything we need to electrify the worlds roads.
An electric scooter uses around 1/10 of the electricity of an efficient small electric car, so every person who switches from car to e-scooter will save a lot of energy each year.
Worldwide, it has been calculated, that at the current time, e-scooters are cutting carbon emissions 4 times faster than electric cars.
This makes it clear, that we need to electrify all forms of transport.
Whaling went on for centuries, in many parts of the world. One of these was Iceland, where due to the latitude, it is often hard to grow much food. Iceland did not end whaling when it was banned by the international community, and since then have hunted and killed around 1800. They returned to hunting fin whales last year, but what is clear, is that not only do the Icelandic people not want to eat the whale meat, but there is little hunger for it elsewhere in the world. Indeed, whaling is incredibly expensive, and has only stayed afloat through government support.
Whales are essential to the worlds oceans, both through their fertilization through their waste, and the vast amounts of carbon that they sequester over their lives. For the foreseeable time we need every living whale we can have, in the fight against the damage which humans are doing to the planet.
Golden jackals are not native to France, probably as a result of of the presence of wolves. Unfortunately, wolf populations have dropped so low, that their presence is not stopping the spread of animals like this.
In this instance, the female was too young to have arrived on its own, suggesting that not only are golden jackals present, but they are breeding.
We will have to watch this space, and see what is happening. Will the recovering wolf population stop the spread, or are golden jackals going to become a permanent part of west Europe’s fauna?
To read more about golden jackals visit our golden jackal page here
The Algonquin wolf, also known as the Eastern wolf is a species which has been discovered in the eastern USA and Canada (click on the bold name above, to visit the species page).Â
Perhaps, understandably, it is hard to find a new species in the USA unless it is already pretty rare. This species is only thought to have around 500 individuals, throughout its range (eastern USA and north into Canada).
South-eastern Canada has been known for a race of wolves and coyotes, that do not appear quite right for some time. This study suggested that this group of wolves split from the rest of wolves around 67,000 years ago. This appears to recent to give rise to the significant genetic differences, but it appears that this population also bred with coyotes around 37,000 years ago, and has continued to have genetic exchange between both species (on occasion) since.
As such, it is suggested that the Eastern wolf largely owes its appearance to hybridization between all three.
Has this lead to a more successful species? Well, one may well suggest not, given the small number of these wolves that survive at this time.
However, this is a well settled part of North America, suggesting that in fact it could be down to human hunting rather than natural forces.
At the current time, countries in the region in which the COP is held will chose a president. In theory, that is fine, however, in practice if this is going to continue then the middle east should be banned from hosting the conference.
So, what precisely did Sultan Al Jaber say, which was so troubling?
Firstly, he claimed that a ‘phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves'”.
He then claimed that there is ‘no science’ to suggest phasing out fossil fuels is the only way to achieve 1.5C.
After being laughed at, over this utterly insane statment, he suggested that the comment had been misinterpreted. It should be noted, that this was in response to a question from a woman, which he was relatively rude about.
Do you think this woman misunderstood?
He even had the gall to suggest that the misrepresentation was undermining his desire to reduce carbon emissions (perhaps if this is true, it can start with his huge fossil fuel company can show this?). More than 100 countries are already supportive of this.
The worlds uptake of electric cars must accelerate. This is partly underway – last year around 67 million cars were sold, but 14% of these were electric, up from just 9% the previous year. The uptake is accelerating.
It should also be noted that apart from extreme heat in the UAE, continued global warming will also damage the UAE in extreme ways. The UAE economy is 0.5% of the global economy, in the end, places like this may refuse to accept the end of oil, and will have to be bankrupted, as cars move to 100% and many other industries clean up their act.
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For those who visit this website regularly, there will be periods where it looks like I am not active. While there are periods where I am away from the computer, more often than not it is because I am concentrating on other aspects of the website. In recent times, I have been working hard on the list of species that the website lists.
The long-term aim of the website, is still for it to become a one-stop shop for wild travel. We continue to work towards this. Do look at the Species watch page.
Gibbons are lesser apes – lesser than the great apes, anyway. This means that they generally need far less space per individual. Unfortunately, so much of their forests have been lost, that they are increasingly isolated in small scraps of the forest, unable to socialize or breed.
It is becoming clear that in many parts of the world, the survival of specific animals is going to rely on humans regularly translocating animals – that is, we will have to treat the whole population as one large population, and connecting artificially by transporting the animals. The success of this, is perhaps most noticeable in South Africa, where there are many small reserves. Cheetah survive in these reserves and the surrounding areas, but find it hard to connect with their own kind. By regular translocation, the cheetah population grew substantially, as well as their health. In other countries lions leopards, and many other species are likely to require this in the near future.
Each had been kept as pets, with one handed over voluntarily, and the other 4 were seized. While the park is not vast (covering around 200 square km) it would be able to support a significant number of this endangered primate.
There needs to be a change in these countries so that it is no longer acceptable for people to keep these as pets.
There is heavy pressure to end wolf protection in the EU because farmers are suggesting that they have recovered to too great a degree.
Due to the low numbers of all of the large mammals that live in the country, poaching could rapidly threaten the survival in the country.
Currently, about 500 wolves survive, 50-60 bears and perhaps only 30 of the Balkan lynx (the Balkan lynx only has around 120 members spread across the whole Balkans).
According to SWIPE (Successful wildlife prosecution in Europe)
“While compiling the Report, a total of 165 cases were collected and analyzed, 110 of which were misdemeanors and 55 were criminal offenses. In 75% of initiated misdemeanor proceedings, the accused was found guilty, while that percentage is lower in criminal proceedings – about 57% of them ended in a conviction.“
In this report, the wild species most often targeted include song-birds and after this the bear. There was issues with captive animals that came between (I find this repugnant, but this website is to do with wildlife primarily) and then came targeting of bears.
Now, given there are only 50-60 left in the country, a poaching level of just 5-10 bears a year could threaten the countries population to extinction within the next decade. It is true that the Serbian bear population, like the wolf and the Balkan Lynx is part of a transboundary population which is more healthy. Never-the-less, local extinctions is almost always how extinction starts.
Indeed, wildlife tourism has the capacity to lift more people out of poverty, than hunting of the animals that would otherwise be photographed. Currently, world wildlife tourism is thought to be worth $156 billion, and this often goes to little places where there is little work. It seems quite conceivable for Serbia to seize a sizable portion of the wildlife tourism for Europe.