Category: Wild Places

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JBS a beef giant in Brazil has promised to go deforestation free – in 14 years; response?

Much of the deforestation that is occurring in Brazil is to make more room for cattle grazing. The promise of a beef giant to stop deforesting in 14 years is not worth anything. Apart from anything, it is likely that the have calculated that it will take 14 years to clear the land that they currently have access to.

A promise to reform your bad behaviour in 14 years is worth nothing. Indeed in a new Soy and Cattle deforestation tracker, JBS scored 1 point out of 100. As a point of context, its nearest competitors scored 40 and 46 out of 100.It has congratulated itself as the first company in its industry to make commitments, but no one else is impressed. They have had to many chances, now we must move away from buying their product.

The fact that they felt they needed to make a commitment would suggest that market pressure is working, clearly there has not been enough pressure bought to bare on this group. A boycott would likely be a good move. Morrisons Aldi Sainsbury and Lidl all buy meat from this company. My suggestion is that you buy your meat from companies which actually worry about things like this – If one of these companies are forced to drop this beef supplier, it is likely to force the others to do the same. They managed to get good converge last September, when they remade a commitment that they originally made in 2009 to halt deforestation through its suppliers – the bigger question should have been why havent you lived up to your 2009 pledge. It should be noted, the forests they are clearing are not grown for wood, they are old growth natural woodland, coming with it are the tens of thousands of species that are endangered or eradicated as their forests are lost.

JBS has consistently worked to keep their supply chain as opaque as possible, presumably to avoid being held accountable. They have now had enough time, and so it is time for action. If you shop at any of the food chains above, ask about where the meat comes from, and avoid any beef that does not have its origin clearly labelled.

We may not have rainforests to cut down in the UK, but if you continue to eat JBC meat, you may as well have got out the axe yourself.

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Grizzly bears are rebounding in the USA, how can this success story continue?

Back in 1975, the American Grizzly bear was declared endangered. With only minor differences, the American Grizzly bear is the same species as the European bear, that lives from Western Spain, through Europe to the Kamchatka bear of far Eastern Russia.

In 1975 the USA lower 48 states grizzly bear population numbered somewhere between 136 animals and 312, so it was essential that it was protected. Nowerdays the same 48 states have a population of around 1500, but given that this number would have been as high as 50,000 when people started migrating to the USA in large number, this recovery is only just getting going.

Allowing bears to return is essential
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Could Indian Lions help return the Barbary Lion? Is it even a separate species?

In some ways, recent discoveries should have been made long ago. Asiatic lions historic distribution stretched across Asia, north Africa, and Southern Europe.

Given that the Barbary Lions historic range covered the central part of this huge area, it seems reasonable that the Barbary lion and the Asiatic lion should be closely related. Yet it was only in the last few years that genetic evidence has been shown that this is indeed the case.

West African Lions do look very like the Asiatic lion
Continue reading “Could Indian Lions help return the Barbary Lion? Is it even a separate species?”
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Global warming is happening, and even with the cuts promised, we are likely to see significant sea level rises: what is this likely to cost

It is an unfortunate fact, all over the world, that people have chosen to live near the sea. There are many reasons for this, but the basic fact is that this is often the most productive land.

The problem now, though, is that all these peoples lives are liable to change. This is because small rises in sea levels could make them homeless. As much as 1 billion people live at low enough elevation to make this a threat.

Countries like Bangladesh are very flat, and it is estimated that as many as 20 million people within Bangladesh would become homeless by 2050 under current trends (this assumes that we meet our carbon cut targets. There would be many others that would be lost.

Forgetting the hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, there are famous buildings and places which should underline this issue in the west as well.

Buckingham palace would be under water up to the first floor if we fail to act. A temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C would merely bring the water level to the front door. Many other famous buildings such as the pentagon, the tower of London and Tokyo tower in Japan would all be lost.

This is all a long winded way of stating, that even with the dramatic cuts the world is hoping to make over the next few decades, many people on earth are still likely to loose their lives have their lives changed dramatically, in most cases for the worse.

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Has the Pandemic forced a new way of working on the BBC natural history unit?

In filming for the BBCs mating game, the film-makers for the BBC were forced to work in a different way to normal.

Given rules that were put in place to stop the epidemics spread, it was impossible in many instances to send film makers on trips all over the world. As a result, they were forced to rely on local wildlife film-makers.

The producers of the series, found that not only did this make it easier to get the footage required, but also meant that it was easier to know timings of when specific parts of the series would be complete.

Over the last couple of decades high definition cameras have become the norm and in recent years, local people around the world have been trained to use them. With the advance of 4G signal in wilder parts of the world, it is now possible to stay in touch with crews even when they are in the field. This also means that the carbon price of the production can fall dramatically.

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The British government claims that 30% of of UK land is set aside for nature; what rubbish

At the current time 26% of the UK is designated as a national park, area of outstanding beauty or other form of protected area. However, to claim that this whole area is set aside for nature, is absurd. British national parks, unlike African ones still have human habitation within them.

Continue reading “The British government claims that 30% of of UK land is set aside for nature; what rubbish”
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A tesla plane? what impact would this have

Elon Musk has talked about creating an electric plane, I think that this is a fantastic idea, but not from a tesla fanboy point of view.

Electric planes are in their infancy. There are a range of extremely light weight aircraft for learning to fly. There are also an increasing number of island hopper jets, which can allow easy access for small communities – at prices that are affordable, and therefore long-term as well as the far more environmentally friendly setup.

The other big move in this arena, is Ryanair. They are a budget airline operating throughout Europe, but they are building an aircraft which should be able to carry 186 people (31 rows of 6 seats) that would cover 80% of their routes. My hope is that this is a move into them behaving in a more compassionate way – they have a reputation of treating people poorly (I have experienced that first hand but that is another story)

Elon Musk envisaged a vertical take off and landing aircraft, and one which would fly high enough to travel at supersonic speeds. He did state that he thought batteries needed to reach 400wh/kg and the batteries that run tesla cars are currently 260wh/kg, so were still some way off. Having said that, tesla has some of the best battery research going on, and they are confident that the batteries will be ready in the next 3 or so years.

So what impact would a tesla plane have? Well what Musk is describing is largely a private jet, not a passenger jet. Never-the-less Tesla cars started and high cost and came down. It is likely that a Tesla plane would do something similar. Certainly, with the weight Tesla can bring to bare, it is likely that any involvement by Tesla would push the electrical aviation market place to new heights.

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Gains in the Virunga national park of the DRC are encouraging but threats continue

For the last 3 years there has been a significant baby boom in the forests of the Virungas. This is highly encouraging for the long term survival of the mountain gorillas that live here.

Unfortunately many threats remain. Parts of the park are potentially about to be reclassified for mining, and there are invading armed groups in various parts of the forest.

Currently, the DRC section of the park contains roughly 350 gorillas, though this number includes all mountain and lowland gorillas. However, the armed groups often make money by hunting wildlife both for bushmeat and the pet trade.

In recent years, Mountain gorillas have been moved from critically endangered, to the endangered list. However, this generally is in relation to the reduction of the population over the last few years. If the population reaches a small size, then reductions of any level are likely to wipe them out. This has not happened, thankfully, but given a population of only 350 animals, it is foolish to think that this wildlife population is out of danger, quite the contrary, it would take very little for this population to disappear – STILL and so we must not relax.

Current threats thought to exist for the park long term, do not worry about poaching, so much as land lost to oil and mineral extraction. Remember that an area can be deforested in a matter of a few weeks, it can take a century for the forest to return.

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