See Animals Wild

There are a large number of different trials going on around the country into whether it is feasible to reintroduce Beavers and what they would do in the places that they would return. This question is important to answer for several reasons. The first of these is that there is a legal requirement in the EU to consider reintroducing any species that has been made locally extinct by humans. While we are leaving the EU this directive is actually a very good thing and therefore is worth following. The second reason that this question needs answering is because in places like the Tyne river basin in Scotland a large number of beavers have escaped and live in the wild and it is important to work out whether this is something that we wish to encourage or to reverse. Continue reading “Beaver trials – as expected, benefiting ecosystem”

In an interview last year Tucker Carlson bought in a physicist from MIT and then berated him over his, and the generally accepted, views on climate change. In this interview Tucker Carlson stated many facts that were totally incorrect.

It was an absurd interview, and would only be tolerated by a channel like Fox News. However while Fox News is more willing to openly state things that any reasonable person would be able to refute, the interview would be improved if an interviewee was allowed to appear and speak without being interrupted by the host. This behaviour is not restricted to far right wing news channels but unfortunately happens in many other places.

Many of these outlets, if challenged, will state that the numbers generated were changed in some way by the scientists. In recent years unfortunately there has been a climate scandal that started in the UK University of East Anglia.

This group edited a graph by smoothing out bumps in recent periods, to remove any drops in the average temperature. This was underhand and foolish, particularly as accepted for publication in a serious magazine the underlying data would have to be presented alongside the analysis done. Having said that, this was an attempt to make the graph look clearer than it was, but the underlying evidence is extremely clear. The fiddling of the data was not required.

The organisations that made the biggest fuss over this con have continued to point at this as a reason to not take action despite further mounting evidence showing that climate change is taking place and indeed accelerating, and that therefore we still need to take action as fast as possible.

The Persian Leopard

The Persian Leopard is only found in a few countries and only in very few small numbers. However the fact that it still clings on means that it is far easier to recover this species than it would be were the last few to have disappeared. This is similar to the Amur Leopard which dropped to only a population of perhaps 20 but has made an astounding recovery in the last 10 years where it has gained more than double its population. This is still a very small population base but is likely to lead to a growing population which, because of the support of the Worldwide Conservation Group, has huge amounts of money being thrown at it. Continue reading “News in Brief: The Persian Leopard, Accidental Death of one of the last male Marsican bears, and a mutant enzyme which eats plastics”

As much as half of our carbon footprint comes from what we eat. There is a carbon price on virtually everything, there are very few foods, unless we grow them ourselves in our garden, which take in more carbon then it takes to grow and get them to us.

It is it a particular problem that in the West we eat a large amount of meat as this is far more carbon intense then eating vegetables. However not all meats are the same, and it is actually possible to cut your food carbon footprint significantly without removing all meat from it.

It should be it noted, numbers I have had to state are approximate. There are instances where some of the meat would have far higher carbon footprints than are stated. A particularly poor situation is in South America where large parts of the Amazon are being cut down to give grazing ground for cattle. The fact that the rainforest is being cut down would suggest that this beef has a extremely high carbon footprint, and far higher than these stated numbers.

Lamb come out the highest, with the equivalent of 91 miles driven for each portion eaten. Beef in general came second on about 63 miles per serving, but this can be higher depending on where and how the cattle was raised. It should be noted that in a time of not enough water in many parts of the world beef grazing is also a very poor efficiency use of water.

Cheese has the next highest footprint at about 31 miles per serving (assuming that servings are roughly similar size). At 28 and 25 pork and then turkey has a dramatically lower carbon footprint than lamb or beef which would suggest that while going vegetarian will cut your food carbon footprint in half you get half of this benefit simply by switching beef for pork or turkey. Chicken has an even lower carbon footprint, only 16 miles driven per serving, so halving your carbon footprint again. Eggs have a carbon footprint of 11, and potatoes have a carbon footprint of 7 so you cannot go carbon free on your food.

Unfortunately in the West, as with most other carbon emissions, we find that the way we live is the worst way in terms of reducing CO2. Other countries like India and China have rapidly rising CO2 levels and have or will soon overtake America and Western Europe. In terms of carbon per head India and China are still vastly lower then we have in the West and it is our responsibility to demonstrate a way of living without emitting so much carbon that the planet roasts.

The Eurasian Steppe is a vast grassland that stretches in the West from Romania and Ukraine all the way through much of Russia to the Far East of the Eurasian continent. In the past this huge grassland supported vast populations of ungulates (hoofed animals). The damage to the ecosystem has been most severe in the far East of this huge wildlife habitat, in an area called the Eastern Steppe. Continue reading “Collapse of the far Eastern Steppe ecosystem and what is being done to help its recovery”

Dolphins breaking fishing nets

Dolphin in the Western Mediterranean Sea have taken to breaking into fishing nets. While this is considered a serious problem it is thought that actually this is probably the fault of the fishermen. There is no limit on the quota that the fisherman from Cyprus are allowed to take. This is meaning that there simply aren’t enough fish left in the sea. What is more absurd about this is that local fisherman are highly critical of this policy and actually would like limits put in place so as to protect their income over the longer term and stop large boats coming in from elsewhere to decimate the future stock. Amusingly they have attempted pingers on the nets, in order to put the dolphins off. Unfortunately it appears that the dolphin rapidly worked out what these pingers meant and have taken to treating them as a dinner bell, coming in rapidly to feast. Continue reading “News in Brief – Dolphins breaking nets, frogs resistant to illness, and bad news for the Great Barrier Reef”

For those of you who have not heard of Bonobos, they are a close relation to the Chimpanzee. The population of Chimpanzees and the population of Bonobos is split by the Congo River. It seems that as the Congo River formed it split the population of Chimpanzees in the far distant past, and the Chimpanzee like animals on one side continued to evolve as chimpanzees dominated by males. However on the other side of the river, they took a different path, these chimpanzees started to be dominated by the females and as such the way the communities behaved changed. Rather than regular aggression and violence, things changed so that when tension arose it was dealt with by sexual contact instead of by violence. The females in the Bonobo population are the dominant force and the males are kept carefully under control. Continue reading “A new discovery about the astounding intelligence of Bonobos”

While a 97% agreement rate amongst climate change scientists appears to be a very nice figure and reliable enough to base discussion of the future on, it seemed odd to me that 3% of the scientists disagreed. As such in this article I’m going to look at the study that was done which created this figure. I will also look at another study that was done more recently which suggests a far higher figure. Continue reading “Do 97% of climate change scientists believe in climate change?”

The UK government has proposed a total ban on the sale of ivory. This is a very very good move. It is likely to lead to a significant cut in the ivory that comes into the UK. The problem that has occurred over the last few decades is that while it is legal to sell ivory from before 1947 it is almost impossible for anyone but experts to be able to tell when the ivory has actually come from. As such this means that great quantities of ivory products that have been created recently has then been disguised as antique ivory and has been illegally sold in the UK anyway. Continue reading “Ivory banned”

Image source Burrard-Lucas Photography

Wild dogs are one of the hardest species of the savannah ecosystem to protect. This is because they live at low densities. They have been exterminated by humans in the misguided belief that wild dogs were killing more of their domestic livestock than other predators and they are highly impacted by illnesses that they can get on the rare occasions they have contact with domestic dogs. The last of these is a particular problem as because wild dogs are highly sociable, when an illness enters a wild dog population it can rapidly spread throughout Continue reading “Wild dogs impacted by domestic dog illness”