When David Cameron entered 10 Downing Street, he talked about it being the greenest government ever. While they have had to be in coalition for much of the period that the have been in power, it is clear that much of the negative effects on the environment has been pushed through by the conservatives not their partners.
Continue reading “The Conservatives record on the environment”
Cape leopards
Cape Leopards are a fascinating part of the leopard population of South Africa. It is estimated that there are as many as 1000 cape leopards living throughout the western cape. Now the western cape covers roughly 50,000 square miles so it is a rather large area, and they are spread across a few national parks. What is interesting about this group is that they are significantly smaller than any other group of leopards with females weighing around 20kg and males 35kg (generally leopards weigh between 60 and 70kg). Continue reading “Cape leopards”
Lion (Tanzania)
The majority of my safari experience has been had within the Kruger national park in South Africa. While wild, generally the facilities there are far greater than in Tanzania. As such the campsite in the Selous national park in Tanzania consisted of a flat piece of land with a sign saying ‘Lake Tagalala camp’ and a long drop toilet. However there was no fence or barrier of any kind around the camp (you are required to pay for a night guard above the costs of camping). The washing facilities were in themselves quite an exciting prospect as you used the local lake, though you took your guard with you as when we went for a was there were crocodiles on one side of us and hippos on the other.
We were sitting by our fire at around 8.30pm that evening, listening to the sounds of wildife from the surrounding area while we ate our supper. This consisted of the insects of the bush, as well as regular grunts and splashes of the hippos in their pool about 100m distant, and the roars of the various local lion prides. The night guard had gone to be with the other group that he had spent the day with. Very suddenly out of the dark about 10m distant to where we were sitting a lioness appeared out of the dark. We were sat by a fire so she was unlikely to approach but she held our gaze as she stalked across the camp site and then back into the dark.
Bear (Croatia)
To put this sighting in context, we had spent 3 lovely days hiking in the Northern Velebit National Park national park in Croatia, it had been beautiful, but apart from a brief sighting of two deer from a large distance away we hadn’t seen any wildlife. We were moving on and so had left the park. It was quite early in the morning and due to the remote location of the park there was little artificial noise. About 100m beyond the front gate we stopped suddenly when we heard noise from our left. Moments later the was more noise as a large bear crashed down the steep bank and started to amble across the road. It paused briefly in the middle of the road and glared at us as we sat perhaps 10m away. It then ambled across the rest of the road and crashed down an equally steep bank. At this point I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the road and looked down into the dark of the forest. The bear had not moved from the bottom of the bank, and he turned his head and fixed me with a stare for a few seconds before disappearing further into the gloom of the forest.
Transfrontier parks – allowing wildlife to exist closer to how it did before humans arrived
In Africa it is becoming increasingly common for national parks to be declared on both sides of a border. This allows the protected area to be vastly larger than either country could succeed in, on its own. This is important because many of the mammals that live in Africa need a lot of space and live at low densities. Without transfrontier parks it would be too expensive to protect a large enough area to support populations of animals such as wild dog and cheetah. In an ideal world this is a relatively simple solution, however as with everything it isn’t often that simple. With war and famine and other problems the animals could suddenly become less secure in one country than another. Continue reading “Transfrontier parks – allowing wildlife to exist closer to how it did before humans arrived”
Greening the western lifestyle
If we are to be able to continue to live on planet Earth we are going to need to stop releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is unfortunate that at the current time, this simple fact is not looked on as a fact by some of the big world leaders.
One of the difficult things to look at is that some of the publicised success the UK has had in the last couple of decades is false. When looking carefully you can see that we have exported the emissions, by having things manufactured in India or China for example. This makes it clear that much of the pressure on manufacturers must come from consumers rather than governments. Continue reading “Greening the western lifestyle”
Does hunting pay its way?
Even in the current age where many species such as elephants and lions are facing steep declines in population and range, there are still many countries where it is legal to go and hunt them and other species. Unlike many conservationists I am not inherently against hunting, however the way it is done in many places baffles me. I realise with many people it is essentially “the bragging rights” that they are looking for. Shoot an animal and mount its head on your wall at home. One hundred years ago, when there were more animals left I could understand this idea, but nowadays, when we are likely to have to explain to our grandchildren if not children why these animals no longer live in the wild I don’t want one stuck to my wall! Continue reading “Does hunting pay its way?”
Problems with Palm Oil – and how to avoid it
Palm oil is a plant based alternative to digging up hydrocarbons (like oil).
In theory, the concept of growing the fuel that we use might be a good idea, unfortunately this has not worked well in practice. The best place to grow palm oil is along the equator, but this is where much of the tropical rainforest also grows. It has already been established that as much of this needs to be left intact as possible for the world to function as an ecosystem.
While I would have a problem in the way this is being undertaken for the simple reason that these rainforests hum with life there are other issues. Continue reading “Problems with Palm Oil – and how to avoid it”
Review of Udzungwa National Park, Tanzania
Driving around Tanzania, you regularly come across tiny remnants of rainforest that still exist high up in hills and mountains. East Africa used to have more rainforest, but the area has dried out over the last few thousand years (East Africa has an extremely long cycle of drying out and the retreat of rainforest and then its return). However with extra altitude you get more rain. That means that driving around areas that are largely dry savannah you can find small pockets of forest if the road rises significantly. As such driving between protected areas you can suddenly find that you are in a forest remnant and that there are monkeys above your head. One of the largest protected remnants is the Udzungwa National Park. This park protects a part of the eastern arc mountains that run across eastern Tanzania. The park protects around 770 square miles. Much of this is rainforest, with six species of primate, four of which are endemic. One of these the highland mangabay (also called kipunji) was only discovered in 2005.
We stopped off for 4 days after leaving the Selous ecosystem. This is a park that I would highly recommend to anyone. After visiting the park headquarters, you are free to explore. Compared to the surrounding rainforest the prices were extremely cheap. We paid around £200 for two of us for 4 day guided walk in the forest and camping each night.
It does require a reasonably high level of fitness as you spend your days scrambling up and down steep hills and mountains. We went to stay in an encampment a significant distance inside the forest. There are few roads so everything is done on foot. The park is particularly popular for birds but also has a large number of reptiles. We did not see anyone inside the park, we had the paths we were on completely to ourselves. What is particularly odd that due to its size, many of the usual forest animals are not there such as chimpanzees, though they did live here at one time. Also missing is the forest elephant. However as this reserve is close to savanah parks there are elephants from there- forest elephants have developed smaller tusks to help them get around within a crowded forest, but these ones manage fine. While we did not encounter one we did see dung in many places.
With more time, you can go for a longer hike (4 days in each direction) to the furthest part of the reserve. In this part of the reserve you have an area of Savanah. This is particularly exciting as there are lions among other animals, but there are no vehicles so if you wish to see the elephants you have to walk.
There are no guesthouses or hotels within the park, though the local village does have some. There are however, a few campsites. Many of these are deep in the forest and are not going to be used except within the middle of a hike. We stayed in one of these campsites deep within the park. This was just stunning, and we found this park to be one of the most relaxing parts of our tanzanian holiday. However we also camped within a separate campsite across the road from the park, with beautiful view. It was only just being set up but the plans included large amounts of wild land and a lake which is likely to attract animals to watch during the evening.
Review of Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania
The Selous nature reserve is the largest protected savannah reserve in Africa. It covers roughly 50,000 square km (19,000 square miles). However this reserve is named Selous after Fredrick Selous, a successful hunter. 95% of the park is set aside for hunting. However, partly because of this and also because of an insect that inhabits the area; bites from the insect can give humans an illness called sleeping sickness, and therefore humans have not settled in the area. However due to its size, it has the capacity to protect huge populations of many mammals.
Few people visit the nature reserve, but this means that you are likely to experience a hugely wild experience, and usually have any sightings completely to yourself. It has been hard hit by the elephant poaching that followed the southern African countries one off sale of their elephant ivory stocks. The intention of these occasional sales is to drop the price of Ivory which means that it is not worth the huge risk to get it (both physically and from detection from the game wardens). However, the risk is that it increases the desire for ivory, and in this instance the second happened. In 2007 it was estimated that the elephant population of the Selous was around 110,000. When we went in 2011 the population was estimated at 30,000. 80,000 elephants from this one protected area were killed. As can be imagined the the remaining elephants are very wary of humans,and so aggressive, which makes it harder to get significant numbers of people coming to the reserve to take pictures.
A population that has not been decimated in recent years is the lion population, in this reserve it is estimated that there is roughly 5,000 lions. This is roughly a quarter of the remaining lions in Africa.
Practical review
While I greatly enjoyed my visit here, it is not an easy place to travel to on your own. There are very few amenities here. This is partly because the majority of people who visit the park will do it on a far larger budget; there are the resources within the park for an astoundingly luxurious trip. For me, I am far more interested in paying the money to go to very remote places and then living frugally.
My wife and I camped in a camp called Lake Tagalala camp, this cost $25 dollars per night which is not terrible, but here it buys you some space to put your tent up, and a long drop toilet. Washing consisted of walking the 100m to the local lake, with your night guard as there were both crocodile and hippos were in the lake close to where you were able to use it. You also had to pay $50 dollars for a night guard each night. While this does not seem to much, we felt ripped off. All the night guards are day guides, so generally go to bed early (and indeed went to bed around 7pm every night we were there) also if you are sharing the camp with another group you are still charged $50 dollars but there is one between the two (or on some occasions more) groups. On those nights our $50 dollars bought us a good evening and good morning. $50 dollars is the average income for tanzanians per month. We did feel in places that people expected to be able to rip off tourists as they wanted (one warning: we were offered a free walk, on return, the guy demanded the full cost of the walk – we paid up but on leaving the park our driver went in and informed the authorities and got our money back)
Just as an aside, our car was the biggest headache for the whole trip. It was very expensive ($120 per day). It came with a driver and we were picked up at the airport promptly, which was lovely. The problems however started almost immediately. The windscreen was cracked badly already, though the whole pane needed to be replaced quite quickly as we hit a branch which made it far worst. The cold box was not working, the windows did not open some of the doors did not work etc. As you can imagine for the price we felt that this was a rather huge rip-off, and this was never fully rectified. However the driver we had was a lovely guy. It was unfortunate that his English was almost non existent, and it took several days to get him to understand how to drive within the park (slowly so we can look for animals and various other simple techniques to help us find animals). We did also discover after a few days that he was using the majority of our water, having not been sent with water of his own (when you are in a remote place perhaps 50 miles from the nearest place to replace your water this is quite important). However, I wish to say that our driver was lovely, very helpful and made sure that we were not ripped off when we went to buy things, the problem lay with the firm that rented the car in the first place.
