The most recent estimate, puts the French wolf population on about 620 in the country. They have recently moved into the department of Lot which lies just a few miles north of Toulouse.
Given the growing population of wolves in France, it would be ridiculous to kill these wolves, as others will replace them pretty quickly.
Time will tell how good Lula is, but the world has had a reprieve!
WE MUST KEEP OUR EYE ON THIS SITUATION, BUT FOR NOW WE CAN RELAX
So what has Brazil turned its back on?
Jair Bolsonaro time in office was characterized by attacks on:
Democratic institutions (from human rights institutions to deforestation watch, many more)
The Media
The Left (given Bolsonaro was far right, this means virtually every opponent politician)
The Amazon rainforest
So what did Lula run on?
Social Justice
Environmental protection
Defending democracy
Reunifying the country
Will there be a peaceful handover of power? No one knows. Jair Bolsonaro, like Donald Trump before him has stated many times over the last few months, that he cannot loose a fair election. As an outsider, it is hard to see how he would ever win a fair election but there we are.
He has the support of much of the army (a former soldier himself) and there is much concern that he could throw the country into chaos, and would have a far greater chance of actually overthrowing the government than Trump did in the USA.
He only won with a margin of 2%, and as of yet Bolsonaro is still yet to comment on the results. If Lula is allowed to retake the presidency, then it will mark the end of an incredible comeback,
Lula was president from 2003-2010. After this, he spent time in prison for corruption convictions – later annulled.
Pro – Bolsonaro Truckers have blocked highways across Brazil in protest, but nothing worse has yet occurred.
The worlds rainforests are concentrated in a small number of countries. As a result, there are a handful of countries where, they have the potential on their own to make climate change far worse.
These countries include many of those in the Congo basin in Africa, and the countries of south east Asia.
Perhaps the biggest, is Brazil: and unfortunately we have had to watch as the current president Jair Bolsonaro has done everything as badly as possible. Could it have been worse for the world? Perhaps, but it would have been hard.
What is frustrating, is that he is terrible for Brazil. He has the bizarre support of the evangelical Christians, and he has made sure that the middle class has benefitted from his time in office, never-the-less, he has destroyed much of the institutional blocks to serious damage in his first term, so may be able to do more damage in his second.
What is his worst record? 688,000 deaths from Covid, having declared what should he do and having minimized it as the little flu. This is the second most deaths in the world after the USA (largely as a result of Donald Trump minimizing the issue -see a pattern?) despite being 5th in the number of cases. The illness hit indigenous people hardest (possibly intentionally? Certainly it helps Bolsonaros many aims). For the world, though, Bolsonaro will be remembered as someone who vastly increased the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and there is a great deal of fear that the rainforest is getting close to collapse as a result of his behaviour. Not only will this cause huge problems around the world, by releasing billions of tonnes of carbon, but it will also change rain patterns, leading to crop failures in Brazil as well as countries around.
Currently Lulu has a 4%-8% lead in the polls, however, unfortunately 4 years ago the polls underestimated Bolsonaro support so this may mean little. In a similar way to Trump, there is a certain proportion of the population who are embarrassed by their support for the leader, so are unlikely to be honest in polls.
In a debate Bolsonaro spent his time just attacking his opponent and does not seem to have any ideas for the future of the country.
In the first round, Jair Bolsonaro got 43.2% while Lula got 48.4% so he is comfortably ahead, but what happens now is still on a knife edge.
It would appear that no matter what supermarkets are saying, South American beef is still encouraging deforestation. According to a new study 1.1 million cattle with boot directly from protected areas within in the rainforest, with a further 2.2 million cattle found to have spent at least some of their lives grazing in protected areas or on indigenous land.
It should be noted that this study largely stops taking you data in 2018. This is not because they got bored, but because at the beginning of 2019 Jair Bolsonaro olsonaro was elected and change the rules so they could not do the work they were doing.
As much as 70% of the Amazon rainforest deforestation has been entirely down to creating space for cattle grazing. While virtually every meat producer has promised not to source their meat from these areas, information appears to be kept intentionally lacking so that these meat producers can get away with using resources they have promised not to.
Quite apart from the high carbon footprint of consuming South American beef in Europe, it is clear that we cannot do, and be sure we are not contributing to the loss of the Amazon rainforest.
I should mention (as I have in the past) that my family have largely seems to eat beef. We have not gone vegetarian, but have found that replacing beef mince with turkey mince not only greatly reduces our carbon footprint but is almost indistinguishable after it has been cooked. If you must eat beef (unless something changes dramatically this is likely to always have an unacceptably high carbon footprint) at least eat British beef- not only should it have much lower travel carbon footprint, but there are no rainforests in the UK to be lost.
Graham made this statement as he informed MPs that he had awarded more than 100 licences for north sea drilling – and claimed that this was a green policy. He also claimed that this fossil fuel extraction will help the UK reach net zero by 2050.
Australia is likely to loose a great deal if climate change continues in a big way. This is because Australia already has a large part of the country unbearably hot. If the temperature increases another 2-5 degrees these areas might well become impossible to survive within.
This is why it is so strange that Australia is so backwards in this respect.
Currently, Australia gets a great deal of money by selling coal abroad. This is because Australia is incredibly rich in coal. As a result they are keen to be able to put off zero carbon as long as possible as they will loose this income.
Professor Lesley Huges is a climate specialist, that has just been appointed to the Australia climate change authority and she has quite rightly stated that 2050 net zero is not good enough. Encouragingly, though she has also said that the new government was showing a willingness to listen to science. The Climate change minister has appointed 3 new members after it was suggested that the authority was to heavily weighted in the direction of business and fossil fuels (if there are too many representatives from this part of the market, then concerns about global warming are likely to get less voice, as fossil fuel companies know they only have a finite length of time to make money from resources that are likely to be banned in the future).
I am unsure why this website has come under such a heavy and sustained attack over the last while.
We are desperately trying to fend off these attacks once and for all, while at the same time moving forwards on what the website is supposed to accomplish.
So why are we a target? I have no idea, unfortunately it appears that many websites are targeted constantly.
Recent positions taken by Jacob Reece-Mogg include ‘Squeezing “every last cubic inch of gas”‘ from the north sea, restarting fracking, rejecting windfarms (and instead preferring fossil fuels) has all been pushed forwards of his position. He has a history of accusing people of climate alarmism. Two other mps refused the role of the climate change minister (though eventually Graham Stuart agreed to take it on).
Conservative members who are concerned about climate change (so called Green Tories – my argument would be, that if any Tory is not concerned about climate change and global warming, should not be considered for a role in the cabinet. We cannot continue to tolerate climate change denialism in the UK government).
There are many mammal species that are threatened with extinction, with 73% of species facing pressure as a result of agriculture expansion. These are two of the most endangered.
There are also 187 bird species that have been confirmed to have vanished from the wild since 1500.
Perhaps one of the rare positive stories in the report said that more than 20 bird species would have gone extinct in the last 30 years without the work of conservationists.]
Many of these bird species are essential for ecosystem health, so their continued decline will have a significant impact on virtually every ecosystem around the world – and may cause the collapse of some.
The Pyrennes in the south west of France, and the corresponding area across the border, are a wonderful area of wilderness. There are currently about 64 bears living in this area. So where are we on the road to recovery?
Were the the entire Pyrennes mountains wild, it is thought that these mountains could support 600 bears. However, this area is not an area that is set aside for wilderness – there is a whole population of humans living in these mountains (almost 700,000 people live here).
It is thought that the bear population of the Pyrennes could potentially get to 250 in its current form.