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A new act in the US congress might have the capability to slow or halt deforestation, or at least force instigators to face financial penalties

The Forest ACT bill would make global suppliers responsible for the illegal deforestation that their products cause.

This is a long overdue issue. Currently, large companies will structure things in such a way, that small farmers and other land users are encouraged to deforest their land, knowing that the big company wishes this, and will buy all their resources.

It cannot work this way. If these companies are made legally responsible for any deforestation that occurs to provide their products, they will manage to put an end to illegal deforestation over night.

As well as enacting this process nationally, the bill would require USA trade partners to buy in on these new rules.

Will it work? Who knows, but it is likely to have a huge impact on deforestation, as if this rule is implemented, it will never pay to deforest.

It cannot be the be all or end all, but is a fantastic first step.

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Back at the beginning of August the Prime Minister’s spokesman said UK net zero emission goal is to far away, have they done anything about it?

Allegra Stratton is the spokesperson for the British Prime Minister’s office, number 10 Downing Street. She stated that the UK target of zero emissions by 2050 was too far away. She stated that the science is clear and we need to be making changes now.

It is true that we have intermediate targets. We aim to reduce carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 and by 78% by 2035.

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The incredible mimicry powers of the Lyrebird of Australia

A range of animals have the ability to mimic sounds or sights. These range from aspects that have evolved over time (such as cuckoos, baby cheetah and many more) to those that are learnt.

A variety of birds have the capability to copy sounds that they hear. The lyrebird of Australia is perhaps one of the most incredible. There was a fantastic clip from a David Attenborough programme that showed a Lyre bird copying all sorts of noises that it heard around it.

A clip of a wild Lyrebird copying all sorts of sounds that it hears

Yet, in a recent instance, a captive lyrebird has developed the ability to copy a crying baby that it heard from its enclosure.

This is, in this instance merely rather funny for those listening, but it demonstrates the incredible talents that a lyrebird can use, to copy all the sounds it hears from around it when it is living wild.

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So, while the website is back up there is something wrong

We are hoping to return to normal services in the near future. Unfortunately, when the website returned, it had a real problem with using far more computing power than it needed before the hack.

There are no viruses, and it works fine until it hits its maximum, which forces it offline. We are hoping to fix this in the next few days.

Please bare with me

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The website was hacked! nothing lost, and wildlife tourism to Africa can return

Hello everyone! We survive

So, the website was hacked. Nothing was stolen, from what I was told they were just able to delete the website. Thankfully we back up, so we have survived.

We have added a significant extra layer of protection which should make it impossible for the same problem to arise (it had nothing to do with the attack on Facebook and WhatsApp). While we do on occasion have sharing buttons, that is the extent of our link so we were safe.

Bigger news, many red list countries have been upgraded allowing travel. These countries include

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1 in 3 of the wolves living in Wisconsin were killed after they lost protection

More than 2000 hunt licences were given out in Wisconsin for the first season of wolf hunting.

They had an aim to kill 119 wolves, yet within 3 days they had shot or traped 218 wolves and so the season was brought to an early close. Added to these official numbers it is thought that Poachers killed around 100 more wolves within the state.

The alarming thing is that these illegal hunting numbers will works out on the assumption of extreme conservative estimates.

This only happened after the trump administration declare the wolf no longer endangered – ignoring virtually all science (they still occupy a very small portion of the range that they once had in the USA). Furthermore, the States department of national resources initially banned the hunt, and it only went ahead when a pro hunting group sud and a judge ordered the ban illegal.

Alarmingly this is not the worst case. Idaho’s new rule allows up to 90% of the world’s population to be killed. In no one’s books does this constitute a rational or long-term decision.

Bizarrely in Wisconsin the current rules state that a hunt must occur each year regardless of whether it is scientifically justified. It should not be controversial to suggest that hunting quotas be based in science and not written by those who benefits from more of the animals being killed, but unfortunately in the USA, this is often how it happens.

I would hope that president Biden looks at this ridiculous decision made by trump on the way out of the door, and put in clear scientific requirements before the wolf is pushed back towards the brink of extinction. It is in the interests of those who enjoy hunting, that the hunt is sustainable, as without, the hunt will cease again in just a few years.

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What should we do when our government makes a big show of new climate commitments which are actually recycled?

The British government is continually making good noises about cutting emissions.

At the beginning of June they announced half a billion pounds for a blue planet fund – but this was merely repurposed money, from the conservative manifesto in 2019. A total of £11.6 billion has been pledged to fight climate change by the British government in this term, which means that this pledge is nothing more than deciding where to spend the money.

Is £11.6 billion spent across a parliamentary term a good amount of money. 

It is certainly a lot of money, however in 2020 the government spend over 900 billion pounds, meaning that this advertisement is roughly 0.2% of our spending each year for the next 5 years. This is not fighting for our lives and that of our children’s future. Indeed if we truly consider environmental change an existential threat to our current way of life if this is chump change.

The fact that new pledges the government make then come out.of this small amount should be an embarrassment. I suspect that it will be highlighted multiple times during the the climate conference being held later this year. I hope other countries point out the absurdity of this position.

We are an island country! We stand to have our country changed dramatically if the amount of sea level rise that is possible actually happens. The idea that we can’t even put 1% of our GDP towards fighting this is a problem and one which future generations would have a right to point to.

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Has Jair Bolsonaro just ruled out his second term?

Despite the absurdly poor behaviour, the ridiculous name-calling, one of the worst ways of handling covered in the world and a determined attack on on the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous people that live there, it may well be his attack on the supreme court that ends the horror show show of the Bolsonaro presidency.

Jair Bolsonaro is the current president of Brazil. He has been terrible for his country, but the damage he has done to the Amazon rainforest is likely to have impacts far beyond the Brazilian border

For any regular readers of this blog, you will have noticed that I have followed the presidential moves of Jair Bolsonaro over the last few years. 

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Faroe Island dolphin Hunt so disgusted is that the government will consider whether it will occur again

Once a year thousands of dolphins are herded into a cove on the Faroe Islands, and are then killed. The intention is that they are killed rapidly by locals using a knife, however many suffocate, and others in agony. This year 1400 dolphins died, many of which would have been protected as they are threatened with extinction.

Faroe islands dolphin massacre. This massacre dwarfs recent hunts.
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Could mammoth help us fight climate change

Roughly speaking, there is 3000 billion tonnes of carbon in the atmosphere. This is a huge number, but then we have to remember that this is higher than at any other time in human history. Before humans were on the planet, there were time periods where carbon concentrations in the atmosphere were dramatically higher.

While rainforest hold large amounts of carbon, so do bogs. Having lost most of its mega fauna, the colder regions of the planet do not function as they should, so these

However, the problem is that there is thought to be roughly 1600 billion tonnes locked in the permafrost around the world. If global warming continues, this permafrost will melt and release its carbon stores – increasing the carbon concentration by around 50%.

This is obviously a point at which a significant amount of planet warming will be inescapable.

So what needs to happen?

In the past great mammals behaved in such ways that it largely kept this carbon locked in the soil. There were far fewer trees, vast grasslands often covering bogs.

If mammoths were to return, perhaps alongside woolly rhinoceros and bison the same processes could return allowing a far greater quantity of carbon to remain in the permafrost soil.

Will this happen? Who knows, though with the increasing quantity of carbon known to be locked in the Siberian soil, it seems worth giving it a go.

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