Wildlife and conservation new, wild travel information and links for booking
Bluefin tuna is usually thought of quite an exotic fish species. Our desire for eating tuna has been a real problem as it has pushed many different species of tuna far too close to extension.
Going to a national park to see wild animals in distant places, can often be the holiday of a lifetime. These trips are essential,to give a financial incentive for the hosting countries to look after their wildlife.
However, in much of the world there is not vast national parks where humans are absent. In much of the world wild animals live alongside humans. While it is true, that lion and elephant are rarely animals that people tolerate living nearby roaming free, there are still fascinating and often exciting animals living amongst us.
For those who’ve read Jane goodalls original book, you will have recognised the title. In the shadow of Man tells the early days of the chimpanzee study Jane Goodall mantas in Gombe stream Tanzania. While when she first arrived, the rainforest around Gombe stream stretched in all directions, by the time she wrote through a window, the sequel, Gombe stream was an island of forest surrounded by human expansion.
The aim of this section is to provide an extra source of income for those who hosts wild animals,and at the same time a chance to get a truly wild encounter for the person visiting. My hope is to make financial value of these little island wilderness years too high for them to be destroyed. Imagine a situation, where are a South African farmer puts up a small cottage somewhere on their land and people can pay to come and use it, to see the cheetah that he shares his farm with. All he needs to do is escort them to the ‘guest house’, explain any safety precautions, and then get on with his main job. At the end of the period, perhaps the next morning, he escorts them back off his land, and has pocketed a decent amount of money for very little work. In this world, if the cheetah occasionally kills some of his livestock, he now has an income to give him compensation for the loss.
This currently only has a few uk links, however hopefully it will spread fast. Do contact me if you have an place you would like to list
Giraffe survival is in danger: according to the giraffe conservation Foundation giraffe numbers have fallen from 140000 and 80000 in the last 20-years. Yet other organisations suggest that the current number of wild giraffes is only 68000.
How can we possibly let such a unique looking animal disappear from the world. Giraffes are a common sight in zoos, it is often one of the young child’s most liked animals. How can we let this happen? If we’re not careful we are going to have to explain it to our children’s children.
Continue reading “Are we allowing the silent extinction of giraffes”it would appear that the UK and the USA addiction to plastic is worse than any other countries in the world. As well as general waste the USA also comes between third and eleventh (depending on what’s included) in terms of the amount of their plastic that ends up in the marine ecosystem.
Continue reading “UK and the USA biggest source of waste plastic in the world”It is a widely recognised fact, that beavers reduce flooding. The main way that they do this is my slowing the flow of water through the river system. This means that you don’t end up getting a flash floods to the same degree. It is true that beaver dams can cause local flooding. However the way that beavers create dams, this localized flooding is generally small in the heart of a valley (where there is a water course anyway). My recent trip to Devon to see their beavers highlighted this. Despite the stream running alongside a farmers field, through a small area of woodland, and the beavers having created a series of dams within the woods, the farmers field was unaffected. Now while there are plenty of places where building has occurred in foolish places, beaver dams will reduce flooding damage in the country as a whole.
So why is the NFU against this. This is a good question, indeed the NFU another organisations like it essentially been against all forms of re-wilding in their entirety.
It is a simple fact that’s farming in the UK has been horrifically bad for the environment.this is been in the form of killing off what they call pests, both in terms of insects and mammals, runoff of pesticides and insecticides from their farms and the large eradication of wild spaces between farms.
Farms are given a large amount of money by the government for looking after their land so that it benefits the environment. We must make some actually do something for that money, and make it clear to the NFU that is not the only organisation to be thought of when trying to improve our biodiversity.
It is true that in small places beavers may cause localized flooding. These places can be dealt with relatively simply, however for many of these places the simple reason is that land that was once given over to floodplains are now being used for something else.
We need to re-wild, our country and ecosystem will be more capable of coping with global warming if it is operating as it did more like before humans arrived. Farming voices are loud but our representatives must not give them more of a voice than they deserve. The country’s general population is forcefully behind the majority of re-wilding projects, particularly when it comes to beavers. It should also be noted that the biodiversity that beavers bring is likely to be highly beneficial two farms in the surrounding area.
Australia is one of a growing list of countries where global warming is incredibly obvious. Unfortunately the current leading Australian parliamentary party is full of people who deny that humans have any impact on the environment, this is very useful for them as a large amount of money in the country comes from coal mining.
Given the huge amount of sun and the large space in Australia, it is perfect for running it’s country off solar, but due to the extraordinary cheap coal they have not made as much progress on this front as they should have done.
Of course this is not helped by the messages denying any need for emission reductions coming from senior politicians.
Scott Morrison the prime minister is fully understanding (or at least said he is) of the need for change in Australia,unfortunately he and other senior members have spent many years denying this.
What is stupid is that with the incredible amount of solar energy that hits the country Australia, they should have the ability to go carbon neutral long before anyone else.
At the moment Australia has around twice as many climate change denies as any other country in the world. This is particularly bizarre, as global warming is more obvious in Australia than almost any other country on earth, with parts of the country becoming impossible to live in.
There is a similar pattern to elsewhere, where are the young offaly recognising the danger to their future, however the older people (the generation who are at fault) deny the science and ignore the signs.
It is a sad fact, that many first world countries deny the obvious facts around them. Although these countries clearly have more to lose by greening the world (as they have grown rich on the old system), it seems old as generally these countries are the ones with the well-known universities, from which of the player climate change research comes out.
One can only hope, that economics forces Australia to act sooner rather than later.
It looks like Biden is going to squeak a victory.
Why wasn’t it a landslide?
In many ways Biden couldn’t have had more favorable circumstances. In the middle of an epidemic – clearly poorly handled by the sitting president, and with a significant crash of the economy (which was doing reasonable badly before).
Continue reading “What does the near draw between Biden and Trump mean?”I am writing this article before the election has been called against Trump, though given biden now has over 250 electoral college votes, and a path to 270 appears to be quite simple, with multiple options.
What does this election mean for America and the rest of the world?
Continue reading “So the end of the Trump era? now what”For centuries game birds such as pheasant and partridge have been imported or bred in the uk and then each year released in their millions for people to shoot for sport.
Now shooting estates will need a license to release birds on any estate near nature reserves.
At the moment around 60 million birds are released each year. it is thought that this new rule will reduce numbers by around 7.5 million.
Pheasants each native vegetation, insects and reptiles, as well as damaging the makeup of the soil with their droppings. they also increase the populations of foxes and other scavengers to unhealthy levels, and these then also feast on other wildlife.
Not surprisingly, the shooting interests have been highly critical. However shooting estates, have long claimed environmental benefits of their operations, and often paid for these by government bodies such as DEFRA. Ending this travesty and making these groups truly be good for our ecosystems are log overdue.
One of the big arguments is that lead ammunition must be banned anywhere near reserves. It is telling that a parliamentary group for shooting and conservation, was merely concerned that this doesn’t damage the shooting industry. Clearly, this body should first loose its conservation credentials and secondly despite demanding an evidence based rule for any changes, perhaps we could demand similar standards for current practices. We must force shooting estates to serve the environment as well as the wealthy small part of the British population that actually pays for their services.
When humans arrived in north america there were many wolves. We cannot say how many for sure, but it is thought that there were between 250,000 and 2 million.
Continue reading “Trump administration has ended gray wolfs endangered species protection”