Tag: National Park

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African elephant populations have stabilized in their Southern African homes

African elephant populations have risen and fallen incredibly fast over the last few centuries. It is estimated that as much as 20 million Savanah elephants roamed Africa in the year 1800, but in 1979 just 600,000 remained, and in 2016 just 415,000 live in Africa. At that point, over 100,000 had been poached in the previous decade.

Unfortunately, it is not merely a case of making more parks. Elephants are incredibly intelligent, but so called fortress reserves, are not good enough. Indeed, less well protected reserves, that are linked together by migration corridors, are far better for the elephant population, than the aforementioned fortress reserves.

These corridors have multiple benefits, from allowing elephants to leave overpopulated areas, to being able to move to places where food and water are available. It also means that the elephants can leave areas of heavy poaching, for instance the Virunga national park, where elephants virtually disappeared in the 1990s, but have started to return from Queen Elizabeth national park in Uganda, across the border.

Where animals cannot move, one often has a boom and bust kind of population dynamic. Now, it should be noted, that this is not always easy, as migration corridors are rarely completely empty of humans, so there is more conflict in these areas, never-the-less, it is clear that these corridors are essential, if these elephant populations are to survive into the long-term. Of course, it also leads to an interesting situation, where virtually all of the huge ecosystems in Africa are along borders, as this allows more than one country to share the cost.

Of perhaps greater worry, this population of 415,000 is both the African savannah and African forest elephant. Yet these two are completely separate species, African forest elephants are nicknamed the gardeners of the forest, and it is questionable whether it can survive as effectively in the long-term without their recovery. The African forest elephant had a population of 26 million in 1800, it is unclear how many are left, but what is clear, is that their population has collapsed in the last few decades.

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The odd job of a pangolin carer

Have you heard of a pangolin? Would you recognize one? For many people, the pangolin is unfortunately known, only as a family of species, which have been poached for their scales (made of keratin, and with no medicinal basis) such that of the 8 species, half are endangered and the other half critically endangered. Click on any of the mentions of pangolin on this page to be taken to our pangolin family species page. This poaching is so extreme, that some estimate that this family of species are the most trafficked in the world.

Pangolin are very hard to take care of, which is why there are so few in zoos around the world. Indeed, the vast majority of even wildlife guides in somewhere like the Kruger have never seen a pangolin, even if they are known to exist in the park. A pangolin carers job, is to look after a pangolin, take it into the bush, and find places with many ants and termites, and generally get it ready to return to the wild.

An incredibly rare sighting of a pangolin within the Kruger national park
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Restoring a DRC reserve from a ‘triangle of death’ back into a thriving wildlife reserve

Upemba national park had virtually all its large mammals poached, but it is coming back (below is a 3 minute video about this decline).

Just a couple of years ago, 16 members of the Bakata Katanga militia suprised a party of 4 rangers within the park (close to the Upemba base camp). Lying in the south-east of the DRC, this reserve once teamed with life. Tens of thousands of elephants, alongside lins zebra and many other species roamed free.

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‘Sky islands’ in Africa are producing more new species than anywhere else

Sky islands like this one Mount Lico in Mozambique

Sky islands are found across much of Africa. Our experience of sky islands, occurred within the Udzungwa national park in Tanzania. This national park protects a large portion of the Eastern arc mountains. – a chain of mountains which run across Eastern Tanzania.

Africa started drying out around 5500 years ago, and much changed at this point, including a great expansion of the Sahara. However, what is relevant here, is that in many parts of the continent, this caused the rainforests to retreat. More rain falls on higher ground, so you were left with a situation where the tops of hills and mountains remain forested, but the valleys become savannahs. Perhaps one of the most notable effects of this, was to split the worlds mountain gorillas into two populations, one in the Bwindi impenetrable forest in Uganda and the other in the Virunga ecosystem. At their closest point, these two protected areas are only 20km apart (though driving between the two are likely to take longer, as visitor facilities are not at these points). Unfortunately, this space between the two areas has a large human population. This means that the two mountain gorilla populations were stuck on their respective mountain homes, relatively close together, but with no way to cross the gap between.

Not researched until recently, there is a strip of mountains that runs from northern Mozambique to Malawi’s Mount Mulanje. As with the eastern arc mountains, rainforest was preserved on these peaks. These were finally given scientific attention by an internatiional team in the South East Africa Montane Archipelago study. While archipelagos are usually used to refer to a group of islands, it seems apt here. Among these mountains, there are around 30 fragmented pockets of grasslands and evergreen forests that have been largely cut off from each other.

This is perfect for housing unique collections of species, that have found themselves cut off from other habitat that they once roamed. This study, identified 90 species from amphibians(11), reptiles(22), birds(3), mammals(4), butterflies(39) and freshwater crabs(6), alongside 127 species of plant, not found anywhere else on earth. These sky islands are even being considered for their own ecoregion.

Big or small, it is important to protect these little ecological islands, and it should be possible to have tourists visit to give an extra income to locals.

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What do we do when carbon offset markets collide with land rights

Stable glaciers are very effective carbon sinks, though if they then melt, they tend to loose all their stored carbon

The problem with carbon offsets, entirely depends on how they are used. When carbon offset money is given to a local project, but many try to buy an area from locals entirely. Kenya currently hosts 11 glaciers within Mount Kenya national park.

The problem is that, many of these projects require a rainforest to be left standing or something similar. Without buying from locals, and an income from the carbon offset to support the people who will loose access to the resource, it is highly unlikely that the deforestation rate will fall at all.

Much of these offset programs are being set up in Africa, on a continent which has the least responsibility for climate change, and yet local people are loosing the rights to land that they have lived on for millennia.

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Palm oil deforestation continues in the Leuser ecosystem

Ulu Masen forest, Aceh, Indonesia photo credit:Abbie Trayler-Smith CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Leuser ecosystem is one of the most biodiverse in the world, and is the only place where tiger orangutans elephants and rhino can all be found in the same place (and this ignores various special species such as bears and gibbons among many others, which still call this ecosystem home).

This deforestation, carried out to create palm oil plantations, is even occurring within a national park – somewhere where the rules means that a plantation cannot be given a licence. 2 new palm oil processing mills have sprung up near the deforesting concessions: keeping these supplied may well, now be driving further deforestation. Below is a 219 second documentary on this fascinating ecosystem.

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Wildcat kittens born outside captivity in Cairngorms

Wildcats are native to the UK, but have been pushed to the brink of extinction by hybridisation with native cats – which come from the wildcats from places like Israel in the middle east. As a result of this, as well as trying to remove the feral domestic cats, and their descendants, they are trying to create pockets of Scotland, which would allow these cats to recover.

The natural behaviour of a British wildcat when meeting a feral cat, is to kill it. However, as these animals become rarer, even rare breeding events, can threaten the survival of the whole species. This behaviour also means that with careful planning, we should be able to reintroduce them into other parts of the country. There are a range of other wild predators lost over the last couple of millennia – and I hope to see the others return, but it is thrilling to know that a wildcat is once again living and breeding in its native habitat of the Scottish mountains.

These wildcats are thought to be the first born wild in Scotland for 5 years, after 19 wildcats bred in the Highland wildlife park, were released into the Cairngorms national park.

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Beavers have been returned to the South-down national park after a 600 year absense

Having been released near Petersfield in the South of England, they will be tracked by a team of academics, to make sure that they survive and thrive.

These beavers will help with the rejuvenation of a wetland area on the river Meon. Currently, the area consists of a straight section of the river, with a sort of duck pond beside it, however, once the beavers get to work, this will change dramatically – turning the pond into a series of ponds, and making it suitable to house a wide variety of British wildlife.

As found elsewhere in the UK, the beavers are likely to have a rapid impact on water quality (for the better). A second pair were introduced to an estate near Basingstoke just last year (they had their first kits in September this year).

As in other parts of the country, these beavers will spread out from where they have been reintroduced (if allowed) and are likely to link up with other populations, such as the Devon beavers, within a small number of years – it seems likely that without a sustained attempt to remove the beaver once again, it is only a matter of time, before they spread to all parts of the UK.

Apart from the joy of knowing they are there, there are many positive impacts of their presence: they will reduce flooding (areas that they do flood with their dams, are places which we likely should not have built anyway), clean water and create habitats for many other creatures. Perversely, they have also been shown to help forests recover (by creating a mosaic of different habitats) and therefore should be a positive for the forestry industry in the UK, despite fears to the contrary.

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The greater glider, looks like a cross between a koala and a possum, but it is in danger, and if Australia does not change course it may be lost

Recognized as an incredibly popular species, with a great deal of conservation effort being put into its survival. The Queensland conservation council is urging the state government is calling for its remaining habitat to be protected, as logging continues.

Calls are being made to create a park to protect the species.

The Miles government promised (in June) to turn 50,000-60,000 hectares of high value ecosystems into a greater glider national park. Unfortunately, this plan gave detailed listings of where timber would be extracted, but did not include clear maps for areas to be protected. Quite understandably, conservationists are calling foul – it is not possible to deforest an area, and then call for its conservation.

The population of this species is estimated to have halved in just the last 20 years, which should officially declares it as vulnerable to extinction (it is true that this is often decided over 10 years, but still is a very bad sign). Other issues, is fragmentation of their forests – they are generally very unwilling to come down to ground level to travel to other trees. They can stay in the air for around 100m, but this means that a gap greater than this can isolate the population. They require eucalypt forests (this is almost all they eat, with plenty of large tree hollows to make home, and retreat into.

Will Australia step up, or will this species get pushed into planned extinction? Time will tell, though given Australias track record, we should not expect big things without a great deal of pressure from conservation groups, and publicity on what is happening, from around the world.

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On the founding of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, locals were pushed out -they now have the right to return, what will happen

Kahuzi-Biega National Park was established in 1937 by the Belgium colonial rulers and then expanded in 1975. It now covers 6000 square km or 2300 square miles. Roughly 13000 Batwa were cleared out of the area to make way for the park (along with other people who had settled more recently).

Continue reading “On the founding of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, locals were pushed out -they now have the right to return, what will happen”
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