Nature Ramble

This week, we’re back in Britain.

A sweet story.

We’re looking at otters, fascinating animals. We have them in Brazil too, I have often seen them during treks in the Pantanal. To me they are like a cat who likes water, playful.

Sad to see the tide turn against the otter

Although some claim the otter population is getting out of hand, I will always love them

European otters: three-month-old male and female cubs. Photograph: Nicole Duplaix/guardian.co.uk

I love otters. I recall my father’s excitement at seeing one glistening on a rock beside the sea on the west coast of Scotland in the summer of 1982. When I lived in a cottage beside the river Usk in my 30s, I used to rise before dawn in the hope of glimpsing the resident otter bitch teaching her pups to fish. Even now, I still get a thrill stumbling across a fish carcass, the debris of an otter’s dinner, rotting on a riverbank.

I was surprised to learn recently that otters are now so numerous our waterways cannot sustain them. At least, this is what Brian Dodson of Waen Wen Fishery in North Wales believes. His legal case made the news last week. Dodson claims the Environment Agency reintroduced otters to a nearby river without informing him and that the otters ate all the stocked fish in his ponds.

This is not an isolated incident: the impact of otter predation on the multimillion-pound inland fisheries business is a serious ecological issue across Britain. The call for an otter cull is increasing by day.

From the middle ages until the middle of the 20th century, the otter was akin to vermin, detested by fishermen and hunted with hounds, but it was the widespread use of the agricultural insecticide DDT that made extinction a real prospect 35 years ago. In 1978, the otter was added to the list of protected species and a PR makeover followed. Henry Williamson’s novel Tarka the Otter was made into a film in 1979, while the Otter Trust initiated a captive breeding programme. Since then, numbers have burgeoned.

 

(I have taken the liberty of replacing the Guardian video clip, because they never seem to ’embed’. If you want to see their clip, use The Guardian link below – AV)

Some would say we should have let nature takes its course, but that has not been an option for a long time. A very long time. Since about 4,000BC, man has effected the greatest changes in the “personality” of Britain and a perfectly functioning ecosystem is a thing of the distant past. We have felled forests, drained fens, dammed rivers and ploughed fields, modelling the landscape to our needs. We have introduced and eradicated the fauna to suit our desires.

Managing nature is, though, extremely hazardous. The red kite was hunted by gamekeepers down to a handful of breeding pairs in the rural fastness of mid-Wales by the early 1900s. Fast-forward a century and red kites are common again, following an effective conservation campaign. They have even become a motorway hazard: a cloud of red kites circling in a great vortex above the M40, like a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds, is a common distraction to drivers.

My pet hate is the North American grey squirrel, introduced in 1876 to brighten up the parklands of Victorian gentlemen. We now spend a fortune annually trying to control grey squirrels.

The European beaver, the first native extinct mammal to be officially returned to the wild in Scotland, has recently caused huge controversy. The beaver is spreading south, where people are emphatic it will have to be shot.

In the complexity of our dominant relationship with nature, we have created a quagmire for ourselves. Thus, one generation’s vermin is another generation’s protected species, and vice versa.

I shall continue to treasure every rare encounter with an otter. I certainly won’t be laying any traps to snare otters along the Usk, but I appreciate that my son might.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Image: Art Spire

Pthirus pubis … at risk from ‘deforestation’

Yes, another creature is heading for extinction.

Hardly surprising, we hear this word so often, extinct this, nearly extinct that.

Big cats, polar bears, pandas and Javanese Rhinos, all have extinction looming over the horizon.

But…

Is there a creature whose demise we wouldn’t lament?

Are pubic lice in danger of extinction?

Some doctors have suggested that modern pubic-hair grooming practices, such as the Brazilian wax, are destroying the natural habitat of Pthirus pubis

Pthirus pubis … at risk from ‘deforestation’. Photograph: Alamy

Pity the poor pubic louse. Every few years, a story comes along predicting its demise, most recently a Bloomberg article that blames the increasing number of women – and men – who remove their pubic hair. Think of it as deforestation on a massive, global scale.

It wasn’t much different in 2006, when doctors Nicola Armstrong and Janet Wilson, two sexual health specialists, in a letter titled “Did the Brazilian kill the pubic louse?”, raised the possible link between the decreasing number of people coming to their clinics with public lice, and increase in the number with shaved, trimmed or waxed pubic hair. Where does this leave the woman who has so far resisted all patriarchal and capitalist pressures to wax her bits until they resemble a child’s, but would like to do her bit for parasite annihilation? Tricky.

 

Read more

Grunge Rock… Green???

Navicula to campaign for orangutan, tropical rainforest in Canada

Navicula – Grunge Rock band from Indonesia

The orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), one of Indonesia’s most endangered species, deserves and requires attention from all parties in the country as they are facing a variety of threats that could lead to their extinction.

Navicula is one of the most concerned groups of young musicians in the country. The grunge rock band is actively launching campaigns to protect and preserve the rare animal through their musical endeavors.

“The orangutan’s habitat in Sumatra and Kalimantan has been gradually destroyed by the expansion of palm oil plantations,” the band’s guitarist, Gede Robi Supriyanto, said.

The massive development of palm oil plantations has also degraded tropical rainforests on both islands.

“Forest destruction is the most crucial environmental issue we are now facing,” he said.

To launch their campaign internationally, the band will perform a song entitled “Orangutan” at the international music festival Envol et Macadam, one of the most prominent annual alternative rock, punk, grunge and metal music festivals in the world, in Quebec, Canada, on Sept. 7 and 8.

Read more

Warning: Some of the images in this video clip are a little disturbing.

Now grunge rock is not entirely my ‘thing.’ In fact, it is about as far removed from being my ‘thing’ as is possible.

But the band is to be applauded for its conscious awareness on this issue.

Good luck at the music festival!

Good luck di musik festival yang!

Monday Moaning

‘Palmed Off’: Is Your Dinner Killing Orangutans?

Palm Oil: The Other Kind of Oil Spill

Although it is difficult to draw a direct relationship between the growth of palm oil and the conversion of forests, roughly 66 percent of Indonesia’s palm oil plantations and 87 percent of Malaysia’s plantations have involved documented forest conversion.

Palm oil plantations are used to harvest and process palm oil, an edible plant oil derived from the fleshy middle layer of the fruit of the oil palm. Not unlike other vegetable oils, palm oil acts as a cooking ingredient in both tropical cooking and the larger commercial food industry, and may be prevalent in products purchased by up to 75 percent of everyday Western consumers.

As of 2010, it was the most widely used and consumed edible oil in the world, holding approximately 32 percent of the oil market.

Often listed discreetly as “vegetable oil”, palm oil is found in some 200 international brands, including McDonald’s, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Girl Scout cookies, Kentucky Fried Chicken and KFC packaging, Avon personal care products, Clinique cosmetics and skincare, Tim Tams, Mars Incorporated chocolate and confectionary, and in Mary Kay, Covergirl, Lancôme, Sephora and Urban Decay cosmetics and face washes—just to name a few.

Because of trapping, hunting, and deforestation, wild orangutan populations have fallen 70 percent over the last 60 years.

Is your Big Mac really worth the lives of this parent and child? (Photo: Anup Shah)

When I found Max, he couldn’t walk. He was disorientated and terrified, and the burns to his feet and body were severe. He was one of several hundred orangutans displaced by forest clearing outside Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park in 2006. He had become separated from his family after plantation workers cruelly herded escaping orangutans back to the burning jungle—and away from precious plantation land.

No more than one year old, Max had fought successfully against the trapping, hunting and forest clearing industries that endangered his short life. But with one last breath, he finally lost his battle, becoming one of several thousand orangutans killed annually by a barbaric agricultural farming process, and becoming a victim of a different kind of oil spill: the trade in palm oil.

Palm oil monoculture is “palming” off orangutans in giant numbers, pushing the once abundant species closer than ever to extinction. Today, less than 60,000 orangutans exist in the wild and scientists and biologists conclude that the species’ numbers have disappeared by more than 70 percent over the last 60 years as a combined result of trapping, hunting, and deforestation.

These same scientists predict the species could be extinct by 2023.

Deforestation forest fires—used as a method of land clearing for the construction or expansion of palm oil plantations—run a high risk of unmanageability and typically burn out of control in the often dry and dense conditions of Indonesia and Malaysia, irreversibly degrading the important habitats of tigers, elephants and endangered orangutans like Max.

Do the Green Thing for Orangutans: “Palm Off” Your Palm Oil

Turning the cheap and popular commodity into a commercial liability is the surest way to safeguard the future for orangutans and other species affected by commercial palm oil production—and it’s easy!

1) Look out for palm oil by keeping an eye on the label: Ice cream, pet food, cosmetics, chocolate, chips, and personal and household items with the highest percentage of saturated and transfats or containing stearic, isopropyl or elais guineensis acids are products that may contain significant amounts of palm oil. Researching and eliminating items guilty of endangering orangutans—and choosing sustainable alternatives—will contribute greatly to the lessening in the supply and demand of palm oil products and safeguarding orangutan habitats and populations.

2) Raise your political voice: Lobbying and petitioning Indonesian, Malaysian, and Papuan New Guinean governments to enforce environmental and wildlife protection law is a quick and simple way of applying political pressure on the worldwide need for palm oil regulation. Your signature on active petitions will call for the fruition of strict regulations on existing palm oil plantations in both Western and developing countries, forcing owners and workers to comply with standards of sustainability and animal welfare.

3) Get active for orangutans: Existing in abundance, orangutan conservation organisations—including the World Wildlife Fund, the Australian Orangutan Project, the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme, Orangutan Foundation International, DeFORESTaction, the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project, and the Orangutan Conservancy—need volunteers, symbolic adoptive parents and generous donors to support important initiatives seeking to care for orphaned, displaced and wild orangutans. Learn more about becoming an activist for orangutans and volunteering.

Will you stop using products that contain palm oil?

Source: Take Part

Opinion:

Another case of First World consumer needs taking advantage of Third World nations.

The First World is insatiable, it is raping the planet without regard or remorse.

Consumerism is the worst form of pollution.

Nature Ramble

How wildlife is thriving in the Korean peninsula’s demilitarised zone

The forces that lock humans out of the DMZ have allowed other species to thrive. Could a remnant of violent conflict become the symbol of a greener, more peaceful future?

Manchurian cranes with their distinctive black and white feathers fly low over fields in Chulwon valley, just south of the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Photograph: AP

DMZ

A thin green ribbon threads its way across the Korean Peninsula. Viewed from space, via composite satellite images, the winding swath clearly demarcates the political boundary between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Its visual impact is especially strong in the west, where it separates the gray, concrete sprawl of Seoul from the brown, deforested wastes south of Kaesong. In the east, it merges with the greener landscapes of the Taebaek Mountain Range and all but disappears.

Amur leopard cat, Prionailurus bengalensis euptilurus - Image: Scientific American

From the ground, the narrow verdant band manifests as an impenetrable barrier of overgrown vegetation enclosed by layers of fences topped by menacing concertina wire and dotted with observation posts manned by heavily armed soldiers. That a place so steeped in violence still teems with life seems unimaginable. And yet, the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, is home to thousands of species that are extinct or endangered elsewhere on the peninsula. It is the last haven for many of these plants and animals and the centre of attention for those intent on preserving Korea’s rich ecological heritage.

Once known as the “land of embroidered rivers and mountains”, the Korean Peninsula has experienced almost continual conflict for over 100 years, resulting in a severely degraded natural environment. International competition for control over the peninsula’s resources left Korea in a precarious position at the start of the twentieth century. The Japanese occupation between 1905 and 1945 brought with it radically increased exploitation of mineral and other resources, resulting in massive deforestation, pollution and general environmental decline.

Since at least the 1940s, deforestation for fuel wood and clearing for agricultural land has caused significant erosion of the area’s mountains and hills and contributed to the siltation of its rivers, streams and lakes. The 1950 to 1953 war ranged across the entire peninsula, subjecting it to widespread devastation that destroyed cities, roads, forests and even mountains. And, in the 1960s and 1970s, unchecked industrialisation further undermined the peninsula’s ecological health, causing air, water, and soil pollution.

The relative health of the DMZ now stands in stark contrast to the failing ecosystems in both North and South Korea.

White Napped Crane - Image: Julie Larsen Maher © WCS

Created in 1953 during tense armistice negotiations, Korea’s DMZ is at once one of the most dangerous places on earth and one of the safest. For humans, its thousands of landmines and the millions of soldiers arrayed along its edges pose an imminent threat. But the same forces that prevent humans from moving within the nearly 400 square miles of the DMZ encourage other species to thrive. Manchurian or red-crowned cranes and white-naped cranes are among the DMZ’s most famous and visible denizens. Nearly 100 species of fish, perhaps 45 types of amphibians and reptiles and over 1,000 different insect species are also supposed to exist in the protected zone.

Scientists estimate that over 1,600 types of vascular plants and more than 300 species of mushrooms, fungi and lichen are thriving in the DMZ. Mammals such as the rare Amur goral, Asiatic black bear, musk deer and spotted seal inhabit the DMZ’s land and marine ecosystems. There are even reports of tigers, believed extinct on the peninsula since before Japanese occupation, roaming the DMZ’s mountains.

Much of the biodiversity in the DMZ is speculative, extrapolated from spotty scientific studies conducted in the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) that forms an additional protective barrier along the DMZ’s southern edge. Approximate though these studies are, the DMZ’s ecological promise is great enough to spur many people to action.

Source: The Guardian Read more

South Korea Seeks to Protect Endangered Species in Demilitarized Zone