It’s time Scotland took on landed interests over animal protections
Mountain hares winning protected species in Scotland was an amazing achievement for Alison Johnstone and the Greens in Scotland. At least 26,000 mountain hares are killed per year, a number which is most likely to be an under-estimate. The backlash from estates was intense. It always is. They do not appear to like their behaviours exposed to the public.
Week after week we hear of raptors (often protected species) killed on estates in Scotland and the rest of the UK, in particular Yorkshire and Derbyshire. This article outlines the need to push harder against large estates and the power they wield in Parliament. Too many estates persecute native wildlife and have done for centuries, usually for the benefit of non-native birds which will be shot (a sport paid for and often subsidised) and agricultural animals. I believe it is also about power and greed.
Land owners have a responsibility to stop and change this outdated approach. We can’t let the systematic destruction of our wildlife on these estates slide any longer. It’s insidious and pervasive, and needs to be stopped.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18542803.time-scotland-took-landed-interests-animal-protections/
This Was The Decade Climate Scientists Stopped Being Polite | Gizmodo Australia
Scientists’ ‘politeness’ went on for far too long. If you know a truth – one that will change the world if rampant consumerism and greed continue unchecked – you do something about it, especially if you’re backed by science and academia. The people I can’t forgive are past politicians and some scientists who said little and did nothing while knowing our natural world was doomed. This applies to consumerism and capitalism, deforestation, predator persecution, climate, whaling and overfishing and more. Where were they? For 30 years from childhood I looked around and saw chaos coming and no one in power doing anything about it. Only charities like FoE, Greenpeace (back in the day) and WDC were speaking out. Too late now I fear. Humans are our own worst enemies. Too few listening to science, logic and fact, and the rest too easily swayed by rhetoric, propaganda, brainwashing and greed.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/01/this-was-the-decade-climate-scientists-stopped-being-polite/
Bolsonaro’s election is catastrophic news for Brazil’s indigenous tribes
Bolsonaro’s election is catastrophic news for Brazil’s indigenous tribes.
Bolsonaro plans to deregulate deforestation. Since the election in Brazil and his ecocidal rhetoric, deforestation in Brazil doubled in two months.
Bolsonaro is quoted as saying:
“It’s my advice and I do it: I evade all the taxes I can.”
“I would never rape you, because you don’t deserve it.”
“I will not fight against it nor discriminate, but if I see two men kissing on the street, I’ll beat them up.”
“I would be incapable of loving a gay son. I wouldn’t be a hypocrite. I prefer that he die in an accident than show up with some guy with a moustache.”
“She doesn’t deserve it [to be raped] because she’s very bad, because she’s very ugly. She’s not my type, I’d never rape her. I’m not a rapist, but if I was, I wouldn’t rape her because she doesn’t deserve it.”
“There will not be a centimeter demarcated for indigenous or quilombo reservations.”
As this article states, “The country’s 900,000-strong indigenous people are among the many minority groups Jair Bolsonaro has frequently targeted with vitriolic hostility. “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated their Indians,” he once said. If he enacts his campaign promises, the first peoples of Brazil face catastrophe; in some cases, genocide.
There are around 100 uncontacted tribes in Brazil, more than anywhere else on earth, and all are in peril unless their land is protected. Bolsonaro has threatened to close down FUNAI, the government’s indigenous affairs department, which is charged with protecting indigenous land. Already battling against budget cuts, if it disappears uncontacted peoples face annihilation.”
What has happened to us? When did the lunatics take over?
When nature says ‘Enough!’: the river that appeared overnight in Argentina
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/01/argentina-new-river-soya-beans
“Until the early 1990s, the Morro basin was a patchwork of water-absorbing forests and grasslands, but they are mostly gone, replaced by maize and soya beans.”
It may be a good move to cut down on cattle ranching worldwide (to prevent deforestation, to cut back on carbon and methane production, to limit the ongoing human health crisis caused by increasing meat consumption, to avoid further water pollution from farm runoff, to limit predator persecution, and to spare countless animals the endless cycle of slaughter), but an irony here is that soya beans, the hero of every vegan and vegetarian, come at a terrible price. Deforestation and clearing for cattle ranching has been replaced with deforestation in favour of this detrimental monoculture of soya bean farming.
If course, it is true that the humble soya bean is the new answer to reducing or cutting out meat consumption, but the majority of this soya and maize is being grown to become feed for the animal agriculture industry, something the attached article completely fails to mention. Animal agriculture is literally eating up our planet in countless ways.
Less than a third of Argentina’s rainforest remains. Losing that much established forest means losing deep networks of tree roots which naturally absorb large amounts of water from underground aquifers. The result is a huge new river appearing on land as has happened in Argentina. Why is this a surprise now? There are myriad experts in these fields worldwide who would have known this was a likely outcome as a result of mass deforestation. Why aren’t scientists involved in such massive economic and environmental processes and decisions?
Brazil has been in the grip of terrible deforestation for decades. With a changing climate, increased precipitation and otherwise poor substrate, deforestation in these countries inevitably means more landslides and more flooding, and perhaps more new rivers. We are drastically altering the landscape of the planet, destroying habitats and disrupting entire ecosystems.
Countless wildlife have lost their homes during this shift to soya bean plantations and deforestation, something that cannot ever be undone. When are governments of countries with such invaluable habitats going to quit putting profit before protecting and preserving their and the world’s most precious and vulnerable natural heritage? Rainforests are incredibly diverse, most are quite ancient, and they are so important to the world in terms of carbon sinks and wildlife biodiversity – they must be protected.
In 30 years asian-pacific fish will be gone and then we’re next
Turns out there aren’t plenty of fish in the sea.
Recent evidence suggests humans evolved their big brains not on a diet of red meat after all, but on a diet of fish. Yes, fish is a great source of protein for all animals. Yes, unaffected by microplastics, pollutants and heavy metals, fish is good for us, ‘us’ being the ever-increasing human population of 7.6 billion and rising (and let’s face it, fish is no longer safe to eat).
Plenty of marine conservation organisations, such as Sea Shepherd, have been saying for decades that while we allow industrial trawlers and fleets of thousands of unregulated fishing boats to ravage the oceans with trawler nets and insidious ghost nets, fish stocks will collapse and there will be devastating implications for all marine life and human populations that rely on fish as a source of protein. Even some marine conservation orgs hadn’t fully understood the role that overfishing plays in the decimation of the oceans – and its impact on local human populations – and are still not condemning overfishing or advising their relatively affluent members to cut out fish from their diets as an effective way of ending their contribution to the terrifying problem of global overfishing.
Anyone can stop contributing to ending overfishing by not eating fish, wherever you are in the world, and by writing to relevant businesses and governmental departments (and your MP), and by boycotting companies which contribute to global (and local) overfishing.
Peer reviewed study shows non-lethal deterrents effectively protect livestock from wolf predation
The science is there. Will governments and hunters pay any attention to it?
Wolf trapping – A diary of moving from East London to Montana
A fascinating read. I will never, ever understand hunters of any kind. Their logic and ethics are utterly skewed.
“But I learn that Jim Posewitz is that uniquely Western American who has made it his life’s work to improve ‘the image of hunting with an emphasis on fair chase ethics’ and has focused ‘on putting hunters at the forefront of our nation’s conservation ethic.’ He’s exactly the sort of person I find impossible to understand. Is it just semantics? When he talks of conservation, does he mean the conservation of a way of life based on when the trapper ruled and the West was won by guys who slept under the stars dreaming of the dead wolves at their feet the next morning? As Rick Bass says about hunters in his book The Ninemile Wolves, ‘there’s nothing harder to stereotype than a “hunter”.’ I would add that this is also true of trappers: they claim to love the wilderness, they call themselves sportsmen, outdoorsmen, and yet they are happy inflicting pain on animals in return for the price of their fur. Most hunters eat their prey, whereas trappers do it for money.”
Humboldt – the greatest Ecologist we’ve never heard of?
Born in 1769, Humboldt observed deforestation and its effects in the Amazon rainforests 200 years ago and wrote about them; he was possibly the first person to express concern for the negative effects of anthropogenic activity on the natural environment. He wrote of nature as a “living whole” and a web or tapestry – all life as connected – a new concept at that time.
Humboldt wrote about soil erosion as a result of deforestation, and of climate change. He describes concern for human destruction of the entire planet – even suggesting we would take that destruction to other, distant planets – and of human greed and violence.
Humboldt evidently influenced Charles Darwin himself. Was he the first ecologist? A fascinating listen.
Dragon Mother 
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