Author Archives: vidhidoshi91

Europe’s wild cattle

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Europe's wild cattle

An image shot by a brilliant photographer from Poland, Sebastian Lasek. Wild cattle, such as these bison as well as others like the Heck cattle, have been used in Pleistocene rewilding programmes in Europe. These programmes aim to introduce populations of wild cattle to replace the aurochs that were made extinct due to hunting in the 17th century. The idea is, that by introducing megafauna into ecosystems, a natural chain of events will restore ecosystems to the state they were in during the Pleistocene era (long before humans).

Scientists are still in the early stages of testing rewilding programmes. It is important to note that rewilding experiments can go wrong, and reintroducing megafauna (large animals) into the wild can have dramatically undesired results. This month’s National Geographic magazine explored the ethics of cloning the woolly mammoth back into existence. The split over de-extiction initiatives seems to be between people who were emotionally scarred by Jurassic Park, and those who weren’t. However, it is important that overenthusiastic scientists weigh up the pro’s and con’s of rewilding.

National Geographic and SOOANG are working in collaboration on a project to clone the woolly mammoth back into existence. According to scientists, the woolly mammoth’s large hooves once ploughed the grasslands of Europe. But after they became extinct, those ecosystems dried up. Re-introducing the woolly mammoth to the wild could dramatically change European wilderness.

Bisons and auroch-like cattle can be thought of as the first step in judging whether more ambitious Pleistocene rewilding programmes, such as resurrecting the woolly mammoth could work.

Maasai herds rise in protest against evictions from ancestral lands

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An Emirati hunting company, the Ortello Business Corporation (OBC) has leased a chunk of land near the Serengeti National Park for private hunting groups, resulting in the displacement of 30,000 residents in the area as well as the nomadic Maasai who rely on this land to graze cattle. The OBC is a big game hunting company through which hunters from the UAE come to Tanzania to hunt lions and leopards. The Tanzanian government maintains that trophy hunting generates immense revenues and brings much-needed foreign money into a debt-ridden nation. Trophy hunting also incentivises tourism companies to conserve drought-prone land for wildlife. However, the OBC's further marginalise a nomadic tribe that has been repeatedly displaced from its ancestral lands, first by the British colonial establishment, and later by post-independence national governments. The Maasai, famed for their ability to jump high, and ancient (now outdated) customs such as hunting lions and drinking cows blood, draws millions of tourists to Tanzania and neighbouring Kenya. This proposal, would remove almost 40% of Loliondo's highland prairie and forested mountains from the Maasai's reach. In retaliation to the OBC's land acquisition, the Maasai have protested by throwing away membership cards to Tanzania's incumbent party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). One Maasai woman, Ms Tenemeri told the BBC, "My son is in secondary school because of the grass from here. "If they need my land they can kill me." The campaign against the OBC corridor is spearheaded by local women, who depend most on the land near Lolindo. Local politicians initially voiced support against the OBC but have since turned their backs on the Maasai by refusing to resign from the party as they had promised to. Tanzania's tourism minister, Khamis Kagasheki defends the evictions, saying the project will promote conservation as the Maasai are exhausting the land. "These 1,500 sq km are a crucial breeding area for wildlife, a corridor for the iconic great migration of wildebeest, and a critical water catchment area," he said in a press release. He has also accused the Maasai of living in Lolindo illegally and defended the government's right to use the land to boost tourism revenues. However, Maasai groups claim to have title deeds to their land in Lolindo. Maasai groups will take the government to court over the evictions.


 Maasai herds evicted from ancestral lands in Lolindo

An Emirati hunting company, the Ortello Business Corporation (OBC) has leased a chunk of land near the Serengeti National Park for private hunting groups, resulting in the displacement of 30,000 residents in the area as well as the nomadic Maasai who rely on this land to graze cattle.

The OBC is a big game hunting company through which hunters from the UAE come to Tanzania to hunt lions and leopards. The Tanzanian government maintains that trophy hunting generates immense revenues and brings much-needed foreign money into a debt-ridden nation. Trophy hunting also incentivises tourism companies to conserve drought-prone land for wildlife.

However, the OBC’s further marginalise a nomadic tribe that has been repeatedly displaced from its ancestral lands, first by the British colonial establishment, and later by post-independence national governments. The Maasai, famed for their ability to jump high, and ancient (now outdated) customs such as hunting lions and drinking cows blood, draws millions of tourists to Tanzania and neighbouring Kenya. This proposal, would remove almost 40% of Loliondo’s highland prairie and forested mountains from the Maasai’s reach.

In retaliation to the OBC’s land acquisition, the Maasai have protested by throwing away membership cards to Tanzania’s incumbent party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
One Maasai woman, Ms Tenemeri told the BBC, “My son is in secondary school because of the grass from here.

“If they need my land they can kill me.”

The campaign against the OBC corridor is spearheaded by local women, who depend most on the land near Lolindo. Local politicians initially voiced support against the OBC but have since turned their backs on the Maasai by refusing to resign from the party as they had promised to.

Tanzania’s tourism minister, Khamis Kagasheki defends the evictions, saying the project will promote conservation as the Maasai are exhausting the land.

“These 1,500 sq km are a crucial breeding area for wildlife, a corridor for the iconic great migration of wildebeest, and a critical water catchment area,” he said in a press release.

He has also accused the Maasai of living in Lolindo illegally and defended the government’s right to use the land to boost tourism revenues.However, Maasai groups claim to have title deeds to their land in Lolindo.

Maasai groups will take the government to court over the evictions.

 

 

 

No elephants at India’s Elephant Festival

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Jaipur, 26 March 2013

Jaipur, 26 March 2013

I was in Jaipur, India for this year’s annually celebrated Elephant Festival held in the so-called ‘pink’ city two weeks ago. The Elephant Festival is supposed to be held to celebrate Holi, an Indian festival that fills every street with colour to inaugurate the spring season. The festival, held at the Rajasthan Polo Grounds, boasted a plethora of Jaipur’s finest talent: dancers in traditional garb, singers thrilling foreign audiences with folk songs, and turban-tying competitions that left the tourists in a twist. This year’s elephant festival however, was conspicuously missing one thing: the elephants.

The cavalcade of elephants, pimped-out so to speak, for a beauty competition which is usually followed by a tug-of-war and an elephant polo match – as it turns out – was flagged by animal rights’ activists from PETA as a cause of serious ill-treatment of the animals, with the Mahouts using inhumane techniques such as iron hooks to train the elephants.

So, whilst many tourists were disappointed at the lack of jumbo-sized pageantry at Jaipur this year, Rajasthan Department of Tourism’s decision to scrap the elephant festival was a decisive gain for the elephants themselves. Assistant Director of Tourism Department of Rajasthan, Upendra Singh Shekhawa passed the buck to the state-controlled Animal Welfare Board, stating “The Animal Welfare Board of India had written to us that there is some violation of exhibiting the elephants. That is why; we are going whatever they are saying. We will adopt whatever they want”.

PETA activist Sarvgya Bhargil, explained the problem more clearly, stating that the elephants used in the festival are given insufficient food and are chained into tight spaces by their Mahout handlers, causing them to develop foot infections and arthritis. He also argued against the use of performing animals as keeping elephants and camels in captivity for long periods of time restricts their natural social behaviour and can induce health problems and loneliness.

The Elephant Festival is a clear example of how irresponsible tourism can be. The cancellation of this year’s Elephant Festival should stand as a precedent to stop the cruel treatment of performing animals in India.

Poaching Britain’s rhinos

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A report in AFP today said that the British police have noted an increase in rhino poaching in Britain’s wildlife parks. The Aspinall Foundation which, a wildlife charity which runs two animal parks in Kent in southeastern England, appealed for residents living near those parks to keep a watch for suspicious activity.

The Aspinall Foundation’s chairman, Damian Aspinall, said police had told them there was a “genuine threat” which it attributed to poachers seeking the rhinos’ valuable horns.

“It is tragic and beyond belief that, as we do everything possible to restore these magnificent animals safely to the wild, the traders who seek to profit from their slaughter should bring their vile activities to the UK,” he said.

The foundation has 20 black rhinos across its two parks in Kent, out of an estimated 200 held in captivity around the world and just 700 who survive in the wild.

This report should alert us of how intense of a threat poaching is to the black rhino.

Pink Elephants & Poison Rhinos

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Reblogged from Fight for Rhinos:

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This weekend many people will partake  in the tradition of dyeing eggs. So it's a fitting time to discuss dying ivory. More specifically the actual  tusks themselves.

This is an idea that I first noticed on Facebook and is being presented in a petition as well. The theory is the dye while safe for the elephants, will serve as a deterrent to poachers.

Read more… 167 more words

Is Earth Hour is truly dim-witted idea?

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Tonight between 8.30 and 9.30 pm, people around the world will switch off their lights for an hour. What a great idea, right? Let’s show the world how easy it is to go green. The only problem is, it’s really not.

Earth Hour has all the right intentions. Saving energy. Raising awareness. Getting the whole world in on it. But Earth Hour, (and I’m referring specifically to the campaign for the single bulb-free hour, not the organisation’s other activities) is a pea-brained plan and I’ll tell you why.

Firstly, if you are planning to take part in Earth Hour, do NOT get green-happy and switch off all your electrical appliances. Earth Hour (and they really should have made this less vague) is only about switching off the lights. If you turn off – say your refrigerator or your central heating system – then you’re actually doing the world a disservice because the turning the thing back on will use up three times as much energy as you saved in your one hour of electro-abstinence.

Secondly, why did Earth Hour target electricity at all? We need electricity. There is no long-term, sustainable solution that Earth Hour is kickstarting. One night without electricity is easy – it’s even exciting. Candlelight is romantic, and might give you the warm fuzzies for one night, but who’s going to stop using lightbulbs altogether after this? No one. And for good reason.

Electric light is essential to the modern world: we can’t turn the clocks back on it, nor should we. In fact we need more of it. In some parts of the world, people are still waiting eagerly for electricity in their homes, so their children don’t have to study in the dark; so that homes can be heated. Lightbulbs have been extremely beneficial to our world, and there’s not a chance that anyone’s going to turn their backs on them.

The fundamental problem with this type of environmental campaign is the attention-seeking, narcissistic, hollow symbolism at its very core. This campaign has spent heaven knows how much time and money making a big noise but what is Earth Hour’s message, exactly? That we should turn off lights we’re not using? Well, most people know that anyway. Do we really need another million dollar green campaign to tell us that?

Here’s the crunch – environmentalism is not easy. The green lobby has made environmentalism sexy enough for a significant portion of people to start paying attention to the damage we are doing; to care about the planet. But going green is not as simple as switching off the lights for one hour. A sustainable solution which meets our needs for energy consumption is needed. Answers are not clear cut yet – though ever household should try to minimize waste, increase the amount they recycle and make a genuine effort to reduce their carbon footprint; it’s not as simple as that. The debate about the best way to use energy sustainably carries on– all I know is, just turning off the lights for an hour is not enough, not even if the whole world does it.    

Here’s a weird argument

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Alexander N. Songorwa, Director of wildlife for the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism has written a piece in the New York Times about why trophy hunting is invaluable to Tanzania’s wildlife. 

Trophy hunters pay incredible amounts of money to the Tanzanian government to hunt wild lions – about $1.9 million every year. This money, plus the millions of dollars spent annually on camping out in the bush (which amounts to a total of $75 million), are an important source of revenue for 26 wildlife parks, their employees and the local communities which they support.

Listing lions as endangered would put a stop to trophy hunting, but the effects of this may be counteracted by a lack of funding to maintain Tanzania’s wildlife. 

Songorwa’s argument may seem outrageous to animal lovers, but in practical terms, the revenue generated by hunting excursions are in fact indispensable and the revenue they generate annually give an important incentive to maintain these wildlife parks rather than razing the ground they stand on for agriculture or industry.
 
Painfully, I have to admit, though trophy hunting is abhorrent and tragic, it seems to have a utilitarian value in maintaining wildlife habitats. 
 
The argument around trophy hunting shouldn’t be about whether it should be illegal or not, but rather about how much we need to regulate it in order to protect the species and habitats it affects.

Shark tales, ebony and ivory: a round up of the 2013 CITES conference

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This year’s CITES conference in Thailand has come to a close and a new international agenda to protect sharks will headline tomorrow. In an unprecedented move to protect the world’s marine life, eight species of sharks and rays will become a priority for conservation action.

A crack down on the illegal poaching of elephants for their tusks and rhino for their horns has also been announced.

According to a press release from CITES,

The conference saw a record number of countries vote to regulate the international trade in the Oceanic Whitetip Shark, three hammerhead species,  the Porbeagle shark and the two existing species of manta rays. Parties also voted to ban the international commercial trade in the Critically Endangered Freshwater Sawfish.

The rising demand for shark fins, shark meat, gill plates, and aquarium animals is seriously threatening the survival of these species, according to IUCN. Up to 1.2 million Oceanic Whitetip Sharks, which are fished for their large and distinctive fins, pass through the markets of Southeast Asia every year and over 4,000 manta rays are harpooned for their gills.

“This is a historic step towards better protection of these marine species,” says Nick Dulvy, Co-Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Shark Specialist Group. “Now, after nearly two decades of slow and fragmentary progress, Parties agreed that CITES can complement existing national fisheries measures to ensure that global trade is sustainable and legal.”

Attending parties also reaffirmed their commitment to stop the illegal trade of ivory and rhino horn. Country-specific measures were noted to implement this.

According to the IUCN SSC African Rhino Specialist Group, poaching of African rhinos increased by 43% between 2011 and 2012 and illegal rhino horn trade continues to pose a serious threat to rhinos worldwide.

Finally, a commitment to curb the trade of Madagascan timber, specifically rosewood and ebony was announced.

Other decisions taken at the meeting include actions relating to a number of crocodile and snake species, a renewed focus on monitoring of the trade in pangolins and continued commitment to sustainably manage the Humphead Wrasse fishery – an Endangered, coral-dwelling species that was one of the first commercially fished species to be addressed under CITES.