Published on January 28th, 2010
Officials from 13 nations are meeting to discuss conservation efforts to save the endangered tiger. Officials from countries where tigers still roam - Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam - are taking part in the Asia Ministerial Conference (AMC) on Tiger Conservation. The conference runs from January 27 to January 30, 2010, in Thailand. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
Asia Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation,
endangered,
Global Tiger Initiative,
illegal poaching,
illegal tiger trade,
Panthera tigris,
tiger farms,
tiger summit,
wild tigers,
world bank,
World Wide Fund for Nature,
wwf
Published on January 18th, 2010
Three stories in the press over the last few weeks, have given South African’s unusual concerns about swimming off Cape Town’s beaches, surfing around the estuaries of Eastern Cape Rivers and canoeing in the Umgeni River.
Sharks Around Cape Town Beaches
A Zimbabwean man holidaying in Cape Town was killed, when he was attacked by what is believed to be a great white shark at Fish Hoek beach in Cape Town.
Ninety three shark attacks, 12 fatal, were reported in the Eastern and Western Cape beaches in the last 18 years compared to only 19, with one death, on KwaZulu-Natal’s beaches. The shark nets installed there have reduced attacks by 99%, since the 1960s, when attacks were a frequent occurrence. But nets are not suitable for Cape beaches because of rough seas, the presence of whales and seals and the type of sharks. Read the rest of this entry »
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Cape Town,
coli,
crocodile,
Durban,
E,
Eatern Cape,
Fish Hoek,
Great White shark,
Nahoon,
Nahoon Beach,
Nahoon River,
shark,
South Africa,
Umgeni River
Published on January 15th, 2010
While Brisbane’s waste removal system battles to discard perfectly good mangos, this contrasts starkly with the difficulties and opportunities associated with agricultural produce gluts in poor communities in rural Africa.
Brisbane Mangoes
So good is the mango harvest this year, that residents of Brisbane’s suburbs are battling to get rid of their excess mangos.
Apparently some trees are dropping up to 60 mangoes overnight. If these are simply placed in rubbish bins they are too heavy for the mechanical garbage trucks and get left on the street. Normally there would be a $24 fee to get a garbage truck to come back and empty the bin, but the City Council has agreed to waive this cost so long as residents first remove the mangoes. The Council has also removed the charge for dumping mangoes at the city’s transfer stations.
So in Australia the fuss is about getting the mangoes to the dump and not about the waste of food or the loss of income opportunities, that bother the African. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
africa,
Australia,
brisbane,
fruit,
Ghana,
glut,
grapefruit,
Hoedspruit,
mangoes,
pre-processing,
South Africa,
Thohoyandou,
tomatoes,
vegetables
Published on January 15th, 2010
The Masvingo regional court has sentenced a member of the Mazhongwe rhino poaching gang to 17 years in prison for killing an endangered rhino.
Justice - at last: Zimbabwe rhino poacher Tichaona Mutyairi has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for killing a rhino and firing on police in October 2009.
After years of letting the killers walk free, could this case finally be the turning point in the war against rhino poaching in Zimbabwe?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
africa,
china,
chinese,
Chinese pharmaceutical,
CITES,
endangered species,
illegal trade,
illegal wildlife trade,
international rhino foundation,
Matendere Range,
Mazhongwe gang,
Mugabe,
poachers,
poaching,
rhino horn,
rhinoceros,
Tichaona Mutyairi,
Vietnam,
Zimbabwe
Published on January 11th, 2010
Wildlife conservationists in Zimbabwe are struggling to protect endangered rhinos - and now the uphill battle includes war veterans who have gotten into the rhino poaching business.
In yet another setback to Zimbabwe’s wildlife conservation efforts, war veterans settled near the Humani Estates in the Chiredzi District are allegedly poisoning rhinos living on a nearby game reserve in order to sell the horns to South African rhino horn dealers.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
africa,
Asian demand for rhino horn,
Chiredzi District,
Critically Endangered Species,
Humani Estates,
poisoning rhinos with cabbage,
rhino,
rhino horn dealers,
rhino poaching,
rhinoceros,
South Africa,
Zimbabwe,
Zimbabwe settlements,
Zimbabwe war veterans
Published on January 8th, 2010
The Great Green Wall of Africa was announced by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal at the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference on 16 December 2009. Although this is still just a plan looking for funders, the way in which it has been handled to date gives an insight into the difficulty Africa has in implementing.
The Background
This Great Green Wall of Africa, aimed at halting desertification, has its origins in a Summit of Leaders and Heads of States of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD), held in June 2005 in Ougadougou (Burkina Faso). The summit adopted the “Great Green Wall initiative as one of its priority programmes”. Just these few phrases illustrate shortcoming often seen in Africa. Calling it an initiative and a priority programme distract from the need to do things as one would in a project or a task. Read the rest of this entry »
Published on January 5th, 2010
Good news from Uganda: Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary has welcomed a third baby rhino!
2010 is off to a promising start at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, where a white rhino calf was born on January 2 - the third baby rhino following more than 25 years of regional extinction.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
africa,
Angie Genade,
Ceratotherium simum,
china,
chinese,
conservation,
endangered species,
poachers,
poaching,
reintroduction,
Rhino Fund Uganda,
rhinoceros,
Uganda,
Vietnam,
vietnamese,
white rhino,
white rhino breeding programme,
ziwa rhino sanctuary
Published on January 4th, 2010
A young American lady, Katie Spotz, has just started to row across the Atlantic Ocean on her own. Why? Katie, 22 years old, hopes to raise $30,000 for Blue Planet Run and give clean water to 1,000 people by doing this!
Katie just pushed off from Senegal yesterday and is on her way. She hopes to make the 2,500-mile journey in just over 100 days. The map above shows her progress up until now (updated every 20 minutes on her twitter page by Google Earth).
Apparently, she really will not see another human being for the entire trip (although she is sure to have bird visitors — her first one photographed in the picture below). She has not been rowing for long, but apparently she is not new to such adventures.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
across,
africa,
American,
atlantic ocean,
Blue Water Run,
charity,
Google Earth,
Katie,
Katie Spotz,
non-profit,
ocean,
row,
rowing,
Senegal,
South America,
Spotz,
U.S.
Published on January 4th, 2010
12 suspected rhino poachers and rhino horn buyers have been arrested in Kenya following the killing of a female Southern white rhino on a private ranch.
A manhunt in central Kenya has resulted in the arrest of 12 suspected rhino poachers and rhino horn buyers, after a 10-year old female Southern white rhino was shot at the Mugie rhino sanctuary on December 28, and her horns brutally hacked off.
The rhino’s horns were recovered in the arrest, along with $8,500 USD in cash.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
arrest,
Asian demand for rhino horn,
Ceratotherium simum,
china,
chinese,
Chinese demand for rhino horn,
conservation Africa,
endangered species,
Kenya,
kws,
Mugie rhino sanctuary,
poacher,
poaching,
superstition,
Vietnam,
vietnamese,
white rhino
Published on December 31st, 2009
African Elephant Bull Photographed in Kruger Park on 20 June 2009.
The author’s last two posts have shown that culling is often used as a “solution” to limit the growth in animal numbers in a particular situations. At the extremes, some animal rights lobbyists oppose the killing of animals on the basis of principle alone ignoring environmental or wildlife issues while some legislators look for a fast fix without a long term view and justify killing by the need to protect the remaining.
There are always a range of opinions and solutions which can be considered in these cases. There is normally neither enough time nor enough information to allow the development of a solution that is acceptable to all and guarantees a longterm solution to the problem. In this context, it is instructive to look at the elephant as an example of the difficulties in finding solutions even in very well studied cases.
Please note that this is a layman’s understanding based on a quick “reading” of two recent major reports and is clearly open to much discussion. The author is simply trying to get a simple overall understanding of managing elephant populations and to also present some interesting information contained in the two reports.
Controlling an Over Abundance of Elephants
Although many press reports focus on the threats to elephants through capture, poaching and commercial hunting, the African Elephant in South Africa is probably more threatened by their successful adaption to protected ranges than directly by man. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags:
contraception,
culling,
elephant,
elephant contraception,
elephant population management,
fencing,
hunting,
management,
population,
research,
sport hunting
