Ecoscene - images of the environment and wildlife

Tsunami debris arrives on the Canadian West Coast

2012-01-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

Nine months after the deadly tsunami struck Japan the enormous debris field, washed out to sea when the water receded, has started to arrive on Canada's west coast. Much of the coastline is wilderness with absolutely no land access except for a few small fishing villages with connections to the interior. There are several National and Provincial Parks where access is possible and it is in

tadpole frying pan

2011-12-31T23:25:00.000-08:00

For some or other reason the tadpoles of the Raucus Toad like to congregate on the leaves of the lily pads in my garden pond. Maybe the water is warmer and they can save energy by not having to swim and can just bask in the water. In any case this is disaster for the tadoples because as the sun comes up the water dries out and the tadpoles dry of dehydration and lack of oxygen.We all know that

Merry Christmas

2011-12-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

Wishing our contributors and readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Roll on 2012

Dog Trek

2011-12-06T23:27:00.000-08:00

I had one of those photo grab moments while travelling along a road in South Africa. People walk along the dusty roads but I could see that this young boy in bare feet was doing something special. He was walking from his home to the local Animal Welfare carrying his dog on his shoulder. It was a hot day and the road was long. Always heart-warming to see people prepared to suffer hardship and heat

The Salmon have come..... and gone

2011-11-26T19:35:00.001-08:00

Four weeks ago, the fish were just starting the annual spawning run into the Goldstream River, near Victoria, in British Columbia. There had been concerns about a fuel spill into the river during the summer; some small absorbing booms were stretched across the surface for several months. The 2010 run was also much smaller than expected, so what could one anticipate for this year. During the

Rhino poaching in South Africa

2011-11-15T00:51:00.001-08:00

The poaching of both White and Black Rhinocerous (Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis) which are critically endangered in South Africa is rampant and to draw the attention of the South African government to the plight of the rhino the various groups trying to protect the rhino have taken the unusual step of defacing bank notes. The defacing of bank notes in any way is illegal but the

PLASTIC WINE BOTTLES

2011-11-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

My first realization that adults also suffer severe emotional stress and trauma came when I was about 7 years old. The incident is still vivid in my mind. A man came out of a bottle store in Stellenbosch and dropped his bottle of wine onto the dusty sidewalk and all that was left were a few shards of glass and a vinegary smell in the air. He sat down on the sidewalk and cried.Last time I went

Beach Clean up Spitsbergen

2011-11-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

These tourists in Spitsbergen are cleaning up the beaches after having walked around the area. A helicopter comes along on a regular basis to pick up the nets, plastic etc. Wouldn't it be great if this happened globally in the cruising industry?

Salmon run on the Canadian West Coast

2011-10-30T12:58:00.000-07:00

It's the fall season here on the Canadian West Coast; time to look forward to the salmon run in the local Goldstream River. The forest here is predominantly coniferous, Douglas Fir, Hemlock, and Western Red Cedar, but there are a few stands of Maple trees among the overall carpet of green. The leaves of the Maples are falling, adding colour to the banks of the river. This may evoke visions of

Tasmanian Devils - the cull's not working

2011-10-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

Many readers of this blog may have enjoyed the BBC's Miracle Babies presented by Martin Hughes-Games. He was filmed visiting captive breeding programmes of some of the world's most endangered species. One was a visit to Tasmanian to find out more about the Tasmanian Devil. Numbers of this marsupial have declined for the usual reasons - habitat loss, hunting and predation by the introduced red

THE PRICE OF POACHING

2011-10-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

The little village of Schoenmakerskop where I live lies along the Indian Ocean and the shores were blessed with a large population of Abalone (Haliotis midae). The Abalone can be dived fairly easily and taste good when prepared properly. When prepared badly they have all the characteristics of a car tyre - hard, rubbery and difficult to chew. Unfortunately the mysterious East decided that the

Polar Bear Safety Lecture

2011-09-16T02:30:00.000-07:00

When I took this picture in Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Salbard Archipelago I was standing on a carpet of fine gravel with the cold wind trying to pick out the wrinkles in my face. At the same time I was desperately trying to listen to one of the expedition team telling us what to do if we encounter a Polar Bear. I couldn’t help thinking there was one behind every rock and at the same

POVERTY AND MAKING AN EFFORT

2011-09-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

Coming home I saw the wheels of this wood cutter’s home made cart. They are held together by wire and seem to have originated from some Victorian contraption. Some poor people turn to crime or wait for hand outs while others like this guy make an effort to earn money. The wood he cuts is either cut up to make fires to cook food or warm people and some of the straight bits would be used to build

Electric Cars

2011-09-01T16:20:00.000-07:00

Five years or so ago, I thought that my next car would be an electric. But now that a wave of them are about to come on to the market, I’m not so sure. Last week, I went down to our local motor association where a new 100% electric vehicle – the Mitsubishi i-MiEV pictured above – was on display. From the outside, the i-MiEV – which is expected to retail for about $33,000 in Alberta, Canada –

BEWARE OF THE SNAKES!

2011-08-02T03:33:00.000-07:00

Every year I go to the Association of Surfing Professional’s Billabong Pro held at Supertubes in Jeffrey’s Bay in the Eastern Cape and every year I worry about the hand painted “Beware if the Snakes” sign on the path over the dunes that leads to the famous surfing spot.So why do I worry? Well I suppose it is because I wish there were more beware of the snake signs around as the last thing I want

China's Green Economy

2011-07-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

As the world prepares for next year’s Rio + 20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, it seems that China and the other fast-emerging economies of the developing world have overtaken Europe in terms of investment in renewable energy.According to a new report commissioned by the UN Environment Programme, investment in large-scale renewable projects such as solar and wind farms totaled $72

AFTER THE DROUGHT

2011-06-23T02:24:00.000-07:00

In Africa the seasons can flow one into the next and sometimes the rain just does not fall. For about 4 years we have not had decent rain when suddenly, after a few heavy downpours, the dams rose from being about 30% full to some overflowing and the dams in Nelson Mandela Metropole in South Africa are in the region of 80% of capacity. Of course the water restrictions are still on – the wheels of

IUCN publishes the latest Red List

2011-06-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

The IUCN has just published the latest version of its Red List of Threatened Species. Its depressing reading with just a few snippets of good news. There are a staggering 19,265 species are currently threatened with extinction. Since the update in 2010, more than 900 new species have been added to the category of threatened, that's either critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable. So

Graveyards and poverty

2011-05-25T05:33:00.000-07:00

A long time ago I wrote an article that was never published on the wonders of the old graveyards in South Africa and how they are decaying and being neglected. I like them because of the solitude, the stillness, the history and the nature. Only a week ago I discovered a colony of suricates living in the middle of a big city in a graveyard. The trees are old and you get an interesting combination

The National Park of Grande Briere, Brittany

2011-05-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

Southern Brittany covers the department of Loire-Atlantique and contains some superb gems for birdwatchers. The first of these The National Park of Grande Briere a huge reed bed of nearly 100,000 acres. The Park has a road running around is it so you can call in at different places or stand at the side of the road. We got Purple Heron, Black Kite, Bearded Reedling and Cormarent within thirty

Floral Gigantism

2011-05-03T02:05:00.000-07:00

...found (well, Dai Morris, the reserve warden, pointed me in the right direction again) a rather unusual case of floral gigantism in a Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa) in Bishops Wood nature reserve, Gower, UK. I hate those shots with a tape measure in them to indicate the size of an object - so I didn't. For those who really 'need' to know: instead of the usual 25mm or so, the flower of

Bush Fire

2011-05-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

Bush fires are fairly commonplace in summer and when we are experiencing droughts in South Africa but the one last week which threatened the South African Marine Rehabilitation and Education Centre near Port Elizabeth was particularly nasty. It was fanned by a strong south easterly gale and basically could not be stopped. The fire brigade placed their vehicles along a tarred access road and

missed photo - strong encounter

2011-05-01T04:04:00.000-07:00

now, there was an opportunity - and i missed it, or did i?yesterday evening, coming home and into the living room, i found myself in the company of a queen hornet (vespa crabro) trying to get out of the closed window! never seen one before. what an extraordinary sight - very close to two inches long and vibrating with life, intensity and purpose.as all external doors and windows were closed, i

TREE XENOPHOBIA

2011-03-16T03:12:00.000-07:00

Tree xenophobia is common in South Africa and people cut down trees for no real reason like blaming the tree for making leaves that fall in the swimming pool or the roots making the lawn lumpy (Africa is not for sissies). It is actually heart warming to see an effort being made to save an alien (it does not occur here naturally) Norfolk Island Pine in the village of Schoenmakerskop where I

True Confessions of a Naturalist/Photographer

2011-03-08T05:50:00.000-08:00

I am supposed to earn my living from photography and writing but sometimes the naturalist in me takes over. Driving in a small municipal nature reserve along a fence I saw a small antelope and managed to switch off the engine and coast to a silent stop, grab a camera and fall silently out of the car. The small antelope continued feeding along the fence and eventually passed me. Watching I

Painted Reed Frogs

2011-02-14T04:21:00.000-08:00

I probably spend a bit too much time around my little fish pond. I ignore the Raucus Toads (too noisy) and keep an eye on the Painted Reed Frogs. At night it is all sex and music. The adults sit on the lily pads and surrounding vegetation and make their not unpleasant “short, high pitched, explosive whipp-whipp whistles, repeated once every second.”* They do this in a massed choir and it

Beware Red Roses

2011-02-14T03:10:00.000-08:00

Well its Valentine's Day and the florists are awash with red roses. They may look beautiful but they are contributing greatly to habitat damage in countries such as Kenya where vast flower plantations raise the flowers for the western markets. In Kenya, flowers are the third largest export and the industry employs thousands of people. Many of these flower plantations are located around the

Global Food Crisis Looming

2011-02-13T19:33:00.000-08:00

Is another global food crisis around the corner? The UN’s food and agriculture organization, FAO, has been warning that global food prices continue to rise and are a cause for concern. FAO’s cereal price index is now at its highest level since July 2008, but still 11% below the peak in April that year. The world’s poor live mainly on cereals and rising prices have a direct effect on their

Penguins and Commercial Krill Fishing

2011-02-07T22:59:00.000-08:00

These Chinstrap Penguins on Half Moon Island in the South Shetlands have stained the ground pink with their guano as their principal food is krill, a small shrimp. When humans first discovered the Antarctic they pillaged it and drove the whales and the seals to the very edge of extinction. Now with the arrival of commercial krill fishing are we about to see history repeating itself?

Antarctic Damage inevitable?

2011-02-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

Adélie penguins on Paulet Island bathe in the summer sun. With the recent grounding of the cruise ship Polar Star in the Weddell Sea you have to ask is the possibility of environmetal damage from one of these ships getting closer?Toursim in the Antarctic is on the up and fortunately the IAATO does a superb job in making sure that vists are carried out in a resopnsible manner.

TOSSERS AND JERKS

2011-02-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the wonder of the internet I know what they call a person who throws litter out of a car window in the UK. They are called “tossers” and I am continually amazed that people still carry on tossing beer bottles and burning cigarette ends out of cars in South Africa too. Apart from the fundamental stupidity of the action accompanied by the litter and broken glass we also have the risk of

Why I hate gardening.......

2011-01-28T01:34:00.001-08:00

I had a bad night last night. It all started perfectly fine when my left eye started burning a bit. I grumbled a bit and poured a glass of wine. It was not my turn to cook and I was preparing to enjoy the evening and take it very easy. No cricket to watch, just a bit of soccer, and little to distract me. Perfect!And then my left eye started behaving badly. It started streaming tears and got a

Asiatic Lion

2010-12-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

This juvenile Asiatic Lion male is walking through the woodlands in the Gir National Park, Gujarat, India. The park is the only area in the world where lions still live in the wild outside of Africa and is a major success with over 700 animals now living in some nineteen prides.

SERENDIPITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

2010-12-09T23:44:00.000-08:00

I don’t profess to know much about education let alone environmental education in Africa or the rest of the world. I do know that people have become more distanced from nature and that the knowledge of nature is decreasing.I suppose the main reason is urbanisation and the lack of formal environmental education in schools. Moving to the city takes kids out of the rural environment away from nature

New Print Shop

2010-12-06T01:39:00.000-08:00

Ecoscene is delighted to announce that their new Print Shop is open for business. Now you can buy prints, mousemats, fridge magnets of your favourite images. More images will be added in the coming months. Happy shopping! www.ecosceneprints.com

Cool Elephants

2010-11-25T04:11:00.000-08:00

No they were not wearing sunglasses but I really thought the African Elephants at Addo in South Africa were trying hard to be cool during the warm spell we had last week. If you are their size it is difficult to hide from the sun and they do overheat. Their habit of flapping their ears to expose the blood in the ears to the air order to cool the blood is well known. It is something they do

Elephants Picking Daisies

2010-11-21T21:55:00.000-08:00

Elephants are incongruous creatures, large and lumbering, they eat and amble around the veld in the Addo National Park in South Africa. The drought has not helped and the vegetation in the park always looks tired, there are no big trees left and most of the growth seems stunted. We tend to blame the mega-herbivores (lovely word!). Anything that gets walked on or eaten by a mega-herbivore is

Rio's Botanical Gardens

2010-11-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

Directly below the right arm of the statue of Christ the Redeemer lies Rio de Janeiro’s Botanical Gardens. Strolling among the 6,000 different species of tropical and subtropical plants and trees offers a complete change of pace from the throb of Brazil’s iconic first capital.Founded by the Prince Regent of the United Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil in 1808, the garden was initially used to

Harvest mouse - extinct in 25 years?

2010-10-19T02:27:00.000-07:00

The farming conservation organization, Conservation Grade, has threatened that some of the UK's farmland animals could become extinct within 25 years. They include the harvest mouse, the small agile rodent found along field margins near cereal crops. Its numbers have fallen drastically over the last few decades as farming has intensified with the loss of hedgerows, drainage of reed-sedge

New photographers

2010-10-08T03:01:00.000-07:00

Ecoscene is delighted to welcome some new contributing photographers. Dave Amis is busy documenting the managed retreat at Standford Marshes on the Greater Thames Estuary near Thurrock, Essex. The first part of the process is breaching the sea wall to allow the tides to cover the low lying marsh land again. David Lygo is a wildlife photographer based in Northern Ireland. He has supplied a great

POLITICIANS AND THE AFRICAN BLACK OYSTERCATCHER

2010-10-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

I had a strange start to my work career and spent the first 5 years of my working life as a Committee Secretary in Parliament in South Africa. Because I have always had an interest in nature it was natural that I should have Environmental Affairs in my committee portfolio. I had to sit at the chairman’s left and do secretarial things like taking minutes and the like. I remember looking down at

Cheetah Kingdom

2010-09-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Like millions of other TV viewers, I have been watching Cheetah Kingdom. I really enjoy this series, more so because I visited Okonjima in Namibia several years ago and wrote a feature on the work of the Africat Foundation. We knew the visit was going to be special as soon as the wheels of the light plane touched down on the Okonjima airstrip, for running alongside the plane were two cheetahs

An Uneasy Spring

2010-09-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

The first day of September is officially regarded as the first day of spring in South Africa. I was lucky and spent the night camping in my van in a National Park. The night was cold, the stars were bright and the bird calls in the morning almost ridiculously loud. In spring it seems that nature turns its thoughts and sounds to love, or at least courtship and the procreation of most of the

Towards a greener Cruise industry

2010-09-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

Reducing your holiday carbon footprint by eco cruising is now being considered essential by more and more people. If cruising is the type of holiday you prefer, then there are ways and means of ensuring that your chosen company is doing its utmost to be green. In one week the cruise industry creates millions of tons of wastewater, thousands of tons of sewage and some older vessels will have

More Choices for Ordinary Chinese

2010-08-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

As disposable income increases in the world’s most populous country, ordinary Chinese are getting far more choices than ever before. That includes what they eat.Up to now, the Chinese have not been as concerned as people in the West about nutritional issues. But that’s largely because fast-food only arrived in China two decades ago. Although shopping daily for fresh food has always been essential

A benchmark for benches

2010-08-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

Small villages, wherever they are in the world, are perpetually embroiled in some or other controversy. Schoenmakerskop, on the shores of the Indian Ocean in South Africa, is not different. For a while benches were an issue. About 100 of us live in the pretty hamlet with cliffs that overlook the sea and people like to come here to look at the sunsets, whales or just laze in the sun. When someone

The African Penguin

2010-08-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

It is always sad to report a re-classification of a bird species when things are getting worse for the bird. The African Penguin Spheniscus demersus has been upgraded (or should that be downgraded?) from being listed as Vulnerable to now being Endangered. The population has dropped to an estimated 25 000 pairs that still live along the shores of South Africa.As a student I was lucky enough to

Belugas - the white whales of the Arctic

2010-08-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

One of our contributors, Andrey Nekrasov took a wonderful set of images of belugas while diving under the Arctic ice in the White Sea, Russia. Not surprisingly, a number of news desk editors agreed and Andrey's stunning images of belugas and Arctic diving have appeared around the world. Well done Andrey, it looks to have been a trip of a life time.Only wish I could dive. This is just one of the

An Elephant Seal

2010-07-17T05:37:00.000-07:00

There are many advantages to living in a small coastal hamlet like Schoenmakerskop near Port Elizabeth. The one is that people know me as a nature photographer and phone me if they see something interesting. Yesterday I got a call saying there is an Elephant Seal in the third bay past the monument on Sacramento Trail. I had my doubts because they are rare vagrants from the sub-Antarctic seas and

Rodeo: Should some events be banned?

2010-07-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

With two days still to go, six horses have already been killed at the Calgary Stampede. The highest number of deaths has been immediately following the Chuckwagon Races. Rodeo animals meet sudden death at the Stampede every year, which since 1912 has been one of Canada’s top sporting attractions. This year, the animal welfare lobby is better organized and has received support from some groups in

Reservoirs - before and after

2010-07-05T02:43:00.000-07:00

NW England has been warned that if substantial rain does not fall over the Lake District in the next week or so, much of the will be subject to hosepipe bans. It seems odd that Cumbria, a county that was devastated by some of the worst floods in memory, should now be suffering from drought. Vey little rain has fallen over the last three months and temperatures have soared to the high 20s

Whaling - back on the agenda

2010-06-25T06:39:00.000-07:00

As I write, the delegates of the IWC (International Whaling Commission ) are behind closed doors discussing the future of whaling; specifically whether Japan should be allowed to carry out small-scale commercial whaling. Not surprisingly, this has divided delegates and there have been numerous meetings prior to this annual meeting to thrash out the terms. Japan has offered the tempting concession

World Oceans Day

2010-06-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

With all the doom and gloom surrounding the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, I thought I'd celebrate World Oceans Day with some beautiful images of oceans and the animals and plants that live within them. Enjoy...... First one of my favourite images of a pair of clown anemone fish amongst the tentacles of its host anemone. Second, a shoal of pyramid butterfly fish on a coral reef. An unusual view

THE FIFA WORLD CUP; SOCKS, FLAGS AND A HOT SHOWER

2010-06-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

I make a living from photography and writing for magazines but I must admit that the World Cup has not aroused any great images or inspired outbursts of writing. The start is only a few days away and people are either very excited or very cynical. I am still slowly discovering what it might mean and what it means.We have in a city that has many people living under the breadline and in shacks a

ELEPHANTS REMEMBER AND BUFFALO ADAPT

2010-05-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

When everything gets too much I escape to the Addo Elephant Park some 40 kilometres from Port Elizabeth in South Africa. Spending a night or two camping and listening to Hyenas and Jackal calling at night I soon forget everything that is irritating me.The drought has been hard on the animals and vegetation but thankfully a cloudburst has filled the dams and the grass has turned green. The

THE WORLD CUP AND THE STATION THAT DIED OF SHAME

2010-05-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

To be quite honest I don’t know if a railway station can die of shame but in Port Elizabeth in South Africa we have one that seems to have done so.It was a narrow gauge railway line known as the Apple Express and its primary task was to bring apples growing in an area called the Langkloof to the harbour city of Port Elizabeth. The apples are good and they are still being exported but road

A Shark Story

2010-05-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes as a photographer you take a picture that you wish you did not have to take and then you don’t like it and you don’t do anything with it and it disappears onto a hard drive.I took this picture in the harbour at Port Elizabeth in South Africa in 2004. They have been identified by a shark expert as Mako Sharks, not an easy identification as their jaws have been removed and they were lying

life, death, taxes and recycling bins

2010-05-05T02:47:00.000-07:00

Life in Africa and small places is very complex. The small coastal village of Schoenmakerkop, where I live, was recently thrown into turmoil as two bins for recycling glass suddenly landed in the village. I don’t know how they got here; they could have been dropped from a helicopter or just pushed off a passing truck.There was unease in the village and the Ratepayers Association started

International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY)

2010-05-05T02:28:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Chinch Gryniewicz on his Third Prize in the category Trees, with a gorgeous image of new spring leaves emerging on common lime. He will be at the Prize Giving Ceremony at Kew Gardens on Saturday. Well done Chinch. The exhibition of 100 images from the competition can be seen at Kew until October and there is a book featuring the images. Chinch has done well in this

China's Urbanization

2010-04-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

For frequent visitors to China, it will be no surprise that the country is now home to one quarter of the world’s largest cities. According to a new United Nations report, there are now 236 cities in China with a population of over half a million. Over 100 more are expected to be added by 2025. The report, 2009 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects, issued last month, says that China’s urban

The African World Cup

2010-04-07T00:35:00.000-07:00

I am vaguely concerned about the World Cup that starts in South African shortly and I am not sure why. Maybe it is the disruption and incongruity of the fantastic stadiums that have risen in the larger cities?We, by the way, call it soccer and play on fields that do not conform to world standards. Grass is nice as it hurts less when you fall but I really don't know the need for the cow dung that

Sharks fail to get CITES protection

2010-03-25T14:51:00.000-07:00

The current round of talks between Parties to the Convention for the International Trade in Endangered Species, better known as CITES, has failed to produce any protection for 4 shark species - the porbeagle, spiny dogfish, scalloped hammerhead and oceanic whitetip. All the proposals put forward by the EU and the USA to protect these at risk species were voted out. Sadly, this lack of

HOME AGAIN ON THE RANGE?

2010-03-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

A new report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature gives some hope that more wild bison may be roaming free on the North American plains. Five hundred years ago, 30 to 50 million bison roamed North America from Mexico to Alaska. But in the 1800s, as European settlers moved across the continent, bison were slaughtered to near-extinction. Thanks to conservation efforts that

Lions kill elephant calf

2010-02-19T01:53:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple of years I have been lucky enough to spend time filming for various projects in Amboseli, Kenya. During a shoot for Animal Planet last year I was out with the women of the Amboseli Trust For Elephants (ATE) early one morning when a call came in from Lion Researchers working in the area. They had witnessed two young male lions chasing an elephant calf which had somehow become

Recycle those batteries

2010-02-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

Non-rechargeable batteries should not go in the rubbish, but how many of us have been guilty of throwing them in the bin. At last, it is compulsory in the UK for retailers who sell batteries to offer a recycling facility in shop. So now there is no excuse for people to throw them way. Environment Minister Huw Irranca-Davies said, "This new legislation will make it easier for consumers to do the

Waste of Fresh Water

2010-01-26T14:59:00.000-08:00

The images of earthquake survivors fighting over scarce resources in Haiti is a grim reminder of what is to come in parts of our overpopulated planet. In addition to earthquakes, extreme weather brought on by global climate change, be it drought or floods from excessive rainfall, is causing misery and suffering to countless millions with increasing frequency. Water and food, in that order, are

Walking with the Lions

2010-01-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

By Gerard Hancock © It was one of those experiences you simply have to do to understand. “Walk with the Lions” said the bit of paper I was holding. Seems simple enough, I thought. We go for a walk........with some lions. What is there not to understand? Everything was clear to me, I had images in my mind of small, fluffy, cub-like creatures which would respond warmly to being stroked and

Act now for diversity

2010-01-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

The UN has declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. Hopefully this will mean that more attention is paid to the plight of the world's species. Biodiversity is the variety of life that lives on Earth. Fewer than 2 million species have been named and biologists estimate that as many as 13 million more species may exist, many being micro-organisms such as bacteria and archaea that

Merry Christmas

2009-12-18T06:23:00.000-08:00

As usual we will be donating to a charity in lieu of sending out cards. This year our chosen charity is the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE). The three-year drought in East Africa has caused major problems for wildlife with 90 % of the wildebeeste, 70% of zebra and 200 elephants dying and there is also the on-going problem of poaching. Contributor Mike Cuthbert has been filming elephants in

Act now, Save lives

2009-12-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Well, the conference of the decade has finally arrived after months of anticipation. Let's hope that the gathered representatives from 192 countries actually roll up their sleeves and get down to some serious talking. The cynic in me wonders just how many of the representatives and their hangers-on are really needed and did they think about the environmental impact of travelling to the conference

China's CO2 Cuts

2009-11-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

As governments ready themselves for next week’s Climate Change summit in Copenhagen, China announced that it would cut its CO2 emissions for each unit of GDP by up to 45% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. That is significant. The Chinese government always takes a long time to come to a position on policy, but once a decision is taken implementation follows swiftly. Not a moment too soon for China’

Slow water

2009-11-24T03:29:00.000-08:00

This is a term that I had not heard of before but it was mentioned on this morning's Today Programme on Radio 4. The interviewee had not heard of it either. But we all know what its about - the slowing down of water runoff during heavy rain to help reduce flooding. Sadly, no amount of flood water management would have saved Cockermouth from 2 metre high flood waters, but its something that urban

Zoo in my garden

2009-11-12T01:29:00.000-08:00

Africa, and by extension Schoenmakerskop where I live, is not for sissies. Transporting and installing the fish pond in the garden was easy and a lovely little eco-system developed over a few weeks. What was really exciting was to monitor the creatures that discovered the pond. One of the first visitors was the Brown Hooded Kingfisher, a terrestrial kingfisher that is supposed to

Nuclear power stations - 10 sites proposed

2009-11-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

The UK government has finally approved sites for 10 new nuclear power stations, which are Bradwell, Braystones, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Kirksanton (shown above), Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa. The proposed sites at Dungeness in Kent, Kingsnorth, Druridge Bay and Owston Ferry were ruled out. Before final planning permission is granted, the power stations have to prove that

The World Food Crisis

2009-10-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

World Food Day, on October 16th, has come and gone. I wonder if anyone remembers this year’s theme: “Achieving food security in times of crisis”. Frankly, I found the theme rather obscure. It was coined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, whose founding in 1945 World Food Day commemorates. But to what kind of crisis was FAO referring: financial, family or a natural

Blowin' In The Wind

2009-10-17T10:26:00.000-07:00