The Battle for Virunga National Park: A tale of human tragedy and hope

 

Created in 1925 by King Albert I of Belgium, Virunga National Park is Africa's oldest national park and is the continent's most biologically diverse protected area. The park is a world heritage site in the East Democratic Republic of Congo on the border of Rwanda and Uganda. It boasts a vast 7,800 square kilometres (790,000 ha) which includes forests, savannahs, active volcanoes, erosion valleys and the glaciated "peaks of the Rwenzori mountains".

 

 

Virunga is home to some of the world's most extraordinary and highly endangered species. Its fauna includes 200 of the remaining 800 mountain gorillas, the okapi (an endangered species that resembles a zebra but is more closely related to a giraffe), forest elephants, chimpanzees, lion and large colonies of hippopotami. 

 

Despite the park's majesty, it is under great threat. The park is surrounded by some of the densest human populations and they have very considerable needs. Emmanuel de Merode, director of the Virunga National Park, explains that "it is an area that has been impoverished by years of political unrest, those communities and their economies needs to be revived." According to statistics from United Nations world Food Programme, the Republic of Congo is one of the poorest places on earth, with over 71% of the population living in extreme poverty, "three million children under five years of age suffering from malnutrition and almost half the countries children under five are stunted (short for their age)."

Virunga has served for the past 14 years for what some people term "Africa's World War, a multi-layered conflict that at its height, involved nine African national armies and a dozen rebel outfits, which sparked a humanitarian crisis and left an estimated five million people dead". In 1994, over 800,000 Rwandan's were killed in the space of just 100 days. Most of the dead were Tutsis and the majority of people that perpetrated the violence were Hutus. The tragic loss of life and political instability continues to have a huge impact on the park and the people living there.

 

With so much extreme poverty, the Democratic of Congo has one of the highest birth rates in the world. This explosion in the human population has had a detrimental effect on the park, leading to huge increases in deforestation levels, an explosion in the bush meat trade and pollution of rivers. From 2002 to 2013 the elephant population in the park has dropped from roughly 62,000 to less than 5,000. The critically endangered mountain gorilla (now numbering less than 800) is facing the fight of its generation.

A more recent pressure which is of very great concern for the future of the park is petrol. Emmaneul notes that "it is believed that there are large oil deposits under the park". Conservationists in 2014 were granted a huge victory, when the British company SOCO international agreed to halt all oil exploration  in the world heritage site. The WWF argued that if oil was found and exploited it could have led to the poisoning of the Lake Albert where "50,000 families depend for fishing" and could further destabilise the region by "exacerbating the conflict between rival militias". To date no oil exploration has happened in the park, but the threat of future international oil companies exploiting the park remains inevitable.  

 

 

How can we stop this?

Conserving the national park and reducing levels of poverty are both interlinked. A study by Lori Hunter from the Colorado University, found that where there are increased levels of resource scarcity there are also increased levels of "HIV within a community". Resource scarcity helps deepen poverty and robs "households of viable livelihood options". Additional evidence from a study by Hunter, Twine and Johnson on "The Role of Natural Resources in Coping with Household Mortality" suggests that "impoverished households affected by adult mortality are more likely than other households to use fuelwood rather than electricity or paraffin for cooking. Such intensified resource dependence can increase environmental degradation, particularly in areas being overharvested". Protecting the national park and having an environmental policy which encourages the sustainable use of local environments, can help reduce poverty and benefit the communities health.

 

Another sustainable way of protecting the park and bringing in wealth to the area is through eco-tourism. Eco-tourism has had a huge impact on the park and 2015 was the strongest year on record, with thousands of people coming from around the world to view its spectacular wildlife. Eco tourism has helped to create vital jobs, hospitals and schools for the local people living around the park. Emmaneul de Morede is hoping to create 100,000 jobs within the park in the next ten years through the Virunga Alliance Programme. This will offer a "critical pathway to a post-war economy in eastern Congo based on poverty reduction, environmental protection and peace building".

For the sake of its beautiful wildlife, biodiversity and the millions of people depending on the park, it is imperative that governments, conservationists and international bodies continue to place an economic value on the park to ensure its long time survival. In a capitalistic society the only way of saving something is to give it a monetary value. The park, through its majesty and beauty, offers a greater benefit to humanity then any guzzling oil company or destructive corporation could ever offer.

By supporting the fantastic work that Emmanuel de Merode does at the Virunga National Park (details below) and charities such as the Africa Wildlife Foundation there is still hope that we can save this magnificent place and preserve it for future generations to come.
 

An article written by Harry Wright  

In memory of ranger Sebinyenzi Bavukirahe Yacinthe who was murdered late last month by poachers protecting Virguna. He leaves behind his wife Jeaninne,  and his eight children ages 2 to 16.

 

 

Please visit the Virunga National Park site here: https://virunga.org/who-we-are/ and the Africa Wildlife Foundation here to see how you can help http://www.awf.org/landscape/virunga.

 

 

References:

 

https://virunga.org/news/8499/

 

 

https://www.wfp.org/stories/10-facts-about-hunger-democratic-republic-congo

 

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2006/HIVAIDSandtheNaturalEnvironment.aspx

 

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/nov/29/virunga-national-park-congo

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_kY03aK2TI 

 

 

 

The Story of Terri the lost Loggerhead Turtle

Terri the Turtle, a beautiful endangered loggerhead turtle was washed up on the shores of Jersey in the Channel Islands on 10 January 2016. She urgently needs our help.

According to the New Era Veterinary Group, when Terri was found she was "cold and stunned" and efforts were made immediately to try and raise her temperature.  Whilst the Veterinary hospital has been able to provide medication and shelter to the turtle, efforts are now urgently needed to transport her to a warmer climate for further medication/rehabilitation and eventual release.

Loggerhead turtles are incredible creatures and have a cosmopolitan distribution, nesting over the broadest geographical range of any sea turtle. They live in temperate to tropical regions and migrate huge distances to find nesting areas. Adelita (a female loggerhead turtle) became the first animal of any kind to be tracked across an ocean basin, she travelled an extraordinary 9,000 miles from Mexico across the pacific to nesting grounds in Japan.

However, loggerhead turtles are facing a number of threats in the wild, ranging from becoming entangled in fishing gear and plastic, to the destruction and encroachment of habitat by humans and are classified as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. They desperately need our help.  

 

 

The New Era Group is looking to raise £22,000 to help transport this amazing turtle to a warmer climate for further rehabilitation. Please visit the link here http://gogetfunding.com/get-terri-the-turtle-home/ to see how you can help donate and return this amazing creature back to the wild. 

Thank you.

A blogpost written by Harry Wright

References:

http://gogetfunding.com/get-terri-the-turtle-home/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-35253213

http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fwnet%2Fnature%2Fepisodes%2Fvoyage-of-the-lonely-turtle%2Finterview-wallace-j-nichols%2F2508%2F&date=2010-05-29

Meet Lolita, The World's Loneliest Orca

Lolita has lived in a tank for 45 years and hasn't seen another orca since 1980. Sign the petition to help free the world's lonliest orca:

http://thedo.do/lolita

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: The death of Indonesia's rainforests

The world’s greatest environmental crime in history is currently taking place. A great part of the earth is on fire and the rainforests in Indonesia are being deliberately burned to the ground to clear the forest for palm oil plantations. The world and the media have decided to turn a blind eye to a crime that will have consequences for the whole world.  

 

The Sumatran/Borneo rainforests are some of the most diverse and ecologically important ecosystems on earth, home to many critically endangered species such as the orangutan, the Asian elephant, the sun bear, Sumatran tiger, clouded leopard and the Sumatran rhino (which now number at less than 100). George Monboit states that the fires are destroying "treasures as precious and irreplaceable as the archaeological remains which have been levelled by ISIS".  The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 70 per cent of the anti-cancer plants identified so far are rainforest plants. A new drug development possibly for treating HIV, is Calanolida A, which is derived from a tree discovered on Borneo. It was only discovered in 1991. According to the United Nations, 25% of Western Medicine comes from rainforest ingredients, yet scientists have tested less than 1% of tropical plants. The rainforests in Borneo/Sumatra are potentially our largest and most powerful chemical laboratories, if we destroy them it won’t be like mothballing a factory, we simply will not be able to able to open them again. The irreversibility of the destruction of the Indonesian rainforests is a catastrophic loss to medical science.

 

                                     (By 2022, Indonesia will lose 98% of all of its rainforest)

The orangutan, a fellow ape which we share 98% of our DNA with, is also under a real threat of extinction. It is thought up to a third of the world’s last remaining endangered orangutans have been wiped out by the fires in the last few weeks. Before the fires there were only 6,000 orangutans left in the wild in Sumatra, thousands are now estimated to have perished and burned alive in the fires. It could already be too late for the orangutan.

 

It is not only the environment that has been affected by the fires, humans are suffering greatly too. The smog from the fires has engulfed the whole country and as a result 500,000 people have developed respiratory problems, 100's of people have died and over 75 million people (including millions of children) are breathing in toxic fumes. Schools have been closed, flights cancelled and a state of emergency called. In Palangkaraya, where the air standard pollution index has reached 1900 (anything over 300 is considered hazardous), scientists have recorded dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, cyanide, ammonia, and formaldehyde in the air. The head of the BBC Indonesia, Bec Henschke, in October described the fires as a "apocalyptic hellish scene" and "even in the hotel which was air conditioned" she would wake up in the night "having to breathe from oxygen in a can". She notes that "the scale of the environmental devastation is just unbelievable. I don't think I've ever felt so depressed about the world and I've covered lots of sad things".

 

 Why is this happening?

Indonesia's forests have been overly exploited over the last decade because of the huge demand in palm oil. The forests are burned to the ground because it is 75% cheaper to clear the rainforest that way than any other method. Palm oil is a vegetable oil which is found in one in ten of our supermarket products, from crisps to shampoo to chocolate. 50 million tons of palm oil is produced annually, supplying over 30% of the world’s vegetable oil production. According to Greenpeace, major corporations such as Dove, KFC and Pepsi are among the worst offenders in destroying virgin rainforest for palm oil. The WWF estimate that an area the size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour to make way for palm oil production. New photos released today by Greenpeace show that palm oil workers in Borneo are already planting burnt peatlands with palm oil seeds.

  

 

The fires in Indonesia highlight a planet which is in real danger. Since 1970 the earth has lost 52% of all of its wildlife, according to the United Nations three quarters of all fish stocks are now over- depleted or exploited and we could see fishless oceans by 2042. The WWF's Living Planet Report has noted that "people are now using about 25% more natural resources than the planet can replace." If everyone in the developed world lived like people in the UK, three planets would be needed to support the earth. Our resource use has simply outstripped what the earth had replenished.  

 

(this baby elephant would not leave her mother's side for over five hours after she was poached)

More than 100 world leaders will be meeting at the United Nations Climate Change conference in December to try and reach a ground-breaking deal on the climate. It is desperately needed as Dr Canadell from the Global Carbon Project, has noted that the daily emissions from the "Indonesian fires had been equal to the daily emissions of the US, accelerating humanity's progress along the upward line of global emissions by about one to two years". What has happened in Indonesia should never be allowed to happen again, and provided we act now the IPCC has suggested that there is still time to limit climate change.

 

 

To see the destruction of the earth in such a callous and destructive manner is heart breaking. If the human species is to rise to the full height that is demanded by its dignity and its intelligence then we must act to save the planet now. It is clear that once we have destroyed this planet we do not simply get another one. 

Mahatma Ghandi once quoted "the earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed".  Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last wild animal killed, the last fish taken from the ocean, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, will man realise that you cannot eat money. Simply man has the power to turn the earth back into the earth again and the future survival of the planet now rests with us.

 

An article written by Harry Wright

 Please visit here to see how you can help:  http://www.internationalanimalrescue.org/orangutan-sanctuary 

 

 References:

 

http://www.wwf.org.uk/about_wwf/the_threat_to_the_planet.cfm

 

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-06/indonesian-fires-forget-the-orangutans2c-is-this-a-tipping/6916872

 

-http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-change/

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indonesia-fires-disaster-21st-century-world-media

 

 http://www.care2.com/news/member/357545291/3042982

http://www.ran.org/campaigns

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25722058

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/borneo_forests/about_borneo_forests/borneo_animals/borneo_plants/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPu4CqfmTA

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33209548
http://orangutan.or.id/ponys-new-life-2/

 

https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/topics/palm-oil

 http://www.monbiot.com/2015/10/30/nothing-to-see-here/

 

 

 

Meet Lolita, The World's Loneliest Orca

This is Lolita, she's lived in a confined tank for 45 years at the Miami Sea Aquarium and has not seen another orca since 1980.

She lives in the one of the smallest tanks in the world for a captive whale. Orca's are highly intelligent and social animals and in the wild she would swim up to 100 miles a day; however Lolita only has space less then 60 x 80 feet to live in.  The confinement is apparently so stressful and abysmal that the only other orca at Miami Sea Aquarium, Hugo, years ago "repeatedly smashed his head into the walls of the tank and killed himself".

However, Lolita was not born in captivity, she once had a family. On 8th August 1970 she was caught from the ocean in Penn Cove, Puget Sound, Washington, USA. She was one of seven young whales sold to marine parks around the world from a roundup of around 90 orcas.

 

The orcas were stalked and herded into a three acre net by deafening explosions, speedboats, and airplanes. Alongside the captors, was a young marine mammal researcher Terry Newby. Dr. Newby notes that "confined and desperate the orcas looked for a way out" their "frantic cries reverberated over the cove and were heard for miles." Dr. Newby says that:

                                      HE CAN STILL HEAR THEIR SCREAMS TODAY

 

Lolita was torn from her mother inside the pen using speedboats and nets. She was pulled closer and forced into a sling, never to return. The baby orcas were then sold around the world, including Sea World, to perform and die in tiny cement pools.

 

 

 

During the 15 years of capture in Washington and Columbia 257 to 307 whales were caught. 55 were transferred to aquariums, 12 or 13 died during capture operations. The rest died.

 

Lolita is the only Orca still alive from the capture; sadly she has spent the last 45 years of her life imprisoned in a pen performing every day for humans.

 

But Lolita's time enslaved is hopefully coming to an end. Her family, the Southern Resident Orca population has been classified as endangered and the government has agreed that Lolita should be included in her family's Endangered Species Act listing and receive the same protection from harm. This inclusion would open the door for her release from the Miami Sea Aquarium and return her to her home waters.  Hopefully she can be free once again.

 

 

 

With your help, she can be released. Spread the word and sign the petition here:

https://www.change.org/p/free-lolita-help-this-wild-orca-trapped-in-a-tiny-concrete-tank-for-decades


An article by Harry Wright:

References:

http://www.seaworldofhurt.com/orca-capture/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dG1evYAGak

http://uk.whales.org/blog/2014/11/brief-history-of-southern-residents

http://www.orcanetwork.org/captivity/lolitacapture.html

The Bloody and Barbaric Truth of Rhino Poaching

                       

South Africa is in the middle of a rhino poaching epidemic. Last year the country lost 1,215 rhino to poachers. This year already 756 rhinos have already been killed. At this pace, South Africa is losing more than one rhino every seven hours. 2015 is on track for a record year. 

Rhino poaching is shockingly cruel and sadistic. This young female white rhino was poached in the Kruger National Park in 2013. When the rangers found her, she was still alive. The poacher’s bullets had ripped through her body breaking her back and leaving her unable to move or breathe properly. She was still conscious when the poachers hacked her horn out of her face. 

Sadly, all Rhino species are now suffering a similar fate; according to the charity Save the Rhino if poaching continues to increase at current rates  "rhino could be effectively extinct in the wild by 2026". That is in just over ten years time. 

In the case of the Northern White Rhino, there are now only 4 left on the earth. In Kenya, 3 of the last 4 remaining are protected by drones and armed guard 24 hours a day. 

The Javan Rhino is one of the world’s most critically endangered species with only a few dozen still in existence.  The Sumatran Rhino which is the smallest and weirdest of the remaining rhino species (apparently it can meow like a cat) is also critically endangered, with around 80 animals left in the wild today. According to a new study, scientists actually now consider the Sumatran Rhino extinct in the wild. 

You may ask why this happening?

The answer is human greed and ignorance.

Greed

Rhinos are killed by criminals for their horns. The horn, made of keratin (the same substance in our hair and nails), can sell for $35,000 per pound, on the black market in Asia. The demand makes rhino horn as much worth as cocaine or gold for traffickers. The illegal wildlife trade is now the fourth most profitable criminal activity in the world, after drug smuggling, financial counterfeiting and human trafficking.  

The demand has created “highly profitable and organised international poaching criminal syndicates” that deploy advanced technologies “ranging from night vision scopes, silenced weapons, darting equipment and helicopters to carry out the missions”. Poaching techniques have become ever more sophisticated and harder to enforce. Rangers are losing the battle to save the Rhino. 

(This man was jailed for forty years by a South African court for organising illegal rhino horn expeditions.) 

Rhino poaching is also linked to terrorism. The trading of illegal ivory and rhino horn has gained the interest of Islamic fundamentalist groups in Sub Saharan Africa. The trading of these commodities has "subsided a significant proportion of their funds, allowing these military groups to cover a larger area, expand in manpower, arms and machinery and to execute increasingly devastating operations within the area".

 Ignorance

Rhino horn has also been an important feature of Chinese pharmacopoeia for at least 2000 years, where it is thought to have medicinal powers. Although there is no scientific proof of its medical value, rhino horn is sought after for a variety of uses such as relieving signs and symptoms of infection, and increasing sexual performance.

There is also a huge lack of awareness about the crisis in Asia. In November 2012, WildAid, interviewed 963 residents in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to better understand awareness of rhino conservation status. Over 69.9% of participants did not know that horns came from poached rhinos and 47.3% thought that Rhino Horn improved sexual competence.

Overall, the battle to save the rhino from extinction is not currently being won. Poachers have become to sophisticated, governments to corrupt, individuals to greedy and rangers to underfunded. Unless something dramatically changes within the next ten years, the future for this magnificent species could be lost forever.

There is still hope but we need to act now. Unfortunately time is now running out for the entire rhino species. 

This article is dedicated to ranger Agoyo Mbikoyo who was killed by poachers earlier this year in the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

For more information about how you can help stop the Rhino Poaching crisis please visit this site: http://savingthesurvivors.co.za/. 

References: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpuHXqb8gb4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdFtJbqvpJo

http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1707:elephants-and-rhinos-fund-terror-networks-illegal-poaching-in-sub-saharan-africa-funds-islamic-fundamentalism&catid=60:conflict-terrorism-discussion-papers&Itemid=265

http://www.livescience.com/51965-sumatran-rhino-extinct-in-malaysia.html

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/rhinoceros/african_rhinos/poaching_crisis_african_rhinos/

http://wildaid.org/sites/default/files/resources/WEBReportRhinoHornDemand2014.pdf

http://www.stoprhinopoaching.com/

http://www.rhinosinfo.com/rhino-subspecies.html#.VRM5ePmsUYk

 

The Time to Act on the Planet is Now

The scale of this immense construction in Dubai is awe inspiring evidence of the power that we now have in our hands with which to transform the face of the earth.

When in prehistoric times these stones were first put up to build this temple in the West of England at Avebury, they too must have been an astonishment to the local people and an amazing demonstration of how clever, how powerful human beings have become. Yet that was less than five thousand years ago, a mere moment in the history of life.

 

In the brief period since then, men have gone on to learn how to build huge skyscrapers, how to mould animals and plants to suit their needs and how to transform whole landscapes. Immensely powerful though we are today, it is equally clear that we will be even more powerful tomorrow. Once more there will be greater need upon us to use our power as the number of human beings on earth increases still further. Clearly we could devastate the world.

 

 

 

If we are not to do so we must have a plan and just such a plan has been formulated by environmental scientists in  1980, they called it the World Conservation Strategy and it rests on three very simple propositions;

 

1) One, that we shouldn't so exploit natural resources that we destroy them. Common sense you might think and yet look at what we have done to the European Herring, the Javan tiger and are still doing to the last remaining rhino species.

 

 

2) Two, that we should not interfere with the basic processes of the earth on what all life depends; in the sky, on the green surface of the earth and in the sea and yet we go on pouring poisons into the sky, cutting down the tropical rainforests and dumping our rubbish into the oceans.

 

 

3) Third, that we preserve the diversity of life, that is not just because we depend on it for our food, though we do, nor that we still know so little about it that we do not know what we are losing. But it is surely that we have no moral right to destroy other living organisms of which we share the earth.

 

 

 

As far as we know the earth is one of the only places in the Universe where there is life. In the two hundred thousand years of man's existence the greatest threat to the survival of our species is happening now. The earth's continual survival now rests in our hands.

 

 

 

 

To find out more about how you can act on climate change please visit the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation page at http://leonardodicaprio.org/.

 

References:

https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/WCS-004.pdf