Category Archives: Conservation

Hundreds of elephants dead in mysterious mass die-off

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Botswana’s government is yet to test the remains of the dead animals in what has been described as a ‘conservation disaster’

More than 350 elephants have died in northern Botswana in a mysterious mass die-off described by scientists as a “conservation disaster”.

A cluster of elephant deaths was first reported in the Okavango Delta in early May, with 169 individuals dead by the end of the month. By mid June, the number had more than doubled, with 70% of the deaths clustered around waterholes, according to local sources who wish to remain anonymous.

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Koalas will be driven to extinction before 2050 in NSW, major inquiry finds

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State parliamentary investigation finds biggest threat to the species’ survival is habitat loss – but logging and clearing has continued

Koalas will become extinct before 2050 in NSW unless there is urgent government intervention to prevent habitat loss, a year-long inquiry has found.

The NSW parliamentary inquiry also finds that a government estimate that there are 36,000 koalas in the state is outdated and unreliable.

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‘Either we change or we die’: the radical farming project in the Amazon

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A growing movement for sustainable agriculture in Brazil has taken on new urgency with the coronavirus pandemic

The cumaru trees could have been planted elsewhere in this Amazon reserve, where they had better chances of flourishing. Instead, they were planted in harsh, sandy soil in the dry savannah that breaks up the forest. Jack beans, guandu peas and other crops were planted in straw around them with cut savannah grass, for moisture and compost. “We call it the cradle,” says agronomist Alailson Rêgo. “It protects them.”

The hope is that if these Amazon-native trees – whose seeds can be used in cosmetics – thrive on this sandy soil and a nearby patch of deforested, burned land, they can regenerate abandoned pasture elsewhere. In the Amazon, more land is cleared for cattle than anything else. It’s easier enough to clear – chop down a few trees, light a few fires. But restoring the forest? Bringing back the life and the greenness? That is far, far harder.

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Scottish villagers plan to buy out landowners for eco moorland project

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Despite funding challenges, community aims to increase biodiversity at Langholm Moor making it resistant to climate change

A small community in the rolling uplands of southern Scotland hopes to create a major new nature reserve, straddling more than 10,000 acres of heather moorland home to hen harriers, black grouse and curlew.

The 2,300 villagers of Langholm, a small settlement a few miles north of the English border, hope to buy one of the UK’s most famous grouse moors, owned by one of the UK’s most powerful hereditary landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch.

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‘My land is now owned by lions’: Maasai farmers offer Kenya’s wildlife a lifeline

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Kenya has lost 70% of its wildlife in 30 years, but conservancy schemes could halt the decline – and benefit local communities

Parsaloi Kupai’s home, situated on the edge of Ol Kinyei conservancy near the Maasai Mara game reserve, is no different from any other Maasai homestead – oval-shaped huts with an almost flat roof and walls plastered with a mixture of water, mud and cow dung. At the centre of the homestead is a cattle boma, an enclosure where his livestock spends the night, safe from the many predators that roam the area.

Kupai, 47, and his two wives chose to live here after they surrendered 69 hectares (170 acres) of land to the 7,500-hectare conservancy. He is among 240 landowners who gave up their highly valued grazing land for the project.

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‘A shame for the world’: Uganda’s fragile forest ecosystem destroyed for sugar

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Conservationists say clearance of Bugamo reserve for plantation is blow to biodiversity and country’s reputation on wildlife

Conservationists have branded a decision by the Ugandan high court to allow swathes of forest to be cleared for a sugarcane plantation “an unforgivable shame for all people”.

Work to clear 900 hectares (2,223 acres) of Bugoma Forest Reserve, in Hoima, began last month after the court ruled that the land, leased by Hoima Sugar Company Ltd, lay outside the protected area of the forest. The court ordered the National Forestry Authority (NFA), which manages it, to vacate the land and remove the military officers who had been guarding it. The NFA has appealed the decision.

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Pandemics result from destruction of nature, say UN and WHO

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Experts call for legislation and trade deals worldwide to encourage green recovery

Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as the devastation of forests and other wild places were still the driving forces behind the increasing number of diseases leaping from wildlife to humans, the leaders told the Guardian.

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Plastic superhighway: the awful truth of our hidden ocean waste

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Solving the issue of waste in our seas turned out to be more complex than scrounging for bottles off the beach, Laura Trethewey found

We called the competition Who Found the Weirdest Thing? So far, the entries that day were a motorcycle helmet, a lithium battery covered with scary stickers asking that we return it to the military, and a toy dinosaur.

The dinosaur was warm from the sun and starting to degrade. The ocean had smoothed and worn down its edges. Rocks and sand had crosshatched its skin. It was missing a hind leg. On one side it was dark grey; the sun had bleached its opposite flank white.

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Diego the tortoise, father to hundreds and saviour of his species, finally retires

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Giant tortoise, whose reproductive efforts almost single-handedly saved his species, has been moved to an uninhabited island

Diego, the giant Galápagos tortoise whose tireless efforts are credited with almost single-handedly saving his once-threatened species, has been put out to pasture on his native island after decades of breeding in captivity, Ecuador’s environment minister said.

Diego was shipped out from the Galápagos national park’s breeding program on Santa Cruz to the remote and uninhabited Española.

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Canadian conservation officer fired for refusing to kill bear cubs wins legal battle

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Casavant shot mother black bear under province policy but was suspended and eventually fired for not killing cubs

A conservation officer in Canada who was fired for refusing to kill two black bear cubs has won a protracted legal battle over his termination.

“I feel like the black clouds that have hung over my family for years are finally starting to part,” Bryce Casavant told the Guardian. “But the moment is bittersweet – my firing should have never happened in the first place.”

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‘I raised hell’: how people worldwide answered the call of World Oceans Day

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From protecting fishing communities to regrowing coral reefs, Guardian readers and environmentalists share how they’re working to defend the ocean

World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them.

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Supertrawlers ‘making a mockery’ of UK’s protected seas

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Vast vessels spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in officially protected areas in 2019

Supertrawlers spent almost 3,000 hours fishing in UK marine protected areas in 2019, making “a mockery of the word ‘protected’,” according to campaigners.

Supertrawlers are those over 100 metres in length and can catch hundreds of tonnes of fish every day, using nets up to a mile long. A Greenpeace investigation revealed that the 25 supertrawlers included the four biggest in the world and fished in 39 different marine protected areas (MPAs).

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Meat giants selling to UK linked to Brazil farms in deforested Amazon reserve

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Greenpeace report shows cattle indirectly sold to JBS, Marfrig and Minerva came from protected Serro Ricardo Franco park

Three international meat companies have indirectly sourced cattle from farms that deforested a unique, protected Amazon reserve, a new report from Greenpeace has found – and two of them later sold meat from the area to the UK.

The revelations come as the Brazil-based companies involved, JBS, Marfrig and Minerva, are under increasing pressure to come clean about their Amazon supply chains. They are now known to have broken commitments made to Greenpeace and Brazilian federal prosecutors  more than a decade ago.

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Revealed: UK banks and investors’ $2bn backing of meat firms linked to Amazon deforestation

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Investigation uncovers ties between financial institutions and three Brazilian firms connected to environmental destruction

British-based banks and finance houses have provided more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in financial backing in recent years to Brazilian beef companies which have been linked to Amazon deforestation, according to new research.

 Thousands of hectares of Amazon are being felled every year to graze cattle and provide meat for world markets.

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Six elephants killed in one day by poachers in Ethiopia

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The deaths in Mago National Park are unprecedented, say officials

Poachers have killed at least six elephants in a single day in Ethiopia, wildlife officials said on Tuesday, the largest such slaughter in memory in the east African nation.

The elephants died last week, when they ventured out of the Mago National Park in the far south of Ethiopia to drink water, Ganabul Bulmi, the park’s chief warden, told reporters.

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Sixth mass extinction of wildlife accelerating, scientists warn

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Analysis shows 500 species on brink of extinction – as many as were lost over previous century

The sixth mass extinction of wildlife on Earth is accelerating, according to an analysis by scientists who warn it may be a tipping point for the collapse of civilisation.

More than 500 species of land animals were found to be on the brink of extinction and likely to be lost within 20 years. In comparison, the same number were lost over the whole of the last century. Without the human destruction of nature, even this rate of loss would have taken thousands of years, the scientists said.

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Bid for first eco-labelled bluefin tuna raises fears for protection of ‘king of fish’

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Conservationists warn the species, which was almost extinct 10 years ago, could be under threat if Japanese fishery is MSC certified

A decade ago, the highly prized “king of fish”, the bluefin tuna, was taken off menus in high-end restaurants and shunned by top chefs, amid warnings by environmentalists that it was being driven to extinction. Recent assessments of Atlantic bluefin tuna, which can grow to the size of a small car and live for up to 40 years, have shown much healthier populations.

But now conservationists and scientists are warning that the largest and most valuable tuna species could once again be under threat if a Japanese bluefin fishery in the Atlantic Ocean is awarded an internationally recognised “ecolabel” they claim is based on flawed science.

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Crab blood to remain big pharma’s standard as industry group rejects substitute

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Animal rights groups have been pushing a synthetic alternative to horseshoe crab blood in drug safety testing

Horseshoe crabs’ icy-blue blood will remain the drug industry’s standard for safety tests after a powerful US group ditched a plan to give equal status to a synthetic substitute pushed by Swiss biotech Lonza and animal welfare groups.

The crabs’ copper-rich blood clots in the presence of bacterial endotoxins and has long been used in tests to detect contamination in shots and infusions.

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EU plan for 3bn trees in 10 years to tackle biodiversity crisis

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Concern that new strategy, which also includes protecting primeval forests, ‘lacks tools’

The European commission will launch a sweeping effort to tackle the global biodiversity crisis on Wednesday, including a call for 3 billion trees to be planted in the EU by 2030 and a plan to better protect the continent’s last primeval forests.

The draft policy document, published online by an environmental NGO, admits that to date in the EU, “protection has been incomplete, restoration has been small-scale, and the implementation and enforcement of legislation has been insufficient”.

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