DAILY QUICK READ - SEPTEMBER 27, 2016

Major Guardian Report – Illegal Wildlife Trafficking

Please take the time to read this and follow along as The Guardian expands the story this week.

A major investigation into global wildlife crime today names for the first time key traffickers and links their illegal trade to corrupt officials at the highest levels of one Asian country.

The investigation, published by the Guardian, exposes the central role of international organised crime groups in mutilating and killing tens of thousands of animals and threatening to eliminate endangered species including tigers, elephants and rhinos.

The in-depth reporting identifies suspected traders across several continents, from South Africa to Thailand and in the markets of China, where animal parts are used in traditional medicines. Many iconic animals are heading toward extinction: only 30,000 rhinos are alive today, 5% of the number four decades ago. About 1,000 are killed by poachers annually – and that figure has risen each year in the last six.

Elephants are being killed in even greater numbers: 20,000 for their tusks last year alone. Tigers, currently numbering 3,500 in the wild, are also in imminent danger.

But smaller animals, too, are facing extinction. Scaly anteaters, called pangolins, are shipped live in fishnet bags across borders for their scales, which are believed by some to help mothers breastfeed. Several vulnerable sub-species of turtles, pythons, antelopes and birds are also in sharp decline.

Existential Coffee Crisis

This shit is getting real now.  Climate change may result in a massive loss in the land available for the cultivationof coffee.  Can the complete collapse of civilization be far behind?

Already climate change is causing trouble for coffee farmers. With warmer, wetter weather overall, growers are experiencing infestations such as coffee leaf rust and the berry borer in high-altitude locations that used to be unsuitable to such pests. Hot spells and cold snaps are killing crops; the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais lost one-third of its yield in 2014 due to drought. From the report:

“Even half a degree at the wrong time can make a big difference in coffee yield, flavour, and aroma. Around the Bean Belt, rising minimum growing temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, and rising pest and disease incidence, are already making life harder for coffee farmers.”

Some countries will become unsuitable for coffee production altogether, such as Mexico, which is projected to be unviable by the 2020s. The report says that most of Nicaragua will lose its coffee zone by 2050, and Tanzanian Arabica will reach critically low levels by the 2060s. There are regions that could benefit from the changing climate by becoming coffee growers, such as the highlands of East Africa, Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, and the Andes, but these would still be affected by more extreme and unpredictable weather. Additional expansion would result, too, in the destruction of more forests to make way for new plantations.

Thoughtful Essay on Wolf Reintroduction (in Britain)

There are extremes at both sides of the reintroduction argument no matter where it takes place.  Well worth the read.

Wolves carry a lot of mythological baggage with them, invoking both unreasonable fear of the darkness of the forest- or perhaps the even darker, animalistic side of our own nature- and also unrealistic expectations of a return to some kind of pristine wilderness. In reality, as wild creatures, they are adapting readily to anthropogenic landscapes and hybridising with dogs and other animals,  challenging our conceptions of what constitutes "wild" (Buller 2008).

If the strongest argument for wolf reintroduction is that, how can we expect other countries to protect wildlife if we cannot do the same here, the counter might be that big animals pose a huge challenge to farmers elsewhere also ,and  how much biodiversity value would they really bring to Britain anyway?

Fractious debates between conservationists and farmers are likely to continue, but in Britain at least, there would seem to be a huge amount of other restoration work to be done in any case before there need be serious consideration of bringing back the wolf.