Daily Quick Read - September 19, 2019

Bureaucratic Conservation

Last week a group of academics, professional and researchers met under the auspices of the World Wildlife Federation to discuss the causes of the failure of the conservation movement to stem the planets loss of wildlife.  The group identified to political systems failures, but they also pointed the finger at conservation NGOs.

Dissatisfaction with the “corporate nature” model of conservation practised by the big international non government groups is growing, said Sarah Milne, a researcher at the Australian National University.

“[They] now consume and channel a significant proportion of available conservation funding. This is corporate nature [where] branding is fundamental, market-based and technocratic. It risks being top-down, impervious and homogenous and calls for a rethink of how global conservation works.”

These groups count success by numbers and the money they attract, not by consideration of conservation, said Dominique Bikaba, director of Strong Roots, a group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “They do not understand local people. They come with big degrees and an idea from London or Washington. They don’t want to learn from local and indigenous peoples.”.

“Conservation still thinks in terms of separating people from nature and of saving pristine places,” said South African anthropologist Anselmo Matusse, who has just spent a year in a remote, forested part of Mozambique where people have lived successfully and sustainably for years, but which governments and conservation groups now want to “protect”.

“If we continue with the present path of nature conservation then biodiversity will soon be like art that is of value to only some – kept locked away in highly guarded museums where only the rich can visit. Is the current path of protecting biodiversity not another form of colonialism? Are the state and the market the only options to change the route of human civilisation and Earth, which [are] heading towards collapse?” asked Matusse.

Deus Vult

I’ve been in Singapore when Indonesian farmers were conducting their annual forest burns.  The smoke and haze were so thick you couldn’t see buildings directly across the street.  Much like fires in the Amazon and Africa, this is an annual event that could be controlled, but apparently governments either actively encourage or are to incompetent to mitigate.

Indonesia’s president has admitted negligence on the part of the government, as top officials engage in a blame game amid the worst spate of forest fires since 2015 that’s sending clouds of toxic haze across large swaths of the country and abroad.

This year’s fires, most of them set deliberately to clear land for planting, have burned nearly 340,000 hectares (840,000 acres) as of Aug. 31 — an area a third the size of Jamaica — according to data from the environment ministry.

“Ahead of the dry season, everyone should have been prepared,” President Joko Widodo said on Sept. 17 during a meeting with officials in Sumatra’s Riau province, one of the worst-affected regions.

The president’s remarks come after several of his top aides issued a series of widely ridiculed claims about the fires, haze, and their cause. Siti Nurbaya Bakar, the environment minister, was criticized last week for denying that the fires in Indonesia were sending haze to Malaysia and Singapore, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile, the president’s chief of staff, Moeldoko, called on people affected by the haze to be patient and pray, blaming the disaster squarely on “God.”

Aliens Bug Me

Spotted lanternflies have journeyed from China to the US, where there are no natural enemies and plenty of food.  Some have developed a taste for wine (the grape vines at least).  Other than drenching vines in pesticides, there is one other solution.  Bring in another Chinese insect to do the work.  But, first make sure that we aren’t trading one foreign pest for another.

The people who are getting hit first, and hardest, are vineyard owners.

Leach takes me to see one of them: John Landis, co-owner of Vynecrest Vineyards and Winery, west of Allentown.

When we arrive, Landis is pressing grapes. He is smiling. Harvest is always a good time, he says. But then I ask him about lanternflies, and he turns serious.

"We've never had a situation like this in 40 years," he says. "If it starts to decimate your vineyard, it could cause people to go out of the winery business. It definitely kills vines."

…in China, the lanternfly has natural enemies that hold it in check. They are tiny wasps, so small you barely see them.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, working with colleagues from China, have brought two of these wasps to the U.S. under tight security. The wasps are under quarantine in a couple of USDA labs.

Elephants Belong in the Wild

After delegates at the August CITES meeting voted to restrict the trade of live elephants, elephant advocates organized an Indaba in South Africa to discuss the status of captive elephants in that country.  Despite a large number of captive elephants being  exploited at roadside attractions and a global controversy over elephants at the Johannesburg Zoo,  no representatives of the South African government attended the Indaba.  

CITES now only allows the live trade of wild elephants within their natural and historic range in Africa, except in exceptional or emergency circumstances.

“This means that wild baby elephants can no longer be ripped away from their families and sold to zoos and captive facilities, which is a great start,” states Audrey Delsink of HSI Africa.

One of the aims of the Indaba was to bring awareness to the plight of captive elephants and the cruel methods of training used to break these animals into submission to facilitate interaction. To achieve perpetual submissiveness, they are often also put on the Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone, which reduces their testosterone levels but has severe side including causing genital deformities.

Hence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is regularly identified in elephants, especially those kept in captivity, stated Dr Gay Bradshaw from the Kerulos Center for Nonviolence.

“When subjected to genocide, imprisonment, cultural destruction, enslavement, loss of homeland, torture, and war, or in the language of elephant managers and conservationists, culls, translocation, captivity training, human-elephant conflict, and crop protection, both humans and elephants experience psychological and social breakdown. Elephant trauma survivors can only begin to heal when elephant ways of life are reinstated.”

Climate Strike — Find an Event

Find a strike near you to attend on September 20 on the map below. If you don’t see an event in your area, organize one! We’ll provide everything you need to get started in planning something in your community so no experience is necessary. Whether you’re 7 or 77, you’re invited to join the movement.

For more information, please visit strikewithus.org.