Daily Quick Read - October 27, 2019

Fence the Humans In

In Sri Lanka population growth and the expansion of farmlands have put tremendous pressure on the relationship between humans and elephants. For decades the government policy was to fence elephants into forest enclaves, but human encroachment and shortages of food in the elephant reserves have resulted in a lethal situation for elephants and humans.  

Asian elephants are under pressure. Their numbers have declined by an estimated 50 percent in the last 75 years, leaving just 40,000 to 50,000 in the wild. Although they aren’t poached anywhere near as much as their African cousins, their forest homes are being rapidly fragmented. Nowhere is the problem more acute than in Sri Lanka. It accounts for just 2 percent of their total habitat, yet is home to over 5000 Asian elephants – more than 10 percent of the remaining global population.

Hungry elephants raid crops, trampling fields and sometimes people. In response, farmers attack the animals with flaming torches, firecrackers, home-made guns and even explosives embedded in fruit, known as hakka patas or “jaw exploders”. Last year, more than 300 elephants were killed in altercations with humans and around 70 people lost their lives to elephants. “Sri Lanka has the highest level of human-elephant conflict in the world,” says Fernando. “Wherever there are people and elephants, there’s conflict.”

Elephant experts have convinced the government to try another approach to elephant and human interaction. Fencing the people and allowing the elephants more freedom of movement.

In 2013, the village of Galewewa pioneered a programme designed by Fernando and his colleagues to use electric fences to encircle crops and homes rather than elephants. The locals took some convincing. “People just assumed it wouldn’t be successful because they’d seen the government fences,” says Sampath Ekanayaka, manager of the Centre for Conservation and Research’s community programmes in the region. “To them, this was just another fence.”

The results have been encouraging. After six years with the fences, no people or elephants have been killed, nocturnal raids are practically non-existent and crop yields and earnings have significantly increased. Galewewa’s success has prompted around 25 more villages to join the programme, and Sri Lanka’s wildlife department has now established another 30 village fences.

Lion Farming

Lions raised for canned hunting

Earlier this year a quiet modification was made to South Africa’s Animal Improvement Act (AIA).  The AIA, outlines a variety of requirement for the breeding of domestic/farm animals, including mechanism to “manipulate breeding outcomes.”  The modification reclassifies 33 species of wild animals as “farm animals.”   South Africa now considers wild animals such as Cape buffalos, mountain zebras, lions, giraffe, white and black rhinos and cheetahs under the same rules as cattle, sheep, goats, etc.

So this raises the question: if the AIA amendment is not for the protection of the 33 wild animals that now fall under the act, what was behind the request from “the industry”? A clue might be in the permit restrictions and constraints imposed by NEMBA on the hunting and particularly the movement of listed and protected animals.

The act requires strict control over conveying, moving or otherwise translocating any specimen of a threatened or protected species, as well as “selling or otherwise trading in, buying, receiving, giving, donating or accepting as a gift, or in any way acquiring or disposing of any specimen of a listed threatened or protected species”. The AIA has none of these restrictions in pursuit of “improved” stock.

Placing wild animals under a set of rules designed to assist commercial livestock operations to increase productivity and manipulate animals for food might help the canned hunting industry, but it isn’t likely to improve the quality of wild animals.  Prior to this modification, the only wild species that was included in the provisions of the AIA was the ostrich and that hasn’t turning out so well.

Scientific reports indicate that haphazard breeding and cross-breeding between, for instance, the Northern African ostrich and the Southern African ostrich was done to improve feather production. The South African ostrich industry is known to experience reproduction and chick survival problems as a result of breeding practices.

Some Forest are Underwater

                                                             Steve Lonhart / NOAA MBNMS

The great bull kelp forests that sustain a great variety of marine life along the northern California coast have virtually disappeared.  In 2013, a mysterious disease decimated the sea star population along the coastline.  Sea stars eat purple sea urchins.  Purple sea urchins love to eat bull kelp.  With the stars gone the urchins have proliferated to the detriment of the kelp forests.  In 2014, an ocean heat wave deprived the kelp of sufficient nutrients and the forest’s growth was impacted.  Between 2014 and 2015, the purple sea urchin population exploded.  Today the kelp forest is less than ten percent  of its 2013 size.

The coastal waters of northern California were once home to undulating forests of bull kelp, a type of seaweed that offers shelter to a host of sea creatures. But a series of adverse ecological events have jolted the region’s marine ecosystem out of whack. Populations of purple sea urchins, a voracious, kelp-eating species, have exploded. And now, according to a new study in Scientific Reports, more than 90 percent of bull kelp canopy along 217 miles of California’s coast is gone.

As is usually the case when part of an ecosystem collapses, the decimation of bull kelp forests has had a devastating ripple effect. According to the study, 96 percent of red abalone, a type of sea snail that feeds on bull kelp, have died from starvation. Red sea urchins, which are bigger and meatier than their purple relatives, are similarly declining from a lack of food. Last year, a recreational abalone fishery worth $44 million had to close. The north coast commercial red sea urchin fishery has collapsed.

Barehanded Bee Handling

Bees didn’t always live in man-made hives.  Michael Thiele is a dedicated bee advocate who is working to rewild bees.  He and his team are helping bees to set up housekeeping in more natural environments.

As he began dedicating more of his time to bees – he did a stint as the official beekeeper of San Francisco Zen Center from 2002 to 2005 – he became increasingly disenchanted with typical beekeeping techniques. He gave up the traditional beekeeping boxes, refused to use chemicals, smoke, or protective clothing when interacting with bees, going so far as to begin scooping them up bare-handed.

Fast-forward to 2006 and Thiele's entwined path with bees found a new place roost – a mission to "rewild" the beleaguered bees who are suffering from a devastating decline. Working with a team of biologists, apiculturists, and botanists, the idea is to coax bees out of manmade hives and back into more natural environs. This comes in the form of log hives elevated off the ground, much like the nests bees lived in for millions of years before they were domesticated.

Screw the Straws

Can the metal straw you use for your Frappuccino really save the planet?  How about  that recycled cotton grocery tote bag?  Do these items allow us to feel like we are part of the solution, while the climate crisis rages on?  It’s complicated.

“We are putting more materials out into the world,” says Emma Rose Cohen, CEO and founder of Final Straw, a company that sells the colorful, foldable metal straw Dufoe carries with her. “There is the irony of buying something to reduce consumption.” Plus, she adds, thanks to the proliferation of cheap knockoffs of her product, “inadvertently, we actually created a ton of additional waste because of these knock-offs. It wasn’t our direct waste, but still.”

Nik Sawe, a neuroscientist specializing in environmental decision-making at Stanford University, says that purchasing products that claim to be environmentally friendly allows people to participate in environmentalism without causing themselves too much discomfort. Considering how to act ethically in an environmental context requires people to confront the gravity and scale of the problem — which can feel overwhelming and, according to Sawe, actually cause them not to act. A more positive experience, on the other hand, is more likely to spur action.

…some think this entire discussion is moot, claiming that the impact of individual purchases pale in the face of the massive environmental challenges we face, and argue that larger and systemic changes are needed. In Heede’s words, “screw the straws, and do something serious.”