Photograph of Snowy Owl

Snowy Owl by Chris Townend.

THE NEWS
February 2012

WILD TRAVEL
A new 160-page magazine about the most amazing birds and other wildlife in the world, and the best places to see them, is available now, in WH Smith and Sainsbury's stores in Britain, and from the publishers; Archant Specialist, Archant House, Oriel Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK, GL50 1BB (Tel: 01242 211 080).


Snowy Owls
Large numbers of Snowy Owls have appeared in the United States this winter, with up to 30 in one area around South Dakota's Lake Andes alone. It is thought that a good breeding season, resulting from a high population of lemmings, on which the young are fed, has led to so many youngsters flying further south than usual. If they then find a plentiful supply of food, such as mice, rats and voles, they are likely to stay in an area until the food runs out. Chicago's Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary is one such spot and there have even been widespread reports as far south as Kansas and Missouri.


Snow Leopards
Five snow leopards have been photographed in Zorkul Nature Reserve in the Wakhan Mountains of Tajikistan. With the support of Panthera, scientists placed 11 automatic cameras at seven locations and the 'camera traps' photographed five separate Snow Leopards in one valley, including a family with two cubs. When the team returned to retrieve the cameras after three months, one camera was missing. When the images were uploaded the two cubs were caught on film carrying the camera off! The survey revealed an unusually high number of Snow Leopards in the Wakhan Mountains, as well as healthy populations of Mountain Ibex and Marco Polo Sheep.


Jaguar seen in Arizona
The Arizona Game and Fish Department has confirmed a hunter’s report of a Jaguar southeast of Tucson. The hunter's dogs, which he was using to hunt Mountain Lions (!), chased the Jaguar up a tree where it remained for about 15 minutes after the hunter had called off his dogs. The Jaguar then climbed down and headed south. Based on photographs and video taken by the hunter, biologists believe the Jaguar is an adult male in an apparently good, healthy condition. The presence of Jaguars, usually wandering males from the nearest breeding population in Mexico, in the Arizona and New Mexico borderlands, was confirmed in 1997 but the last known wild Jaguar in the USA died in 2009.


Orang-utans
Palm oil companies are offering rewards for killing Orang-utans. Four Paws rescued a mother and daughter from almost certain death at the hands of local people who are paid by palm oil companies to kill them because they are regarded as 'pests'! During the last couple of years hundreds of payments have been claimed, despite killing Orang-utans being illegal in Indonesia. All adults are killed but babies are 'spared' for the pet trade, and this is on top of the hundreds which are killed every year for meat. A survey of 7,000 local villagers in Kalimantan suggested that between 750 and 1790 Orang-utans are killed each year. Scientists estimate that if more than than one percent of females in a given population are killed in a year, that population will go extinct. Assuming males and females are killed in equal numbers in Kalimantan, then that could be between 375 and 1550 females, or from 0.9 to 3.6 percent of Kalimantan's total female Orang-utan population, almost at or way beyond the threshold for extinction. For more on this shocking situation see National Geographic News.


Economic growth is more important than the environment
This is not really news because many of us have known it for a long time but at last a senior British politician - The Chancellor, George Osborne, no less - has finally admitted, in his autumn statement, that the environment will not stand in the way of economic growth. He said, “We will make sure that gold plating of EU rules on things like habitats aren’t placing ridiculous costs on British businesses”. This is why conservationists are banging their heads against a brick wall, one consisting of politicians, virtually all of which seem incapable of even contemplating a world without economic growth. They firmly believe that more houses, more cars, more roads and more stuff for more people to make and buy is the only way to run the world. All at the expense of the environment and especially wildlife. It's the opposite of one of their favourite words - (un)sustainable.


Hundreds of threatened species not on official US list?
Many species at risk of extinction in the United States have not made it onto the country's official Endangered Species Act (ESA) list, according to new research from the University of Adelaide. A study published in the latest issue of Conservation Letters compared the ESA list with the world's leading threatened species list, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and found that of the American species included on the IUCN Red List, 40 per cent of birds, 50 per cent of mammals, and 80 to 95 per cent of other species were not recognised by the ESA as threatened, including birds such as Kittlitz's Murrelet and Cerulean Warbler.


Humans
There are now 7 billion people living on planet Earth; that is about 9 million for every Mountain Gorilla. Our numbers are increasing by 10,000 per hour. There is not enough food or other basic resources for this number of people to live half-decent lives and even most of the 78 million babies who are born this year and survive into childhood will probably live the rest of their lives in slums. Less consumption and more technological advances may make it possible for the planet to support so many people but if another billion are born in the next 12 years, like the last 12, Earth may not be able to cope and even if it could provide for more humans what will the quality of their lives be like? What sort of Earth will they live on? One with very little other life, seems almost certain.

  • The estimated population of humans in ...

  • 2050 - 9 billion
  • 2011 - 7 billion
  • 1999 - 6 billion
  • 1987 - 5 billion
  • 1974 - 4 billion
  • 1960 - 3 billion
  • 1927 - 2 billion
  • 1804 - 1 billion


    • Humans love Nature
    Two million visits are made to the RSPB's 200 reserves each year, helping GB£66million into local communities and supporting 1872 local jobs (an 87 per cent increase since 2002). Nature is worth billions to the British economy every year - the most recent figures showed nature tourism visits reached nearly 3 billion in 2010 with visitors spending an estimated GB£20.4billion in the local area, and research by Scottish Natural Heritage has revealed that nature-based tourism generates GB£1.4 billion per year, and helps support 39,000 jobs, in Scotland. Although the figures involved may be much smaller the same principle applies abroad of course, where local people and travellers from afar, especially independent ones, support local communities by visiting and staying at local parks and reserves to look for birds and other wildlife; and, apart from helping to establish parks and reserves, visitors also ensure that they are managed appropriately, for us, and, last but not least, the wildlife they support.


    Do Farmers love Nature?
    Farmland birds across Europe have halved in number since 1980. The Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme has compiled population figures for 145 bird species in 25 European countries between 1980 and 2009. Amongst those species covered, farmland birds are the most threatened group, with 20 out of 36 species in decline, and overall numbers at an all-time low, down by 48% since 1980. Some of the species that have declined the most are Grey Partridge (–82%), Skylark (–46%), Linnet (–62%) and Corn Bunting (–66%), results which prove the need for urgent reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) so that it encourages farmers to think about wildlife as well as profit. Proposals for the upcoming reform of the CAP were published in October, but BirdLife is concerned that they do not go far enough.

    According to Mark Avery, ex Conservation Director for the RSPB, in his piece for the December 2011 issue of Birdwatch magazine, we need to demand that farmers do much, much more to try and make up for the millions of birds which have gone missing from our countryside in our lifetimes. About a quarter of the GB£2billion of taxpayers' money which is pumped into farming in England goes to farmers who profess to be bird and other wildlife friendly but the other three quarters is basically 'income support' for farmers, be they poor OR rich! It's a crazy situation which seems unlikely to change, especially when farmers react so dramatically to such claims by conservationists. "We feed you!" they yell and yet research shows almost every farm has space for more habitat for birds and wildlife. For more on this see Mark's Standing up for Nature blog.


    Latest Red List for Birds
    Things are just as bad if not worse in the rest of the world. The latest IUCN/ BirdLife list of bird species threatened with extinction numbers 1253, a staggering 12.5% of the world total of species which they consider to be 9920. Of these, 189 are regarded as critically endangered! A further 843 species are classified as near-threatened. The major reason why so many birds are struggling to survive is the loss of habitats (especially forests) to agriculture, a grave issue significantly affecting 87% of threatened species.


    Spoon-billed Sandpiper
    One bird definitely on the Red List is the Spoon-billed Sandpiper even though up to 103, one of the highest counts of the species in recent decades, were observed on October 12th at Rudong, in Jiangsu Province just north of the Yangtze Estuary in China. The mudflats are currently unprotected and threatened by several industrial development projects, as well as by an introduced species of spartina grass which is spreading across the mud. BirdLife, the Hong Kong Birdwatching Society and the Wild Bird Society of Shanghai, who found the birds, are working on trying to save Rudong, helped by a grant from Disney’s Friends for Change, and Spoon-billed Sandpiper is one the species benefiting from BirdLife's Preventing Extinctions Programme. If you would like to support their sterling work for Spoon-billed Sandpiper by becoming a BirdLife Species Champion please email species.champions@birdlife.org.

    In an effort to boost the rapidly declining population of the extraordinary Spoon-billed Sandpiper - thought to be around 200 pairs - the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) are spearheading an attempt to establish a captive breeding programme which got underway this summer when they collected eggs and successfully hatched 17 chicks from Chukotka in Siberia. The 13 surviving chicks have now been moved to WWT Slimbridge where they will hopefully produce young of their own, in order to boost the wild population. Continued habitat loss, as well as hunting (on the birds' wintering grounds) may of course render such an intrusive project meaningless. For the latest news see the WWT website.

    When buying books please consider doing so via this WildSounds link. If you do then 3-5% of the book's (or any other product's) cost will help the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. This is because we are members of their Commission for Conservation programme, and are currently supporting BirdLife's Preventing Extinctions Programme to save the Spoon-billed Sandpiper.

    One superb book just out is Cotingas and Manakins, written by Guy Kirwan and Graeme Green, and illustrated with plates by Eustace Barnes and several hundred photographs.


    Tigers
    The 2010 census of Tigers in India, which supports over half of the world population, found about 1706 animals, nearly 300 more than the estimated 1411 which were found in a 2006 census. However, much of the increase is probably due to more thorough counting according to India's National Tiger Conservation Authority (Project Tiger) who carried out the census; for example, it is believed there are about 70 Tigers in the Sunderbans which, along with some other areas, were not included in the 2006 census, and the latest count is still way below the 3600 or so which were believed to be present in 2002, let alone the 40,000 which were possibly in India as recently as 1947. Since then the human population of India has soared to over 1.2 billion and continues to rise, and the loss of Tiger habitat to human habitat seems unlikely to end.


    Wild cats on Sumatra
    Five of the seven wild cat species which occur on Sumatra have been photographed by cameras equipped with infrared triggers ('camera traps'). The 404 images, captured by the WWF during a three-month survey in early 2011 of an unprotected forest corridor in the area known as Bukit Tigapuluh (Thirty Hills), included 226 of (Sumatran) Tiger, 77 of Clouded Leopard, 70 of Golden Cat, 27 of Leopard Cat and four of Marbled Cat. The forests these cats live in are disappearing fast, mainly because of logging for pulp and paper, and illegal palm oil plantations.


    Our Top 100 Destinations
    To see what we think are some of the best remaining wild places left on Earth check out our Top 100 Wildlife Destinations, to which 50 have been added during the last few months, including the likes of Guyana, Mozambique, Estonia, Sumatra, and the Subantarctic Islands of Australia and New Zealand.

    If you think somewhere should be covered by us then please feel free to Email us with your ideas.