Monthly Archives: October 2011

Population Control: the last great environmental taboo?

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Kate

by Kate Booker

“There cannot be more people on this earth than can be fed” – Sir David Attenborough

It seems so obvious.  With world population hitting 7 billion this week and concerns about the environment at an all-time high, there is surely not a single environmental problem facing us today which would not be easier to address if there were fewer human beings on this planet.

Yet when it comes to environmental solutions, we talk about carbon offsets, going carbon neutral, food miles, electric cars, recycling, composting – in short, pretty much everything except the one thing which is unequivocally making each and every one of the environmental issues we face worse: creating more humans.

Why is it such a sensitive issue?  I suppose the suggestion of population control brings to mind punitive regimes such as China’s One Child Policy.  However if we act now, and focus on educating people and allowing them to make their own choices, I believe we can do it voluntarily.

Attenborough himself is the patron of Populations Matters, which raises awareness about over-population and encourages people to choose to have two or fewer children.  Population Matters also believes we can bring our population under control without forcible strategies.  If successful, this strategy will result in a stabilisation, then gradual reduction in the world’s population.

Attenborough proposes each country develop a population policy and suggests it could be as simple as making family planning freely available to every one, and empowering and encouraging people to voluntarily use it.

And an interesting correlation exists between girls and education levels.  It is well documented that where women have higher levels of literacy and access to birth control, they themselves choose to have smaller families and the birth rate falls naturally.

Focusing on ensuring that girls in poorer countries have access to free education and learn to read may therefore have as much of an impact on slowing or reversing global population growth as it does on lifting those young girls out of poverty, empowering them and improving their overall quality of life. In addition to being the key to addressing our population issues, girls are more likely than boys to suffer from malnutrition, be forced into an early marriage, be subject to violence, be sold or coerced into the sex trade or become infected with HIV (Source: Plan International).

Did you know: When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later on average and has 2.2 fewer children AND each extra year of secondary schooling a girl receives boosts her future wages by 15-25% (source: Idealist)

For these girls themselves, as well as for the planet, education is the way out.  A true win-win!

What can you do?

1. Have fewer children: would you choose to have fewer children – or perhaps even none at all – for the long-term future of our planet?  Take the Population Matters “Two or Fewer” pledge here.

2. Educate girls (and boys) better: Support programs, especially those for girls, such as those run by Plan International.  Plan International is a long-established child-centred development organisation with no religious, political or governmental affiliation.

3. Get talking and ask those in charge to take action: Sir David Attenborough himself asks us to break the taboo and raise the issue, especially with the government, relevant NGOs or the church (especially the Catholic church).  Write a letter and ask these bodies to do more about the issue of population:

Need some facts to include in your letter?  Some great facts and statistics here.

See Sir David’s speech to Population Matters here.

Meat-Free Monday: Spicy Red Lentil Soup

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Meat-Free Monday was established to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of eating meat, and encourage people to cut down a little.  (Did you catch our post last week?  Click to here find out more.)

This week’s recipe is Spicy Red Lentil Soup 

Spicy Lentil Soup

Spicy Lentil Soup

  • 1 large onion
  • 2 carrots
  • 4 celery sticks
  • 2 cloves garlic (crushed)
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 100g (4 oz) red lentils
  • 1 litre (2 pints) veggie stock or water
  • 400g tin of tomatoes
  • small tin (approx 200ml) coconut cream (optional)
  • salt and pepper to season

Peel and chop onions, carrots and celery.  Heat the a little oil in a large saucepan, and add the vegetables.  Stir well, put the lid on the saucepan and allow the vegetables to soften for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove the lid and stir in the garlic, allowing it to soften for about 1 minute, before adding the curry powder and ground coriander.  Allow the spices to fry a little for a further minute or so (smells fantastic!), before adding the stock and the red lentils.  Allow the soup to boil for 20 minutes, then stir in the pureed tomatoes and the coconut cream (optional).

Liquidize in a blender, then serve immediately.

Serves 4-6

What can I do?

Be part of Meat-Free Monday by going meat-free one day a week (Or more days, if you feel like it!)  Learn some new recipes and spread the word.  Too easy!

Tell us your meat-free stories or share some recipes in the comments section below:

Photo of the Day: Sleeping Lions

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Lions

Lions. Kwai River, Botswana

These sub-adult lions (“sub-adult” means a nearly full-grown cub) are crashed out under a tree escaping the heat of the day. Lions sleep up to 20 hours a day. (They are cats, after all!)

Did you know: cheetahs and leopards aren’t the only big African cats with spots: lion cubs have spots too! Look closely and you can see these youngsters still have spots remaining on their heads, but on young cubs they’re clearly visible on their legs and bellies.

The African Lion (Panthera leo)
is on the IUCN Red List for Threatened Species as “vulnerable”.
Population trend: decreasing

Meat-Free Monday

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Meat-Free Monday was launched by Paul McCartney and his family to raise awareness about the environmental impact of eating meat and encouraging people to have one meat-free day a week.

The meat and livestock industry produce a massive amount of greenhouse gases, and is responsible for large areas of rainforest de-forestation to clear land for grazing.  Meat production is a particularly inefficient way of producing food, using far more grain, water and land to feed the same number of people as producing grain or vegetables (If you’d like some more statistics and background, click here.)

So meat is bad news for the environment, but we don’t all want to be become vegetarian.

That’s why we at Vanishing Species like Meat-Free Monday: you don’t have to give up bacon sandwiches or your sunday roast, but changing your behaviour just a little will make a difference.  Our philosophy is small changes we can all make and sustain will add up to a big difference.

We can all do with a few more vegetables in our diet, right?  And eating less meat is definitely kinder to animals.  What’s not to love??

Last night, Anna and Kate made Aubergine Towers.  Bloody delicious and they look pretty.  Recipe below.

Aubergine Tower

Aubergine Tower

  • 1 large onion
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 2 tins chopped tomatoes
  • 4 handfuls chard, spinach, or similar, rinsed and roughly chopped
  • about half a cup of white wine (optional)
  • salt and pepper
  • 3-4 medium aubergines (eggplants)
  • 200g goats cheese (any type is fine, but the type that comes in logs is easiest)
  • small amount of olive oil for cooking
  • salt and pepper to season

Chop the onion, saute over a medium heat in a little olive oil.  After a minute or 2 add the crushed garlic.

Once onions and garlic are softened, slosh in about half a cup of white wine (optional, but it does taste nice.  And it gives you an excuse to open a bottle on a monday night.)  Allow it to evaporate for a few minutes before adding the tinned tomatoes.

Season with salt and pepper and leave on heat to reduce a little while you prepare the aubergines.

Slice the aubergines in circles about 1cm (half an inch) thick.  Heat a frying pan or griddle, add just a little oil to the pan and gentle pan fry or griddle all the aubergines on both sides until they’re cooked (roughly a couple of minutes each side).  Keep any you’ve already cooked warm in the oven set to about 100 degrees C (around 210 degrees F)

Slice the goats cheese into circles.

On each plate, place a circle of aubergine, a circle of goats cheese, and then a dollop of the tomato mixture.  Add to the tower with another round of aubergine, goats cheese and tomato, finishing with a round of aubergine.  (I usually find you need to make 2 or 3 smaller towers per person – otherwise they get too tall and fall over).

Spoon any extra tomato over the top, and if you’re feeling fancy, garnish with a sprig of basil.  Very quick and easy to make and awesomely impressive to serve to guests.

This recipe makes enough for 4.

What can I do?

Go meat-free one day a week (Or more days, if you feel like it!)  Learn some new recipes and spread the word.  Too easy!

Tell us your meat-free stories or share some recipes in the comments section below:

The Rhino and The Roadsign

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Anna

by Anna Tinker

I’m looking at the rhino and she’s looking back at me.  Well, she’s not really looking back at me – to do that she’d have to see me – and she can’t.  Just like me, the rhino is exceedingly near-sighted.  But unlike me, she hasn’t been to Specsavers.  She wouldn’t fit through the front door.  And she probably wouldn’t want to anyway.

Her ear twitches awkwardly, telling me that she can hear me, and that despite her size, she’s nervous about the vehicle.  She’s pretending to eat some grass but she isn’t really.  It’s like eating M&Ms when you’re nervous and they miss your mouth and fall down your shirt.

The rhinos in Kruger make me smile.  Every time I’m in their presence, I still have to blink a few times.  How privileged we are that something looking so fantastically clumsy and prehistoric can live alongside us.

White Rhinos, Kruger Park, South Africa

Once, I was watching a rhino when suddenly a leopard casually walked in front of it, just inches from the rhino’s face. Neither bothered to look up and not the slightest glance was exchanged. How many of us could pull off an act of such utterly cool indifference? I certainly couldn’t.

Each rhino here is wild and beautiful.  Each in its own way, with its own character. The ones who pretend to eat. The ones who bolt a short distance and then turn back towards you to check if you’re still there. And the ones who just sleep out in the open, while Africa happens all around them. I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with them all. And every now and then, something happens which secures their super-fuzzy place in my heart.

For the past few months, I’d noticed the road signs in Kruger were often lying flattened on the ground. Although never ruling out frustrated tourists, I assumed this to be the work of elephants. After all, elephants push everything else over.

But a few weeks ago, I watched a big, rough-looking bull laden with mildly confused Oxpeckers, casually wander up to a speed limit sign. He proceeded to bash it over with his horn before stomping on it and peeing on it.  A most undignified death for a road-sign.  This rhino didn’t care.  He simply strolled off down the road looking for the next ill-fated sign in his territory.

Mystery solved.  I can stop blaming the elephants.

It’s fair to say that rhinos absolutely rock my socks.

So can you believe that there are people who want to hurt my rhinos?

Did you think poaching was a thing of the past?  The guests I take out on safari often do, and it’s left to me to shock them with some bad news.

Just in the last 3 years, rhino horn has become one of the most valuable commodities on earth.  And what for?  It isn’t bone, and it certainly isn’t ivory.  It’s not much more than keratin, like our own hair and fingernails.  Ridiculous rumours of its ability to cure just about anything have pushed demand to the most extreme levels imaginable.  The only thing a rhino horn can do effectively is sit atop a rhino’s head where it can be used to smack other rhinos and knock over the occasional road sign.

IUCN Status

In Africa:

The Black Rhino (Diceros bicornis) is on the IUCN Red List for Threatened Species  as “critically endangered”. The latest population estimate is 4,180 (December 2007)

The White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum) is on the IUCN Red List for Threatened Species  as “near threatened”. The latest population estimate is 17,480 (December 2007)

Wollemi Pine: the living dinosaur

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Kate

by Kate Booker

In 1994, National Parks & Wildlife Officer David Noble was bushwalking in the Wollemi National Park, some 200km west of Sydney, Australia, when he stumbled across an extraordinary sight: one of the world’s oldest and rarest trees, thought to have gone extinct some 2 million years ago.

Wow!

The oldest fossils of the Wollemi Pine date back some 90 million years, placing it firmly in the age of the dinosaurs, which died out some 65 million years ago.  In fact, Professor Carrick Chambers of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens described it as “the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur on Earth.”

So what does it look like?

Wollemi folliage with cones

Wollemi folliage with male cones

(Photo by “peganum” used under a Creative Commons licence)

caged Wollemi

in botanic gardens, young Wollemis were originally kept in cages as they were so rare

I’ve seen a few Wollemi now, first in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, encased in a cage to protect it in the early days before they were more widely propagated and every tree was incredibly precious.  I’ve since seen them in botanic gardens in other countries, where it’s immediately recognizable, and now I know it and recognize it, it feels a bit like bumping into an old friend.

I’m the first to admit I don’t know much about plants and trees, but even to me, it’s an unusual-looking tree, not quite like anything else I’ve ever seen.

(Photo by mikkelz used under a Creative Commons licence)

At a glance, it’s a fairly unassuming conifer that grows to a majestic 40 metres high with a trunk diameter of over one metre, but look closer and it really is very different from other trees. It has unusual foliage with light apple-green new tips in spring / early summer which become a dark blue-green as it matures.

Mature foliage features two rows of leaves on the branches, not unlike the spines on a Stegosaur’s back and its bark is also very distinctive and has been described as looking very much like bubbling chocolate. (It does!)

Wollemi bark

Wollemi bark looks like bubbling chocolate

(Photo by Tony Rodd used under a Creative Commons licence)

There are fewer than 100 mature Wollemi Pines in the wild and the exact location of the few remaining wild trees is a well-guarded secret, but since 2007, they have been available to members of the general public to buy and grow at home, with royalties from sale going to support conservation of both the Wollemi Pine itself as well as other rare and endangered plants.

IUCN Status

The Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) is on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as “critically endangered”

Where can I see a Wollemi Pine?

There are now a number of Wollemis in botanic gardens, not just in Australia but around the world, including Canada, the UK, Ireland, Brussels, The Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Japan and Taiwan

For a more comprehensive list, click here

What can I do?

Grow your own! As with most endangered species, the greatest threats to the tree’s survival are due to humans: bushfires, the introduction of weeds and plant disease.  The good news is horticulturalists believe one of the best forms of insurance is to grow Wollemi in pots, gardens and parks everywhere!  In addition, royalties from sales of Wollemi Pines will fund ongoing conservation research.

They are available to buy in Australia, the UK, mainland Europe and Japan, click here to order one.

Spektacular Spekboom!

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by Anna Tinker

Spekboom is a sprawling shrub found in South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape where it pretty much dominates everything else. In Addo Elephant Park, Spekboom covers 80% of the landscape, so the elephants are literally up to their necks in it all the time, which works well because they love the stuff.

‘Spekboom’ translates to ‘pork bush’, but it’s rather a reference to the fat leaves on the plant. It’s very gooey and aloeish and if done properly, you can make the little rounded leaves pop, which is extremely satisfying.

And it’s delicious! Double win! One of its quirks is that it tastes much more acidic in the morning than it does in the evening. I have tested this. The leaves taste a lot like acidic peas. Nobody likes acidic peas, but when you’re out in the bush, the leaves are like chocolate. Chocolate that grows on trees. This is so wonderful that my mind can’t process it. I once sat at the Addo hide with two plain pieces of bread, which I proceeded to fill with Spekboom leaves that I had plucked from the bush beside me, as onlookers gasped in horror. I can assure you that it’s quite good in sandwiches… and as a result, I had the hide during prime viewing hours, all to myself!

Spekboom also works well as natural fencing. It effectively blocks views, but doesn’t dampen the sound of your elderly campsite neighbours playing swing music and generally being rowdy. And the walls don’t stop monkeys from stealing kitchen utensils, like Sporks.

It’s wonderfully adapted to living in Addo and it has to be. Addo has a lot of elephants. And I mean A LOT. They eat a lot of Spekboom. Fortunately, Spekboom has the ability to grow without having to plant seeds anywhere. A branch gets snapped off by an elephant, falls on the ground and a new Spekboom bush starts growing. Beautiful. This feature makes it very beneficial to the environment, because it can grow from nothing in horribly unfavourable conditions. Useful when you have a patch of arid land you need to regenerate. Love.