No Fishing Zones Needed To Save Britains Fish

Scary, but true.

Weird Arsed Problem Solving

Prices of homes in this country are still rising and are now pretty much unaffordable to anyone who was born after 1980. Government solution: build more homes, take away more countryside and make everyone live in crappy crowded places. Oh and open the doors to everybody else in the world who wants to come here, especially rich Russians fleeing Putin who will happily raise house prices in London just that little bit more.

What is this all about??? The worlds population is getting huge and yet no one seems to dare say "Hey, why not encourage people NOT to have kids?".

House prices high? Be less of a problem if there weren't so many new buyers. People would have to sell property at reasonable prices (Heaven forbid the greedy bastards might lost some money!)

Got a problem with badly brought up children? Wouldn't have so much of a problem if there was less of them.

High prison population? Well we can ensure it's reduced in future!

Unemployment? Ditto.

Large class sizes. This is EASY!

Pension crisis due to lower reproduction? Well we are going to eventually get to the point where we can't have any more people living on the island if we constantly need MORE young people so we may as well face the problem now and sort it out rather than leave it to another generation to solve.

Imagine a country with less people. Imagine getting a train and being able to sit down. How pleasant would that be? Imagine affordable houses. Imagine no ugly new builds. Imagine children who've been brought up with all the necessary attention at school and home because there aren't so many of them. Imagine a country in which we could actually LIVE!

Introducing Alien Species Is Dangerous - Shocker

What should have been rather obvious in the first place is spelled out quite clearly in the Scientific America. Introducing foreign species to a new environment has a very well researched history of failure and of unintended consequences.

However I do believe the USA is in a unique position to offer threatened African species safe havens.... large reserves, perhaps on disused farmland, which are carefully monitored. Things in Africa are probably only going to get worse as Africa awakens and starts to expand it's economic muscle. This will not be a good thing for the megafauna. The African Governments might even pay for it with the hope of reintroducing the creatures once human expansion has been completed... they are after all a huge tourist boost.

Red List Published: More Bad News

The latest Red List has been published showing only 1 species situation has improved... and all the rest got worse. :(

In pictures

Don't Eat Bushmeat!

It can kill

A World Without Humans

Imagine for second that humans simply ceased to exist. One day we all just disappeared. What would happen to the world once we were gone?

I've been watching a really interesting show called The Future Is Wild which is a rather pointless, but fun, exercise in evolutionary futurology. I'm always upset that so many creatures in the past died out before I got here to see them. Now I'm annoyed of the possibility of just as fabulous creatures in the future who I'm going to miss out on (for a very obvious reason!).

Thinking about a life after humanity I started reading up on the possible causes of our demise.... and that's how I found the VHEMT, The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

Although I think their dream of a designed demise of humankind is highly unlikely (humans are bloody annoyingly unpredictable and stubborn) I do agree with the idea of less people. And no I'm not into extermination either. But a lower birth rate might make this world a more pleasant place to live less people PLUS environmental concern would make this world a fun place again.

Sadly humans tend to like their boring, safe world. Hopefully one day nature will rise up and bite us on the arse. Then we'll all have to get back to living again.

Carbon Off Setting

I saw this article on the Guardian site and found it fairly interesting.

Climate Care are featured in the article but there are other carbon offsetters...

co2balance

pure trust

equiclimate

Gorillas Freed From Rebel Territory?

Earlier this week Congo rebels had taken over a park containing half the total population of rare mountain gorillas. It looks like the territory has now been recovered; hopefully the Gorillas have not been harmed.

When I say half the population that is about 350 members of the species. 700 left in total. Such a sad, sad thing. Makes me sad to be human sometimes.

Parks 'failing Africa's wildlife'

Check out this BBC News Story. This is not just an animal issue but an issue for the economies for these African nations and thus the human welfare situation there. These national parks must be huge tourist magnets and without their biological diversity, and especially without the large mammals, would not be able to pull in as much money to local people as a well tended and patrolled park could.

These hunters, and the consumers of bushmeat, should be ashamed of themselves for betraying their countries economic future for a quick buck.

Animal Holocaust

I'm not some bleeding heart anti hunting campaigner. I believe humans have a part to play in nature, and hunting sustainably is one way we can interact with nature. However... I have no sympathy or tolerance for the arrogant bastards who hunt and kill creatures to extinction. Worse still are those who kill just for fun or profit. If you kill an animal you need to use it: food, clothing, something useful. And you can't kill the animal if killing it causes it's species to go extinct as that is wasteful.

Some cultures today understand this, taking what they need but never too much and using every last part of the animal (see American aborigines). That is how nature works... nothing wasted.

So it distress' me to see things such as this and this and this. I could go on. It beggers belief that people could so callously do things like this. I hope they suffer painful, slow deaths themselves.

The Holocene Extinction Event

What is that I hear you ask? Something to do with the dinosaurs? Nope. We are in the middle of the Holocene Extinction Event; you just need to read about the extinction of the Baiji that is literally happening at this moment in time to realise it.

If there is some afterlife where we meet our ancestors I'm going to slap them all round the face. All the most exciting animals we know about were bloody killed off by them... imagine a world with Haast's Eagles, the Moa-nalo and the Thylacine. What a wonderful world that'd be.

And still we go on... killing and raping, our successful programme for world domination. Is hating one's own species wrong?