Monthly Archives: August 2018

Severe decline of mountain hares on Scottish grouse moors

Numbers of mountain hares on moorland sites decreased by nearly five percent every year from 1954 to 1999. The scale of the decline increased dramatically to over 30 percent every year from 1999 to 2017, leading to counts in 2017 of less than one percent of original levels in 1954.

The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the RSPB have analysed counts of mountain hares from six decades of consistent spring counts on moorland managed for red grouse shooting.

This long-term moorland decline is likely to be due to land use changes such as the loss of grouse moors to conifer forests, and is reflective of wider population declines that mountain hares are facing across their range.

Conservation concern

The dominant land use in these sites was intensive grouse moor management.

In order to benefit red grouse, the unregulated practice of hare culling as a form of disease control has become part of the management of many estates since the 1990s, despite the absence of evidence that it has any beneficial impact on total numbers of grouse shot.

On higher, alpine sites the numbers of mountain hares fluctuated greatly, but increased overall until 2007, and then declined, although not to the unprecedented lows seen on moorland sites.

The mountain hare is the UK’s only native hare and was listed as ‘near threatened’ in a recent review by the Mammal Society, indicating that the species is of conservation concern in the UK.

Extraordinary data

Dr Adam Watson, of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who was lead author of the work, commented: “Having counted mountain hares across the moors and high tops of the eastern Highlands since 1943, I find the decline in numbers of these beautiful animals both compelling and of great concern.

“We need the Scottish Government and Scottish Natural Heritage to take action to help these iconic mammals of the hill – I hope they will listen to the voice of scientific research.”

Professor Jeremy Wilson, RSPB’s head of conservation science in Scotland who assisted in analysis of the data, said: “It has been an honour to support Dr Watson in the analysis of his extraordinary long-term data set. 

“These data reveal severe recent declines on grouse moors that are strongly correlated with the start of mountain hare culls for which there is no clear scientific justification. Urgent action is needed if the future conservation status of mountain hares is to be secure.”

Duncan Orr Ewing, head of species and land management at RSPB Scotland said: “The mountain hare is a keystone native species of the Scottish uplands. This authoritative research suggests that we should be very concerned about its population status in its former strongholds.

“We consider that large-scale population reduction culls are both illegal under EU law and unwarranted as a method for controlling grouse disease.

“Management of this species should now be more tightly controlled by Scottish Natural Heritage to safeguard mountain hare populations. We expect this subject to be given thorough consideration by the current independent grouse moor enquiry, which is looking at how grouse moors can be managed sustainably and within the law.”

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story was based on a press release from the RSPB Scotland. The study can be read in the Journal of Applied Ecology

Cheap exotic pets that grow large are often released by owners

Large pet reptiles and amphibians that are sold small and cheaply are more likely to be released into the wild, according to a new study published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Non-native species are increasingly recognised as a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and the exotic pet trade is now the dominant pathway by which reptile and amphibian species arrive in their non-native land.

To find out what species were popular pets in the United States, researchers from Rutgers University browsed through major online pet stores and import records from the government (US Fish and Wildlife Service) and obtained information on animal price, size and age at the time of sale.

Ethical or emotional

From 1999 to 2016, 1,722 reptile and amphibian species were involved in the US exotic pet trade; lizards were the group with the most species for sale (739), followed by snakes with 490 species. Species that are imported in high numbers and offered at competitive prices, such as green iguanas and ball pythons, are among the most popular.

The ecologists then compared the species list with previous research and data from a citizen science project that records local sightings of non-native species, to see which species occur as free-living. They found that species, which are commonly sold at low prices, are much more likely to be set free by their owners.

These species, including the boa constrictor and reticulated python, are usually sold as babies but grow very large, or live a long time – over 30 years in the case of the African clawed frog and Russian tortoise.

“It is difficult to unravel why an owner might release their household companion. Impulsive buying decisions without proper research about care requirements could be a reason”, said Oliver Stringham, who led this study as part of his PhD at Rutgers University. “They may underestimate the space and costs needed to keep such animals as they grow into adults.”

“Understandably, some owners may not wish to euthanise their pet for ethical or emotional attachment reasons”, he added.

Nature invaders

Released exotic pets have the potential to spread and become invasive depending on the environment they are released into. They can harm native wildlife through predation, competition for food, and disease transmission.

One example is the invasive Burmese python in the Everglades National Park in Florida. This snake species originates from Southeast Asia and can grow to 5.5 metres in length, which may be why it was released by local pet owners in the 1990s. Since then, its population has increased dramatically and, as a top predator, has caused severe declines of many native mammals and birds.

Release can also be harmful for the exotic pets as many are not equipped to survive in the wild.

The study suggests that providing potential owners with information about the possible negative ecological impacts of releasing an exotic pet as well as a list of safe places to surrender them, including shelters, rehoming initiatives and ‘buy backs’, could avoid future releases.

Co-author Professor Julie Lockwood said: “When it comes to tackling nature invaders, it is best to take a precautionary approach. Stopping an established species from spreading is often not possible, and if at all, very expensive to eradicate. While it might not be possible to fully prevent the release of exotic pets, reducing the number can be an effective way to prevent new species from becoming established and potentially invasive.”

Oliver Stringham and Julie Lockwood (2018) ‘Pet problems: Biological and economic factors that influence the release of alien reptiles and amphibians by pet owners’ is published in the Journal of Applied Ecology on 22 August 2018 and will be available here.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the British Ecological Society. 

Effects of a fence

Fences tend to be invisible on satellite images — you won’t see one in the image above, no matter how much you squint. Yet even without the labels, it would be easy to make out where the governments of Norway and Finland built a border fence back in the 1950s. In atlases, countries are different colors, of course. But in real life? How can that be?

The explanation is in the vegetation, says Bruce Forbes, a geoscientist at the University of Lapland in Finland and coauthor of a paper in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources on ways that people are altering ecology in the Arctic.

“Since this is a satellite image, the colors are false,” Forbes first says of this 2001 picture, plucked from the paper. But, he adds, the hues represent real wavelengths of light, some of them invisible to the human eye. And their patterns reveal large differences in the local vegetation that might spell trouble for the future.

Forbes knows what the colors correspond to, since he’s been out in the field many times to check what the satellite data mean and to conduct experiments. The black areas, he explains, are bodies of water.

The red patches are covered in mosses and vascular plants such as grasses, sedges and shrubs — most of them in low-lying wetlands. Brightness reveals vegetation quality: dull red means plants are short, while intense red indicates a certain lushness — usually tall shrubs.

“That really bright-red patch next to the lake north of the fence? That’s the lushest vegetation,” Forbes points out. “Those willow shrubs may reach up to my waist.” In most of the Arctic, willows never make it to full tree size.

Landscape ‘shrubification’

South of the fence, the duller red indicates that most willows in northern Finland aren’t even shrub-sized. They’ve been grazed down to the ground by reindeer, which are present in higher densities in northern Finland than they are on the other side of the fence, in Norway.

But perhaps we shouldn’t weep for the willow, nor rein in the reindeer. Many scientists and environmentalists have expressed concern that rapid climate warming may cause Arctic shrubs to thrive, resulting in a “shrubification” of the landscape.

Such shrubification might give rise to a vicious cycle, Forbes says. Since shrubs are darker than the other Arctic vegetation, they absorb more sunlight. This may cause more snow to melt more rapidly. If that happens, the surface will become even darker, and that could speed up warming even more. Grazing reindeer may help to nip shrubification in the bud, which could slow down local warming trends.

But there’s a problem: Reindeer throughout the Arctic are struggling due to climate change.

“Warmer temperatures mean that the air is more humid,” says Forbes. “This leads to more snowfall, which makes it harder for the reindeer to dig up the lichens they feed on in winter. It might even rain on the snow, which can then freeze over and turn into ice that the reindeer can’t dig through.” This has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of reindeer across the Arctic in recent decades.

And there’s more. In northern Finland, other problems compromise the reindeer’s ability to find food in winter. Again, the satellite image tells the story: Grayish areas on the Finnish side of the fence are mostly bare ground — the lichens gone, trampled by reindeer in the summer when they are dry and brittle and crumble very easily.

Border enforcement

It looks, then, as if the fence has at least protected the lichens of Arctic Norway, by keeping the lichen-stomping reindeer out. But it’s not so simple, Forbes says.

Once upon a time, the reindeer would migrate north and south at will, and would hang around in northern Finland only in the winter. Come summer, they’d head further north to forage in the wetlands on the coast of Norway. The result was that fewer lichens got trampled, both in Finland and Norway.

Then came the building of the fence, part of a 1950s government effort to enforce the borders and compel the local Sámi herders — who used to follow the migrating reindeer — to settle. And so the migration route was blocked.

The most obvious solution might be to remove the fence and allow the reindeer (and herders) to migrate as they traditionally used to. But Forbes thinks that is unlikely to happen: “I’m afraid the border fences are there to stay,” he says.

So what can be done? Forbes believes the Sámi could still help to make reindeer herding more sustainable — if policymakers would consult them more often. And if damage to lichens could be minimized, grazing reindeer might be an eco-friendly way to keep shrubification at bay.

Indeed, some spots where shrubification is on the rise used to have more reindeer herding, and today’s lusher vegetation may be due, in part, to the local disappearance of this traditional way of life. But climate change is also important, as there are changes all across the Arctic.

“Arctic ecosystems change at a fairly glacial pace,” says Signe Normand, an ecologist at Aarhus University in Denmark and first author of the review article. “They are slow to respond to new conditions and slow to recover when disturbed.” That lag between our actions and their consequences buys some time to intervene, she says. “But it can also make us complacent.”

This Author 

Tim Vernimmen is a freelance journalist based in Antwerp, Belgium. He writes about the science of life. This article was first published on Knowable Magazine

How traditionalist Hayek feared science would lead to Socialism

Margaret Thatcher’s intellectual love affair with the economist Friedrich von Hayek continued despite divergent views on the importance of science, rationality – and truth.

Margaret Thatcher presented a clear argument before the Royal Society in 1988: The free market economy depended on a sustainable natural ecology. And science provided the necessary knowledge to guide the industry on what would, in fact, be sustainable.

The then-Prime Minister’s argument was based on reason. It was rational to expect her fellow free market ideologues to agree with her simple premise. But it seemed Thatcher’s adherence to science, distilled during her time studying chemistry at Cambridge, was not shared by her philosophical allies.

Fatal conceit 

Friedrich von Hayek, her intellectual mentor, published a truly peculiar book in the same year as Thatcher’s Royal Society speech that attacked the very foundations of intellectual endeavour, reason, science and basic facts, deeming them to be the very enemies of tradition and morality.

Hayek was no longer a professional economist by 1988, at which point he published The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism with the free market-dominated Chicago University.

“I did only incidental work in economics,” he admitted, while his friend and ally, Milton Freidman, confirmed that “the truth of the matter is, he really got out of that side of the business.”

But he was still paranoid about socialism: “The higher we climb up the ladder of intelligence, the more we talk with intellectuals, the more likely we are to encounter socialist convictions,” he wrote.

“Rationalism, empiricism, positivism, and utilitarianism. In such definitions one finds quite explicitly… the declaration of faith of modern science and the philosophy of science, and their declarations of war against moral traditions.

Socialism as a ruse

“These declarations, definitions, and postulates have created the impression that only that which is rationally justifiable, only that which is provable by observational experiment, only that which can be experienced, only that which can be surveyed, deserves belief; that only that which is pleasurable should be acted upon, and that all else must be repudiated… and that our task must be to construct a new morality on the basis of scientific knowledge—usually the new morality of socialism.”

Much of his anger appears to have been a reaction against claims that his free market ideology was nothing but a ruse to fool workers into supporting capitalism.

He complained that his work had been “challenged, even ridiculed, as the selfish excuse of privileged classes”. Hayek returned to his argument, expressed in The Road to Serfdom, that no system could satisfy the multitude desires of the masses.

To support this claim, he seemed to be saying that “facts” that could be manipulated did not exist. “Some hypothetical body of objective fact is no more available to capitalists for manipulating than it is to the managers that socialist would like to replace them. Such objective facts simply do not exist and are unavailable to anyone.”

Hayek’s argument appears to be deeply pessimistic here, viewing the world and his fellow human beings as hostile and irrational. People should not expect to get what they want, and should be happy only to have the chance to reproduce.

Social Darwinism

He argued that capitalism might not be pleasant, or fair, or valid, but that it was necessary. “Our civilisation depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism.”

Civilisation “resulted not from human design or intention but from spontaneity it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove…”.

According to Hayek’s world view, “our desires and wishes are largely irrelevant” and only the continuation of human existence is important. “We can against calamity—strive after what, under favourable conditions, will continue to lead, at least for some time, and in many places, to further increases.”

Perhaps this is what followers of the free market mean when they say humanity will be able to adapt to climate change. The Fatal Conceit appears to have demonstrated something John Maynard Keynes had observed more than 40 years earlier: that Hayek was wrestling with his own conscience and losing.

Absolutely crucial

One interpretation of this book is that Hayek himself believed in his heart that rationalism, empiricism and the rationally justifiable led irresistibly to socialism. He must have been grateful that the Soviet Union offered only totalitarianism and despair while “the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family (and also anti-religion), is not promising”.

Societies have evolved, he went on to suggest, through a form of community-wide natural selection. This “social Darwinism” would have dark echoes of Nazism with its faith in the superior Aryan race.

The apparent chasm between Thatcher’s scientific rationalism and Hayek’s unprovable traditionalism did not, however, affect their friendship.

The prime minister would congratulate the economist on the occasion of his 90th birthday in May 1989. “It is 10 years this week since I was privileged to become prime minister,” she wrote.

“None of it would have been possible without the values and beliefs to set us on the right road and provide the right sense of direction. The leadership and inspiration that your work and thinking gave us were absolutely crucial, and we owe you a great debt.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press)He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk

Anti-diesel campaigners and medics block hundreds of Volkswagen staff from head office

Greenpeace air pollution campaigners and medical professionals blocked more than 800 Volkswagen staff from entering the company’s head office in Milton Keynes yesterday morning.

Arriving at 7am, they barricaded the entrances with sick bay furniture and set up a diesel pollution clinic outside to offer advice and health checks to staff and members of the public.

Greenpeace is demanding Volkswagen commit to stop producing diesel cars and go 100% electric.

Diesel addiction

Mel Evans, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “As the UK’s biggest seller of diesel cars, Volkswagen is complicit in an air pollution crisis that’s filling up emergency departments and GP surgeries.

“Volkswagen sold us a lie about diesel being clean. Its diesel addiction is seriously harming people’s health. Volkswagen won’t meet with us and won’t listen. So today we’ve brought the truth about diesel to its doorstep.  

“Volkswagen must face up to its responsibility for deadly air pollution and commit to end diesel production now.”   

Volkswagen sells the most diesel cars in the UK; one in five new diesel cars are VW Group.

More than two-thirds of people believe car companies, like Volkswagen, should be held to account for toxic diesel pollution and be made to contribute to a Clean Air Fund, according to a poll released by Greenpeace today. 

Peaceful blockade

Aarash Saleh, 33, a doctor in respiratory medicine from Manchester, working in London, who was at the protest yesterday, said: “Diesel pollution is causing horrendous suffering across the UK and storing up a lifetime of troubled health for our kids. If you could see it, diesel would be banned tomorrow.” 

The peaceful blockade at VW’s UK head office came as concerns are growing about the health impacts of air pollution.

recent study found an “absolutely clear” link between episodes of high air pollution and spikes in hospital admissions and visit to GPs.

The impact of air pollution is particularly acute for children. High exposure to polluted air at a young age can cause chronic health problems that last a lifetime, with research showing negative effects for lung function, respiratory issues like asthma and even stunted lung growth. 

Air pollution from cars and vans costs £6 billion in damage to health each year in the UK; equivalent to the entire budget of NHS Wales.

Legal limits

Levels of harmful nitrogen dioxide air pollution in the UK have broken legal limits every year since 2010 – and diesel vehicles are responsible for 90% of toxic NOx coming from roads.

In September 2017 Greenpeace launched the campaign targeting VW’s continued promotion of polluting diesel by blocking a major import route bringing Volkswagen diesel cars into the UK. VW’s global competitors ToyotaNissanVolvo and Fiat-Chrysler are already reported to be ending diesel production in Europe.

Volkswagen was caught cheating on emissions tests by using a defeat device designed to reduce emissions in test conditions, but has faced no civil or criminal charges in the UK.

More than 1.2 million vehicles sold in the UK were fitted with this device by VW, designed to mislead the public and push cars which pump out dangerous levels of air pollution onto UK roads.

Volkswagen is now facing the largest group litigation action in UK history, brought by British consumers seeking compensation over the Dieselgate emissions scandal. Affected consumers are still able to join the suit before the 26 October deadline.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Greenpeace.

Increase the peace – vegans and farmers can be allies

Another week, another media story about ‘the fight’ between the meat industry and vegans. This latest piece came off the back of a Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (ADHB) report.

The report did include the odd questionable statement about veganism – but it really wasn’t the attack it has been billed to be.

The AHDB has liked veganism to “other youth tribes such as ‘gym bro’ or ‘craft beer nerd’” which is rather disrespectful of a lifestyle choice and philosophy.

Militant vegans

And there are unfounded questions about the health implications of a vegan diet. But to state that this report is the meat industry fighting back “after years of being harried by activist vegans” is rather over the top.

Indeed, there is much in the report for vegans to take encouragement from, and I particularly welcomed the fact that plant-based farming was presented as the opportunity it is.

We know that not all farms can make that transition, but those who can use their land to grow plant proteins could be farming in a more environmentally friendly, healthy and cruelty-free way.

This ongoing pitting of vegans versus farmers is becoming tiresome. I’m looking forward to joining farmers and food producers on a panel at Abergavenny Food Festival next month, but the title – Should the British farming industry be worried about the rise in veganism? – is again creating an unnecessary divide.

National media coverage this year has included headlines such as ‘vegans go nuts with threats to farmers’ and ‘farmers speak out about “militant” vegans’. It seems the media is intent on exacerbating the natural differences that exist between the two groups and latching on to any opportunities to divide us.

Support and community

The fact that is missing from all this hyperbole is that vegans eat food too. And we’d like our food to be produced by British farmers and for those farmers to have sustainable and fair employment.

As we approach the point of no return in the never-ending Brexit negotiations we will have very difficult choices to make as a nation around which farming practices we continue to subsidise, and which we see as anachronisms.

As vegans, we approach these difficult choices not with glee – ‘let’s see how the farmers like it now!’ – but with pragmatism, empathy and compassion.

Compassion is a key word for vegans, and it’s always surprised me that people assume that our concern stops at the animals that we speak up for.

On the contrary, as people who have chosen to put compassion at the heart of our lives, we feel a natural sense of support and community for people too. This rings true when thinking of the farmers who produce the fruit, vegetables, and legumes which form the backbone of a vegan diet.  

Sad truth

Things do need to change though, and the only question is whether that will be foisted upon farmers, or whether they will embrace the switch that is so obviously coming.

The systemic use of animals in our food production is not necessary, and is not sustainable in the long term. Our recent ‘Grow Green’ report which we produced in association with the New Economics Foundation illustrated this clearly.

A switch to plant based farming would be sustainable, healthy, affordable, and of course would remove animal slaughter from the food chain. 

The fundamental driver for policy makers, however, should be that our environment cannot continue to support the unfettered expansion of animal agriculture.

As environmentalists, we all strive to do our bit, either locally or globally. The sad truth though is that many of us will spend a good proportion of our lives working and campaigning on environmental issues, while ignoring one of the largest impacts we are creating – the food we eat.

Inexpensive and tasty

At the risk of being provocative, it is my sincere belief that the concept of a meat-eating environmentalist is an oxymoron.

In years to come, those who follow in our footsteps may well look back on us at the start of a twenty first century with wry smiles on their faces – puzzled that for all our good intentions, we couldn’t see the obvious solution that was right in front of us, literally on a plate.

Some argue that eating animals is ingrained in our culture, and we are always able to come up with convenient excuses to carry on doing it – ‘locally sourced,’ ‘ethically reared,’ ‘grass fed.’

These supposedly sustainable alternatives could not feed a growing nation. When we only get 12 calories back for every 100 fed to animals it becomes clear that eating plants is the real ethical choice.

Change can happen. You will all be familiar with the famous Gandhi quote: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

We as vegans have heard our share of laughter over the years, and it was a pleasant change from being ignored. Now, our challenge is to move out of the ‘fighting’ stage and on to the acceptance which we know is inevitable.

If you’re ready to start your vegan journey, a great way to get cracking is to take our ‘Plate Up for the Planet’ challenge.

We’ll send you recipes, hints, tips and advice for a week to get you started. More than 15,000 people have signed up so far, and many have never looked back once they realise how easy, inexpensive and tasty vegan food can be.

This Author

Louise Davies is head of campaigns, policy and research at The Vegan Society. If you would like to learn more about veganism, sign up to the seven-day challenge here.

Meet the litter-picking pilgrim

I met Wayne Dixon and his dog Koda passing through Noss Mayo in South Devon two and a half years into his walk. I was having dinner with friends, and one of them noticed him going to the bar to get a drink, looking outdoorsy, sun-tanned, and vaguely familiar.

We had all glimpsed him on the local South West news recently: he was picking litter, wild camping, and inspiring anyone who would listen.

Wayne had walked from his home in Lancashire, down the West coast, round Cornwall and was on his way through Devon, giving talks at schools, scouts, brownies, and attending beach cleans along the way.

Sharing questions

Fresh from a beach clean back home in Brighton, I went out and approached Wayne. He was having a quiet pint with a friend, Koda, the enormous Inuit husky, who was sleeping on the ground beside him.

I asked: ‘Are you the litter guy?!’ – ‘Yes’ he replied, smiling sheepishly. We chatted about beach cleaning, litter, plastic, and the state of things.

Wayne wondered why young people don’t seem to see, or care about where they live: was it a generational thing? What’s gone wrong?

Wildlife gets hurt by humans who throw away plastic, fishing tackle and litter: why don’t people see? Why don’t people take care of there neighbourhoods? Where has this litter blindness come from? This has to come from the ground up, we can’t expect councils to do it all. 

He talked about the amazing kindness and generosity of people he had met along the way, offers of food, accommodation, invitations to speak at schools and beach cleans, and how he hoped to inspire.

Muddling through 

Wayne was happy living out in nature, walking about 6 miles a day, picking up every single piece of litter on his path.

He talked of his history in the army medical corps at the age of 17, stationed in Germany, followed by various jobs in Israel, doing everything from construction, to fruit picking, to cleaning portaloos, and doing anything to fund his travels.

Inspired by his father, John Dixon, a keen rambler and author of some 30 rambling guides covering walks from Lancashire to Russia. This father and son had shared many walking holidays, and planned to walk the 7,000 mile coast line of the UK together.

Sadly, John died in 2016 of a heart attack, aged 62. He had rescued a little dog named Koda ten days before. 

Wayne believes that Koda was sent for a reason. Though quite a bit of trouble in the outset, the family muddled through with lots of help from the Northern Inuit rescue society. 

Warm welcomes

The litter picking started in the early days out walking the dog. Angered by the volume of litter and people’s reluctance to keep their neighbourhoods clean, Wayne decided to do something about it. He quit his job as a youth support worker and set out on his litter picking walk around the coast of the UK. 

Wayne decided to do the walk in memory of his father, with Koda for company. They are living on ten pounds per day, his share of the rental income from the home he inherited with his sister. Once he’s done, Wayne will write his book of the journey.

He carries his tent, a ruck sack with essentials, food enough for 2 days for himself and Koda, water, a wind up radio, his litter-grab stick, and a carrier for his litter bag. Koda is shackled to Wayne’s belt, perhaps because Koda has the wanderlust too.

I told him to go and bang on a friends door up on the headland in the morning and they would give him breakfast. Which they did, as well as a packed lunch and filling-up his water bottles. They called me that evening to say how charmed they were by meeting Wayne and Koda, and hearing his wisdom. 

I’ve invited Wayne and Koda to stay when they get to East Sussex, he doesn’t know when they will get here, but they will get here.

Join in 

I’ve since been following his on Facebook and Twitter, I told him to call in at Schumacher College when he got to Totnes, as he reminds me of a young Satish Kumar, from up North.

He was wholly unimpressed with Totnes. He picked up needles and fag ends at the bus stop by Morrison’s, and cleaned up neglected alleyways by swanky cafés in town.

He didn’t linger in the area, and headed on to Salcombe and spent an evening picking up fag ends at the back of a hotel in town. He asked: ‘Such a beautiful town, probably the staff at the hotel on breaks, why doesn’t the hotel put a bin out for them, or sweep up?’ Three hundred butts later, Wayne and Koda headed off for a wild camp and a Pasty on the headland. Job done.

They were off to Bournemouth to be filmed for Blue Peter. Wayne and Koda both receiving Blue Peter badges – that’s better than an OBE – but in the meantime, he should get one of those too.

This Author 

Annabel Tarrant was an international shoe designer for twenty years. She now runs two Right Livelihood businesses, and is an active beach cleaner, guerilla gardener, nature campaigner and alumnus of Schumacher college.

You can follow Wayne and Koda on Twitter @WayneKoda, go and join them for some litter picking, and take then a packed lunch when they’re in your area. Wayne is fundraising for the mental health charity Mind and the Northern Inuit Society.

British public supports urgent action and litigation on climate change

The British public wants urgent action on climate change and strongly supports holding fossil fuel companies and the UK government accountable for the negative effects of climate change, a groundbreaking new survey from ClientEarth has revealed.

After a record heatwave in the UK and northern Europe, the majority of British people think fossil fuel companies, whose products contribute directly to climate change, should be made to pay damages for their role in contributing to global warming (71 percent), and also that the UK government must do more to help prepare for and adapt to climate change (62 percent).

Undertaken by YouGov and commissioned by environment lawyers ClientEarth, the survey aimed to capture British public sentiment towards who should pay for climate change, fossil fuel investments in personal finance and what the future of Britain’s energy should look like.

Key results

Key results of ClientEarth’s Climate Snapshot include:

·         Almost two-thirds of people think the UK government is not doing enough in adapting to climate change and limiting global temperature increases;

·         More than eight in ten believe that fossil fuel companies who knew about climate change early on and continue to lobby against taking action should be responsible in some way for the costs of major weather events (83 percent);

·         Three-fifths would be interested in a financial institution, such as a bank account or pension fund, that considers the climate change impacts of the companies it invests in (62 percent);

·         Almost two-thirds thought investing in fossil fuel companies was risky long-term and more than half thought such companies could not be trusted to change their business model;

·         More than two thirds were in favour of breaking up the Big Six’s market share to allow smaller, cleaner, and locally owned energy systems to develop (68 percent); 

·         Almost three quarters of consumers would be interested in joining a community energy scheme if the government made it easier (71 percent), and individuals keen to install their own solar panels (62 percent) and home energy storage (60 percent).

Litigation risk

James Thornton, the chief executive of ClientEarth, said: “These results make it clear that the British public want action on climate change, and urgently.

“A majority of people expect more from the government and believe that fossil fuel companies should pay for damages resulting from extreme weather events. People in this country also see a strong role for the courts in holding business and the government to account if they don’t act quickly enough.

“The government can take the lead on climate quickly by cutting off the hundreds of millions of pounds in annual subsidies to fossil fuel power stations and other schemes that are giving carbon-intensive power generation an unfair advantage over renewables.

“Making people’s homes more energy efficient is also a key way of tackling overall emissions and this poll shows that there is strong public support for doing so – the government has no excuse for dragging its feet on this.

“These results also have strong implications for business: the litigation risk for fossil fuel companies and those who invest in them is likely to grow and investors should take note – the costs of defending actions on climate change are likely to be substantial and the damages involved, should a company be required to pay, could be enormous.

“Our survey also revealed that the financial world has much work to do if they are to match consumers’ wishes. The British public said quite clearly they want their banks and pension funds to avoid investments in fossil fuel projects, and were surprised to learn that this might be the case.”

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Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story was based on a press release from ClientEarth. A copy of ClientEarth’s Climate Snapshot opinion poll report can be found here.

How Margaret Thatcher came to sound the climate alarm

Margaret Thatcher’s contribution to the climate debate while British prime minister would cause her free market fellows considerable difficulty in the coming decades. They would spark speculation that the PM, in her prime, was ‘taken in by environmentalists’. 

Lord Lawson, then her chancellor, preferred to believe that Thatcher was engaged in a Machiavellian deception of the British public in order to justify her use of newly discovered North Sea gas to shut down most of the country’s mining industry, with the loss of 100,000 jobs. But can this be true?

Sir Crispin Tickell went to the same school as Lawson, and both men then went on to Oxford, with Tickell eventually becoming a career diplomat. He is widely acknowledged as the man who persuaded Thatcher to adopt the climate cause, and was responsible for drafting much of her speech to the Royal Society.  

The pioneering and brilliant Sir Crispin first heard of climate change during the Stockholm conference of scientists in 1972, and took a sabbatical from the civil service to study the subject at Harvard University.

He also happened to be among the advisors taken on an official visit to France with the Prime Minister shortly afterwards.

Washing dishes

During the short flight, one of Thatcher’s aides indicated that she had a few spare minutes and would welcome any interesting suggestions for her contribution to the United Nations summit, to be held in London the following year.

Sir Crispin raised his hand and was taken to the front of the plane to brief the PM on his suggestion. Some weeks later, Sir Crispin found himself washing dishes with Thatcher after a meeting at the House of Commons.

“I took her through the whole story of climate change, how it worked, the importance of greenhouse gases, and what the temperature of the planet would be without them.” Thatcher said: “Alright, let’s have a look into this.”

Sir Crispin told me: “She very much felt herself to be a scientist among non-scientists, and of course she certainly felt that, as a woman in a man-made world, she had to make her point.”

“People have attributed [her speech] to all kinds of manoeuvring to score advantage. But I think it was a much more genuine intellectual interest.”

Sir Crispin, who was 82 years old and as bright as a button when we met, remembered countering Lawson’s scepticism even back then. The two men had known of each other since they both attended Westminster School as young boys.

“I remember an occasion with him and Jimmy Goldsmith; the three of us had a fight on the subject, but he was already dug in. The thing about Nigel is that he gets dug in on something and that means he can’t get out again.” 

Ignored majestically

He added: “He gradually got out of touch, out of tune, out of sync with Thatcher on quite a lot of issues…in the days when he was battling it out with Margaret Thatcher, he was ignored by her majestically.”

Thatcher met with the independent scientist, James Lovelock, in May 1984. Two years earlier, Lovelock had published his seminal book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, which introduced his controversial Gaia hypothesis, suggesting the earth was a single living organism.

He warned that climate change would ultimately mean that “most of the surface of the globe will change into desert. The survivors will gather around the Arctic. But there won’t be enough room for everybody, so there will be wars raging populations, warlords.” 

Lovelock later became patron of the Supporters of Nuclear Energy (SONE). The industry group was set up by Sir Bernard Ingham, Thatcher’s friend and press secretary before becoming a lobbyist for British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL).

Lovelock’s meeting would later resurface as evidence that she simply used climate change to promote her nuclear agenda.

Another significant influence on Thatcher’s attitude towards the relationship between science and industry was Lord Rothschild, the one-time member of the MI5 anti-sabotage unit and then research director of Royal Dutch Shell Group.

Edward Health had hired him in February 1971 as part of the Central Policy Review Staff which was a think tank at the heart of government.

A financial motive

Prime Minister Heath had called the young Thatcher, then education minister, to his office at 10 Downing Street the following April to discuss the governmental funding of science.

Thatcher began the meeting defending the scientific community. “It was felt that the system was now working better than it had ever worked before”, an official noted her saying.

Her “main concern” was “to ensure that no change was made against the wishes of the scientists without having been consulted”. By the end of the meeting, the education secretary had reversed her position.

She agreed that funding would no longer support projects of general interest, but would be granted only when there was a demonstrable benefit to the industry.

This was a fundamental change in policy, agreed in private and without the consultation of scientists.

Jon Agar, publishing with the Royal Society, would state that: “Thatcher had changed her mind. She now embraced the relevance of the market in shaping key areas of government science, and had already moved into ‘tactical’ considerations of how to sell the conclusion. The lady had turned.” [PDF]

He added: “Science [was for Thatcher] even more of a test case for her developing views on economic liberalism. If markets could work for science policy, they could work anywhere.”

The man from Shell and MI5 had persuaded Thatcher that science, as with everything else, must have a financial motive.

But there is an even more curious and controversial version of events about Thatcher’s road to Damascus…

This Article

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press)He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk

Tourism and the torture of our sublime elephants

Peter Matthiessen once said that elephants “command the silence ordinarily reserved for mountains, peaks, great fires, and the sea”. 

However, when I gazed into the soulful eyes of these archaic creatures, mountains and oceans almost paled in comparison to the sublime feeling of implicit communication with another species.

When those thick lashes close over the eyes you feel tangible sorrow as the quivering boundary between two distinct species is established once again.

Transcendent presence

Anyone that has ever gazed into the ochre eye of the elephant will be able to understand that human intelligence, rather than being the pinnacle of evolution, is just another branch of the diverse tree of life.

For the past few weeks I have been travelling around Thailand to document the plight of the Asian elephant and expose the horrific industry that normalises a practice called ‘Phajaan’, which means ‘to break the spirit of an elephant’.

The camps may have appeared bucolic and blissful to anyone unaware of what goes on behind the scenes. The lumbering giants and the gently rolling green hills all contribute to the concealment of the horrific reality.

However, it does not take an expert to see that the swinging heads, pawing feet and wild eyes eyes all hint at something more sinister.

While the elephant’s leathery skin and almost transcendent presence seems to suggest that they are resistant to any man-inflicted torture, this is completely untrue.

Sick babies

Whilst investigating the camps – and filming an exposé – I saw crippled creatures with sores and slashes etched into their bodies.

Most of them displayed severe stereotypic behaviour, which is evidence of psychological problems such as anxiety, depression or stress.

One of the most distressing scenes came in the form of a six month old called Sheshan. This baby was imprisoned in a meagre concrete pen with his distressed mother, who was on a metre-long chain.

He stumbled around her legs, tripping over her chains and flipping his thin trunk around in juvenile incompetence. The bond between a mother and baby elephant is one of the strongest in the animal kingdom.

This is taken to such an extent that wild mothers will leave the herd – which is almost always a precursor to death – in order to stay with their sick babies.

Fearful creature

They will also mourn them if they die, and their grief is so intense that not only will they bury their babies, but they will return for many years after to visit the bones of their loved ones.

So as you can imagine, enforced separation is incredibly distressing. However, this happens to thousands of elephants across Asia all for the amusement of tourists.

Once the babies are taken from their mothers, they are put through a training process which includes starvation, isolation, repeated beating with a bull-hook and confinement.

The length of the process varies depending on how easy it is to ‘break the spirit’ of the elephant. Essentially, Phajaan is completed whenever the elephant has been abused to such an extent that he believes he is subservient to humans.

The product of the training is usually a very fearful creature who will stumble for miles under the torrid sun with a heavy chair and several tourists on his back.

Simply sublime

However, with the increase in tourism, the camps have found novel ways to entertain the rapacious appetite of humans for continual amusement. These variations may include the elephants painting, playing football, dancing, bowing or praying.

While I stood in the camps filming these horrors, I couldn’t help but feel disgusted as I saw the intelligent eyes of such beautiful creatures watching as throngs of tourists poke and prod them, baying for a selfie.

What makes this cruelty even worse is the fact that elephants have existed for 55 million years, which makes our measly 200,000 years on this planet pale in comparison.

The layers and folds of their thick skin, the colour of sun-baked earth, seem to replicate the fissures and curves of the landscape. Their ears command the air around them, swishing like corduroy.

Their deep rumbles undulate and pulse through your body, necessitating an awe that is usually reserved for mountains and the ocean. They are, to put it simply, sublime.

Yet their magnificence doesn’t stand alone, they have a purpose too – which does not involve serving humans. They are the Gardeners Of The Forest.

Gardeners of the forest

All eight species of elephant are essential for the dispersal of seeds. They defecate over long distances, which ensures far-reaching dispersal, but they also fertilise them by leaving the seeds in viable conditions – nutrient-rich and protective dung.

A scientific paper published on Science Direct states: “Large numbers of forest elephants ranging over large areas may be essential for ecosystem function. The loss of elephants will have important negative consequences for the ecological trajectories of some plant species and whole ecological communities.”

When elephants are taken from their lush, ecologically-rich homes and imbedded in the human community, we will at some stage cause catastrophic ecological consequences which would also affect us greatly.

When our actions are not only harming other species, the environment and consequently ourselves, wouldn’t it be more beneficial if we skip those half hour elephant rides and find something less detrimental to add to our bucket.

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Bella Lack is Born Free Foundation youth ambassador.