Four people have been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage after climate change activists sprayed the Treasury in central London with fake blood.

Extinction Rebellion demonstrators parked an old fire engine outside the building and a pool of red liquid – said to be 396 gallons (1,800 litres) of water coloured with food dye – lay opposite the entrance.

A police spokesman said: “Police were called at 10.17am to Horse Guards Road. People on a privately-owned fire engine had sprayed a liquid at the Treasury building. No reported injuries.

Future

“Three men and one woman were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.”

The campaigners said they aimed to highlight the inconsistency between the Government’s insistence that the UK is a world leader in tackling the climate emergency and its funding for fossil fuel exploration and carbon intensive projects.

At least 30 police officers surrounded the fire engine outside the Treasury building in Westminster, which had protesters standing on top of it, including 83-year-old Phil Kingston, from Bristol.

Ahead of the action, he said he was a Christian caring for the Earth as God’s creation and he was fighting “with all my being for my four grandchildren in this situation of existential danger”.

Fellow protester Cathy Eastburn, 52, said: “I’m terrified – as things stand my children do not have a future, and that goes for all children alive today.

Biodiversity

“Around the world people are already losing their lives and homes because of climate breakdown – floods, droughts, food shortages, more frequent extreme weather events, and so on.”

And she said: “Decisions being made here in the Treasury right now – including huge subsidies for fossil fuels, financing massive fossil fuels projects overseas, airport expansion – have devastating consequences and are incompatible with a liveable future for my children and all children everywhere.”

The protest comes ahead of next week’s International Rebellion, when Extinction Rebellion protesters will take action in more than 60 cities around the world.

In the UK, Extinction Rebellion activists are urging the Government to “act now to halt biodiversity loss” and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025.

Fossil fuel

They staged the protest at the Treasury in the wake of a report by the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) which said billions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money supporting fossil fuel schemes around the world was undermining the UK’s commitment to tackle climate change.

Following the incident, a Treasury spokesman said: “The UK is a world leader on climate change – having reduced its emissions by 42% between 1990 and 2017, while growing the economy by more than two-thirds.

“In June, we became the first major economy to legislate to end our contribution to global warming by 2050. We will continue to build on this proud record.”

UK Export Finance (UKEF), which provides loans, insurance and guarantees for firms operating overseas, gave £2.5 billion to fossil fuel projects between 2013/14 and 2017/18.

These Authors

Catherine Wylie and Emily Beament are reporters with PA. 

Work affecting ancient woodlands in the path of HS2 has been put off until next year, the company building the high-speed railway has said.

Last month Transport Secretary Grant Shapps ordered HS2 Ltd to halt clearances of ancient woodland for the rail project while the scheme is reviewed, unless they were necessary to avoid major costs and delays.

But campaigners raised concerns woods were still in jeopardy, with protesters led by TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham setting up a “woodland” outside HS2 headquarters to campaign against the destruction of trees.

Track

And the Woodland Trust accused the firm of acting with “reckless haste” to go ahead with work to translocate soil from South Cubbington Wood in Warwickshire, where locals set up a protest camp to protect the woodland.

But now HS2 has said work affecting 11 ancient woodlands in Warwickshire and Staffordshire which was due to go ahead this autumn has been deferred until 2020.

The scheme is being reviewed by the company’s former chairman Douglas Oakervee, who was commissioned by the Government to analyse whether and how the project should continue.

Work will take place in early 2020 at six sites, the company said, and at five further sites in autumn and winter next year.

An HS2 Ltd spokesperson said: “As highlighted by the Secretary of State, during the Oakervee Review we must strike a sensible balance between keeping the programme on track, and recognising that some works cannot be undone.

Clearance

“We have assessed 11 ancient woodlands, parts of which were due to be affected by preparations to build Britain’s new high-speed railway this autumn, during the period of the Oakervee review.

“Work will now be deferred to autumn or winter 2020 on five of these sites, and to early 2020 on six of the sites, including South Cubbington Wood.

“We will also take measures to protect wildlife to ensure they are not affected when work begins in early 2020.”

Other preparatory works including “low-level vegetation clearance”, fencing and preparation of site access will continue, the company said.

Ancient

The Woodland Trust welcomed the news that work in all ancient woods would be deferred until the completion of the HS2 review.

Director of conservation and external affairs at the Woodland Trust Abi Bunker said: “This is the right decision but it has come very late in the day and only after much pressure from the Woodland Trust and many other organisations and individuals.

“We remain concerned about the fact that HS2 will still be carrying out some work at these sites.

“The richness of ancient woodland isn’t just about trees. It’s also the vegetation, the soils and the wildlife that makes ancient woodland a special irreplaceable habitat.

Woodland

“Work that permanently affects these habitats like clearing vegetation and evicting bats and mammals must be stopped too while the review is completed. We will be watching closely.”

Mr Shapps tweeted: “Pleased @HS2Ltd have confirmed all ancient woodland clearances scheduled to take place during Oakervee review will be paused. Strikes a sensible balance between avoiding irreversible actions and causing unnecessary delays to the project if it continues.”

Work is being deferred until autumn and winter 2020 at Roughknowles Wood, North Wood and Burnt Firs in Warwickshire and an unnamed copse off Drayton Lane and Rookery Wood in Staffordshire.

It is being deferred until early 2020 at Fulfen Wood in Staffordshire and at Broadwells Wood, Birches Wood, Crackley Wood, unnamed woodland south of Ashow Road and South Cubbington Wood in Warwickshire.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Oil giant BP has been dropped from sponsoring a scheme that allowed students to buy heavily discounted tickets for Shakespeare plays after young climate strikers threatened a boycott.

The move was prompted by a letter from the UK Student Climate Network to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which stated: “If we, as young people, wish to see an affordable play at your theatre we have to help to promote a company that is actively destroying our futures by wrecking the climate.”

The RSC needed young people more than it needed BP, whose contribution comprised less than 0.5 per cent of the group’s income, the letter added.

Debate “often difficult”

Announcing the end of the relationship yesterday, the RSC’s artistic director Gregory Doran and executive director Catherine Mallyon, said that it had been listening to a variety of opinions from its board, staff, audiences and artists about its partnership with BP for several months.

The debate had been “often difficult”, and the decision to end the sponsorship had not been taken “lightly or swiftly”, they said.

“Young people are now saying clearly to us that the BP sponsorship is putting a barrier between them and their wish to engage with the RSC. We cannot ignore that message,” they added.

The partnership with BP began in 2013, and had allowed 80,000 16-25 year olds to buy tickets to RSC shows for £5.

“Disappointed and dismayed”

A spokesman for BP said it was “disappointed and dismayed” by the premature end of the partnership, which was due to run to at least 2022. The oil company shared many of the concerns that contributed to the decision, he said. He added: “Ironically, the increasing polarisation of debate, and attempts to exclude companies committed to making real progress, is exactly what is not needed.

“This global challenge needs everyone – companies, governments and individuals – to work together to achieve a low carbon future,” he added.  

However, Morten Thaysen, climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK said that it was hard not to think that “the walls were closing in on BP”.

“Despite the millions they throw at cleaning their reputation through ad campaigns and sponsorship deals, in the public eye their complicity in the climate emergency is catching up to them,” he said.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for the Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Microplastics may harm human health, researchers at the University Medical Centre (UMC) Utrecht have claimed today.

Research presented at the Plastic Health Summit in Amsterdam will reveal immune cells that recognise and attack microplastics will die quickly as a result of the contact.

Experiments showed immune cells that encounter microplastics under laboratory conditions die around three times more quickly than those that don’t.

Cell death

Some forms of accelerated cell death or damage can prompt an inflammatory response in the body.

The study was led by Nienke Vrisekoop – Assistant Professor at the UMC Utrecht Center for Quantitative Immunology.

Microplastics coated in blood plasma were placed in culture dishes alongside human immune cells under laboratory conditions.

Some 20 percent of immune cells tested in culture dishes without microplastics died within 24 hours.

When immune cells came into contact with microplastics 60 percent of the cells died within the same time period.

Growing evidence 

This rate of cell death is thought to be far in excess of when immune cells encounter and engulf most bacteria or foreign bodies.

A growing body of evidence is pointing to the presence of microplastics in humans. Last year researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found 20 microplastic particles in every 10 grams of stool.

The Plastic Health Summit in Amsterdam is set to see respected health experts from around the world debate the latest state-of-the-art research on micro- and nanoplastics, plastic additives, and health.

The summit represents the first time the world’s top scientists have got together to explore new and existing research on the impact of plastic and health.

At the summit Liz Bonnin will be receiving the results of a urine test revealing the levels of potentially harmful plastic-related chemicals in her body.

Urgent research 

Organised by the Plastic Soup Foundation and supported by environmental campaign group A Plastic Planet, the summit will see vital new evidence presented exploring the link between plastic and ill-health.

Assistant Professor Nienke Vrisekoop said: “These results raise serious questions about what microplastics are doing to our immune health.

“Urgent further research is needed to paint as full a picture as possible.”

A Plastic Planet co-founder Sian Sutherland said: “Anyone who cares about their health or the health of their children will be profoundly worried about today’s findings.

“With plastic production set to quadruple in the next decades, we need to ask ourselves – is this risk worth it for the sake of convenience in our throwaway lifestyle or is this finally the proof needed to turn off the plastic tap?

“The Plastic Health Summit is a vital catalyst for us to finally understand the true cost of plastic on human health.”

Responsibility 

Maria Westerbos, founder and director of the Plastic Soup Foundation, said: “With this Summit, we want to prove once and for all that plastic doesn’t just harm nature and animals, but also ourselves.

“If we want to give our children and their children a fair chance, then all this proof is enough to turn the tide.”

David Azoulay, Environmental Health Program Director at the Center for International Environmental Law said: “The demonstrated impacts along the life cycle of plastic paint an unequivocally toxic picture: plastic threatens human health on a global scale.

“It’s high time businesses across the world took responsibility for the plastic they produce.”

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Plastic Health Summit.

Many of us across the UK have been looking anxiously at ash trees and thinking, “This year it will really start to show.”

Ash is always the last tree to come into leaf, but this spring there were many bare twigs that will not produce leaves again. The march of ash dieback is upon us. All around us, ash trees are dying quietly.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine

Ash dieback is a fungal disease that attacks the common ash tree, Fraxinus excelsior. It is caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, which originally came from Eastern Asia and has spread throughout Europe, decimating ash populations.

Significant challenges

The spores of H. fraxineuscan be carried on the wind, although its spread has been accelerated by trade in ash trees. The fungus can kill young trees quickly, and it weakens older ash trees over a period of years until other pathogens finish them off.

Recent studies suggest that we could lose over 95 percent of our ash trees from the UK in the next ten years. On a practical level, ash dieback will bring significant challenges and costs for land managers.

The health and safety implications of unsafe trees in public areas are huge, with an estimated £30 million per year needed to deal with them in Devon alone.

But figures like this cannot reflect the full impact of such huge ecological change on our society. The looming reality of ash dieback brings the prospect of a different degree of loss to our countryside, one that it is impossible to control: it brings a deep grief.

Ash is Britain’s third most common tree, so familiar that we are used to taking it for granted, like a family member who has always been there for us. It is a core constituent of our broadleaved woodlands, our hedgerows and our timber supply. The ash tree has been fundamental to British life for millennia.

Folk tales

Ash is considered a feminine tree in British folklore, counterpart to the masculine oak, and it brings us protection and healing. Young children would be given ash sap to drink; sick children were passed through a cleft in an ash tree to cure them.

Strong ash wood was used for many purposes, from spears and bows in battle to cartwheels, tool handles, wooden bowls and furniture. The yule log was originally made of anash log or a bundle of ash sticks. Both the wassail bowl and the maypole were made of ash, and the witch’s broom or besom was made of an ash staff, with birch twigs bound by willow.

Ash magic is peppered throughout the folk tales of the British Isles, although the benevolence (or otherwise) of individual ash trees varies in the stories. In the Welsh epic of the Mabinogion, Gwydion the magician bears a staff of ash, the World Tree in Celtic mythology, the tree that joins the lower, middle and upper worlds.

However, it’s in the Norse myths that we find the ash tree at its most fundamental, intertwined with Germanic and British tradition. They tell us that at the beginning of time, the first gods found an ash and an elm tree with their roots ripped out of the soil. They set them straight and created the first man (Ask) and woman (Embla), and all the world’s people were descended from these trees.

Connecting the worlds of humans, gods, giants and the underworld is the ash Yggdrasil, greatest and best of trees, the tree that always was and always is and always will be. Yggdrasil holds all of creation. Deer nibble at Yggdrasil, and a dragon devours its roots from the underworld, but it constantly regenerates from the dewdrops that are sprinkled on its roots by the three Fates.

It is from Yggdrasil that Odin hangs upside down for nine days and nine nights, learning great wisdom to become Odin the Allfather.

Grief and inspiration

At the end of the Norse mythological cycle, Ragnarök, the end of the world, is brought about by the unleashing of dark and trickster forces.

Yggdrasil the ash tree shakes and groans and everything is frightened as wars rage and the land is ravaged by fire. Two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, hide inside Yggdrasil, and they do not emerge again until the world is safe to reinhabit.

It is tempting to think that ash dieback is a ‘sign’ of our mismanagement of the environment or our ecological doom. This denies the natural law of cause and effect, and I don’t think it is entirely fair in this case. Nevertheless, the loss of ash, and the grief, are on their way.

An important part of grieving is to take inspiration from the one who has died – to take their lessons and use them positively, to find motivation for renewal. How can we find this in the face of such huge change?

Let’s return to the old stories. When the two humans hid inside the trunk of Yggdrasil to survive Ragnarök, they did not emerge afterwards, as from the ark, into a bright, shiny new world. They stepped out into a challenging place, wrecked by the egos and wars of the gods and the giants. They had no choice but to take it on.

Respect

It won’t be only the loss of ash trees that is remembered from the mythology of our own times, but also our response.

We can replace dead trees with other species, we can value and propagate our woodlands and hedgerows and treat them with respect; we can think about the source of the wood that we use, and how we can use wood more wisely.

Ash dieback is a wake-up call for us to bring genuine renewal to our countryside, not just to stem the loss that will inevitably come, whether that loss is due to greed, technology or disease.

It is up to us now to turn our intentions to the positive. Perhaps we can invoke the healing and the inspiration of the ash, greatest and best of trees, to help double our efforts.

This Author 

Lisa Schneidau is an ecologist working with Devon Wildlife Trust on landscape-scale conservation. She is a professional storyteller and is the author of Botanical Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland (The History Press).

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine

Image: Woodland Trust Media Library

Some corporations are paying more attention to how their practices impact the planet and revising their policies in line with sustainable development: we hear of universities banning meat in the name of climate change, organisations imposing a levy on plastic bottles and companies pledging to use sustainable materials.

These changes are coming about as more conversations are had about our impact on the planet. It is imperative that every one of us strives to help sustain the planet before it’s too late.

There are various actions big and small that we can all take to try to minimise our impact on the planet, but many of those actions pale in comparison to what’s on our plates.

Avoiding meat

Last year an Oxford University study – which is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet – found that ‘avoiding meat and dairy is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth’.

So just how important is our diet in conversations around sustainability?

There are countless small sustainable actions we can take, such as taking shorter showers, using a reusable shopping bag or buying an energy-saving lightbulb. All these little things add up to effect real change but many people miss out one very important detail – the impact of what we eat.

A study published in Environmental Research Letters showed that eating a plant-based diet has three times more positive impact than washing your clothes in cold water; four times more than hang-drying clothes or recycling; and eight times more than upgrading light bulbs.

Natural habitats

When we think about sustainable food, the conversation is often dominated by local sourcing, organic produce or packaging use. However, the prevalence of meat, dairy and eggs in our diet is hugely damaging to the planet.

The United Nations, WWF, Greenpeace and Chatham House have all called for a move towards a plant-based diet and the recent Amazon fires led many to ditch animal products in favour of vibrant, nutritious plant foods.

Animal agriculture is the major cause of global deforestation and is responsible for up to 91 percent of Amazon destruction. Farmers set fire to trees so they can graze animals and grow crops to feed them. This deforestation is a contributing factor to climate change, removing the valuable C02 absorption and storage that trees provide.

Becoming vegan reduces the land needed to produce our food by between a third and a half. As well as saving precious habitats in the Amazon, we could be protecting wildlife here in the UK.

And yes, if everyone ate a plant-based diet, the UK would still be able to sustain itself – this is what the University of Harvard found in a study we reported on, which was launched at this year’s Grow Green Conference.

Diet’s impact

Animal agriculture is inherently unsustainable because animals eat much more food than they ‘produce’. For every 100 calories we feed to farmed animals, we only receive 40 calories back from consuming their meat and dairy products. By feeding ourselves with those crops directly instead, we could feed billions more people around the globe.

Even though it feels like just buying some food, there is a much deeper and more important story behind every purchase affecting not just our planet but also the lives of those who dwell on it. Here’s where individual action comes in.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Change is difficult and doesn’t come easily to many of us, so start by making small changes. There is no time for justifications and excuses.

If everyone ate a diet as close to a vegan one as possible, the planet would be in a much better state than it is today.

This author

Dominika Piasecka is media and public relations officer at the Vegan Society and a keen vegan activist. If you care about the environment, take the seven-day planet-saving vegan pledge at www.vegansociety.com/plateup.

The decision to censure presenter Naga Munchetty following her comments in relation to racist remarks by Donald Trump, the US president, has now been overturned by David Jordan, the BBC editorial standards director.

The latest decision seems to have been a response to leaked internal correspondence that shows that members of the public made complaints about comments made by Munchetty and also her co-host Dan Walker – and the fact Walker did not receive the same public chastisement from the BBC.

Munchetty, a popular BBC presenter and a woman of colour, was reprimanded for calling a racist comment racist. This is because the racist comment was made by the president of the United States.

Hyperbolic

So the BBC was suddenly keen to follow guidelines and censor Naga, as well as their other employees of colour – who were not permitted to sign the petition supporting Naga. This is not a one-off incident: earlier this year, the Conservative politician Jeremy Hunt refused to use what he called ‘the R word’ when asked about Trump’s comments.

I find this extremely worrying. Fascism is on the rise in the UK and it needs to be called out whenever we see it, so that it doesn’t quietly become the norm. We all know what that can lead to. If our media can’t do it, what’s the point of journalism?

The BBC recently also broke its own editorial guidelines when it gave a platform to the people behind the Policy Exchange report, without looking into who was behind the think tank that funded the report, ‘Extremism Rebellion’.

The report contained the kind of poor argument that you might expect from such a hyperbolic title, attempting to brand peaceful rebels as extremists despite overwhelming evidence that XR is a non-violent movement. The report was also covered without question in The Telegraph newspaper.

Dr Rupert Read, an XR spokesperson, went on the Today programme on R4 and insisted to the presenter John Humphrys that he should have investigated who had funded the report before giving it so much coverage and taking it seriously. Soon after this, it was revealed that the Policy Exchange has been funded by big oil.

Alarm bell

Of course major oil companies want to brand peaceful rebels as extremists; they want us out of the picture so that they can continue to pollute our planet for profit. They have bunkers to retreat to when the proverbial hits the fan. We don’t. The Policy Exchange report was a targeted move against peaceful climate activists, and it will be the first of many.

Next, retired doctor Lyn Jenkins was reported to the counter-terrorism programme Prevent as at risk of ‘radicalisation’ by Extinction Rebellion. The Telegraph also wrote a damning account of non-violent climate activists, likening us to religious fundamentalists.

Meanwhile, there are actual extremist groups out there like Generation Identity, which has been targeting rural communities in the UK, preying on their vulnerability. This shows the worrying growing trend of eco-fascism in the UK: using anxiety about climate change to fuel intolerance and racism.

Every time these things happen and go unchallenged, my safety is being put at risk. I am a mother of two, an author and public speaker, and I am very visible as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion UK. We’ve all seen the hatred being thrown Greta’s way by some very angry individuals, many of them men in positions of power.

I have received hate mail from angry men after appearing on television. I am aware that as a woman of colour, I’m an easy target. But I will continue to do this work, because scientists are ringing the alarm bell on the health of our planet; they have been doing so for decades, and world leaders are still not paying attention to them.

Better world

We are facing a climate and ecological crisis, but we have yet to see an appropriate response to this emergency from those with power. Meanwhile, discontent and anger grow and very easily, very suddenly they can become violent fascism.

I’m not asking you to take a stand for me personally, but I look at my children, one with white skin and one with brown and wonder how a small quirk of genetics – they are both from the same father – can possibly determine their fate. That’s what will happen if we let this slide: that is the path that unchecked fascism will lead down. Racism is such an arbitrary sickness.

When we allow racist comments to go unchecked, when we allow the BBC to censor journalists who call it out for what it is, when we permit anonymous groups to brand Extinction Rebellion as extremists without evidence, lives like mine are being put at risk.

Fear will not deter me from continuing with this work to protect the planet from continued harm: I am not motivated by hate or extreme views, but by love for my children and for all the beautiful species on this pale blue dot, our only home.

Remember Jo Cox, murdered by a fascist for trying to create a better world. Question whether you want to live in a world – and want your children to live in a world, that is ruled by fascism and hatred – or whether you will consider trying to stop things from going that way.

This Author

Zion Lights is author of The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting and is a TEDx speaker. She is also a spokesperson with Extinction Rebellion UK and editor of The Hourglass newspaper. She tweets at @ziontree

Boris Johnson’s government has refused to apologise to Maori tribal leaders today for the massacre that took place in New Zealand in 1769.

Laura Clarke, the British High Commissioner to New Zealand, is meeting tribal leaders in the town of Gisborne in the country’s North Island, as they mark the anniversary of Captain James Cook and the crew of his ship Endeavour arriving 250 years ago.

She will express “regret” that British explorers killed many of the first indigenous Maori they came across in New Zealand in 1769 – but, according to the Press Association, she will not be issuing a full apology.

A High Commission spokesman said: “The expression of regret responds to a request from the local iwi (tribe) for this history to be heard and acknowledged.

“The British High Commissioner will acknowledge the pain of those first encounters, acknowledge that the pain does not diminish over time, and extend her sympathy to the descendants of those killed,” he said.

“It is not how any of us would have wanted those first encounters to have transpired.”

Soon after arriving, fearing they were under attack, sailors shot and killed a leader, Te Maro, and later killed eight more Maori.

The High Commission’s statement said both Captain Cook and botanist Joseph Banks had written in their diaries that they regretted the deaths.

It added that the exact wording of Ms Clarke’s speech to Maori leaders would remain private.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. Padraig Collins is a reporter with PA.

Image: A Royal Mail stamp issued to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook setting sail aboard the Endeavour. 

A veritable A to Z of world finance institutions are enabling the destruction of three of the world’s biggest rainforests, research carried out by environmental and anti-corruption NGO Global Witness has revealed. 

Among those identified are some of the largest names in global finance—Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Santander and Standard Chartered among them—providing tens of billions of dollars in financing between 2013-2019 to companies either directly or indirectly deforesting the largest rainforest regions of the world.

Five of the world’s leading investment banks, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Barclays and Morgan Stanley are also implicated.

Money to Burn

Global Witness wrote to each bank and received responses, which are referenced in the full report, Money to Burn.

Six major agribusinesses causing this damage – which these well-known global financial players invest in – produce agricultural commodities like palm oil, beef, and rubber.

Global Witness investigated these giant companies over six years (2013-2019), operating across the three largest single rainforests on earth – Amazon, Congo Basin and New Guinea – and found that they were backed to the tune of $44 billion by over 300 investment firms, banks and pension funds headquartered across the globe.

The revelations in the report Money to Burn come after a summer of international outcry over the burning of the Brazilian Amazon, and fresh from a week of strikes and climate action across the globe. 

Studies have shown that forests and other ecosystems could make up more than a third of the total carbon mitigation by 2030 needed to limit global heating to a 2-degree Celsius rise.

Rapid breakdown

In 2018 alone an area of primary tropical rainforest the size of Belgium was destroyed. About a quarter of forest loss, or as high as 78 percent in South East Asia and 56 percent in Latin America, was to make way for agricultural commodities, including beef and palm oil.

Ed Davey, head of forest investigations at Global Witness said: “The rapid breakdown of our climate is a concern to many – including bank customers – so it’s unsurprising that banks and investors proudly trumpet policies on ethical investment and lending, giving the impression they are not pumping money into companies that would fell and burn precious rainforests.

“But their hypocrisy is clear: the same financial institutions are breaking their own policies at will and in search of profit, make many of their promises barely worth the paper they are printed on.

Responsibility

“Members of the public will be shocked to know that the bank they have a current account with,that manages their pension fund or invests their retirement nest egg are enabling the destruction ofthe world’s most previous ecosystems.”

“$44 billion is a terrifying sum of money to be ploughing into companies that destroy forests – at a time when we need trees more than ever. These household name banks and iconic investment funds our exposé highlights will be familiar to anyone who has looked at the skyline of Wall Street or Canary Wharf, read a newspaper or opened a current account. But the activity in this report is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Global Witness is calling on the financial sector to take responsibility for the impact of their financing and investments on forests and the climate.

They are also urging policy makers to address the systemic failure of the financial system, and the companies it finances or invests in, to tackle deforestation by introducing regulatory measures, strengthening their existing commitments, and take meaningful measures to ensure they are implemented effectively.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is The Ecologist’s content editor. This article is based on a press release from Global Witness. 

Image: Represenatational/Pixabay. 

More songbirds could be living in captivity than in the wild on the Indonesian island of Java, according to new research led by Manchester Metropolitan University and Chester Zoo.

Around 75 million birds are kept as pets in Java, threatening to wipe out some wild bird populations.

Across South-east Asia thousands of songbird species are extracted from the wild for a variety of reasons, but many are sought after to enter into singing competitions or to be kept as ornamental pets.

Shrinking habitat

The biggest source for this demand is Indonesia, where levels of ownership have put a huge drain on wild populations causing an ‘Asian songbird crisis’, which may now be approaching a tipping point, threatening wild bird populations with extinction.

Manchester Metropolitan PhD student and Chester Zoo Conservation Scholar Harry Marshall led a team that surveyed 3,000 households across the island of Java – Indonesia’s most densely populated island and home to more than half of its 260 million population. For many Indonesians, bird-keeping is a popular pastime.

His research, published in Biological Conservation, looked into the prevalence and patterns of bird keeping. He found that the proportion of bird-keeping households has increased over the past decade, and that a third of the island’s 36 million households now keep birds.

Harry said: “The removal of birds from the ever-shrinking forest habitat on such a large scale may be extremely damaging, not only causing bird extinctions but also threatening the important ecosystem services they provide such as pollination.

“The trade in songbirds is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars to the Indonesian economy, so it is no surprise that it is a key regional source of both supply and demand for songbirds, with hundreds of markets running across the archipelago, selling more than 200 different species – the majority of which are native to Indonesia.”

‘Kicau-mania’

The illegal trade in wildlife affects species in almost every country, with a growing number of species threatened with extinction because of demand for pets, medicine or ornaments.

Birds are one of the most traded groups with over 3,000 species, a third of all surviving species, reportedly affected by the trade.

Keeping songbirds has a long tradition in certain parts of Indonesia and is seen as an important part of a balanced life for Javanese men – the most populous ethnicity in Indonesia. The researchers found that bird-keeping is more common in the Eastern provinces of Java with the largest Javanese populations.

In recent years however, bird-keeping has evolved into a modern hobby, often referred to as ‘Kicau-mania’ – singing contests for the birds. The competition has become a ubiquitous part of urban life, where birds’ songs, or Kicau in Indonesian, are judged on melody, duration and volume.

These events happen all the time across the island with some people willing to pay thousands of dollars for prize-winning songsters that could win them as much as $50,000 in the top contests.

Notable members of Indonesia’s political elite are also keen songbird enthusiasts, supporting the creation of the high-end songbird contests exclusively for White-rumped Shamas, making it one of the most popular and expensive birds with over three million owned across households. Not surprisingly, the species – once widespread in Java – is now almost exclusively only found in captivity in Java, with evidence suggesting birds are being illegally imported from neighbouring countries.

Future prospects

Species not native to Indonesia, such as canaries and lovebirds, are also are amongst the most commonly kept across Java and bred in captivity, so the demand for these birds does not affect wild populations.

Lovebirds – small parrots of African origin – have seen a seven-fold increase in popularity over the last decade, suggesting that demand is adapting to the reduced availability of other species in the wild and could be a way to meet demand and maintain wild bird populations.

Stuart Marsden, Professor of Conservation Ecology at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “Overall bird ownership shows an increase in the last decade but the high prevalence of bird-keeping, the higher species diversity and the expanding variety of motivations for keeping birds in urban areas suggest that bird keeping is likely to increase in prevalence as the Indonesian population continues to become more urban.

“The songbird trade has become a major threat to the survival of South-east Asia songbirds. Millions of these beautiful birds are captured illegally every year and we need to act now before we reach the point of no return.”

Cautious optimism

Andrew Owen, Curator of Birds at Chester Zoo, added: “We’re well aware that songbirds are under enormous threat from illegal trapping in Indonesia. Yet to see the new figures in this study is really startling. Make no mistake, this is a crisis.

“Information like this really helps us to understand and tackle the problem. Through community awareness and education projects in South-east Asia and conservation breeding programmes for rare songbirds here in Chester, we have been striving to combat the songbird crisis for a number of years.

“There is room for cautious optimism though, as a number of influential and well-respected song competition groups hold events exclusively for captive-bred birds – thus reducing the pressure on wild bird populations. We hope that these events can become the norm as opposed to the exception before it’s too late.”

Global partnership

The findings will help conservationists to target the most important communities with campaigns to reduce bird ownership. The aim is to reduce the number of wild caught birds trapped to be kept in captivity, and with it, an increase in the number living in the wild, in their natural habitat. 

This research is in partnership with Birdlife International, Atma Jaya University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the Oriental Bird Club.

This Article 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from Manchester Metropolitan University. 

Image: Gabby Salazar.