2015 poaching stats: what do they mean?

Posted on January 25, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: We can’t seem to put the brakes on for wildlife or habitat. Our population growth and our homocentric lack of concern for other species is devastating nature.

Fight for Rhinos

South Africa DEA (Department of Environmental Affairs) has released the “official” 2015 rhino poaching statistics – 1175. This is a decrease from 2014 which was 1215.

Reason for optimism?

Keep in mind the following: Kruger is the size of Israel, not all carcasses are recovered in a timely manner, or at all. The statistics also do NOT include the following:

poaching survivors (like Hope)
orphans whose mothers are killed, but they are NOT rescued and do not survive alone
unborn baby rhinos

While the DEA pat themselves on the back for a “decline” in numbers, reality is this month, there have already been 37 poached at the time of this post, and the orphanages are seeing no shortage of rescued orphans.

In fact there had been a 10% INCREASE in poaching activity in Kruger National Park, where the majority of poachings occurred.

Instead of taking the numbers as a fact, we must look at them as only an…

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Blogging for the Earth

Posted on January 5, 2016 by GarryRogers

Blogging about Nature: Introducing Garry Rogers on the League of Bloggers for a Better World

Garry Rogers

My blog posts are about nature, about wildlife and its habitat (posts). They are expressions of my concerns for natural conditions and events.

During the past year, 2015, lethal heat waves and storms, decline of the great iconic species of elephants, lions, and rhinos, whittling away of the tropical rain forests, and massive clouds of air and water pollution made it clear that humanity is changing the Earth.

More than just the great species, we are eliminating many other species hundreds or perhaps thousands of times more quickly than ever achieved by meteorites, volcanic eruptions, or natural climate change.

Total extinction of a species usually happens after decades of decline. In 2014, the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations carried out an exhaustive analysis of more than 10,000 wildlife studies (download the report). They wanted to know how wild plants and animals were holding up against human activities. They learned that from 1970 to 2014, just 44 years, the total number of animals on Earth declined by more than 50%! Rates of decline vary across species groups. Birds, for instance declined by 40%. Other groups, especially those dependent on freshwater, have declined by 70%.

What evolution took billions of years to produce, we humans are destroying in a tick of geologic time. We are changing the planet so quickly, that not by migration, and certainly not by natural selection, can plants and animals cope. If we continue our activities at their current rate, in only a few centuries, we will turn the Earth into a factory farm of cities, farms, feedlots, and roads with only the tiniest fraction of our native creatures surviving on the fringes.

I often write brief comments without listing my sources. I am always happy to respond to requests for explanations.

Human Population Answers

Posted on October 19, 2015 by GarryRogers

Earth’s Human Population Problem

Click the book to read online.

I learned about human population as mathematical relationships between migration, birth rates, and death rates. As I started my academic career, I continued to use the numbers, the formulas and projections to discuss population. My students learned about population growth, but the numbers didn’t create much excitement. [Click here for current numbers.]

In the years since I began lecturing about population, injuries to Earth’s ecosystems have spread around the planet. We no longer need math to see what will come; it’s visible everywhere. This book, “Over,” illustrates the human impact on nature with a set of magnificent photographs. In sequence, the photographs first show how we are damaging the planet and then they show the beauty that can be ours if we want to fight for it.

The beautifully written essays that accompany the photos discuss the consequences of feeding the 10 billion or more people the United Nations projects will be alive by this century’s end. The authors explain that producing enough food will require conversion of the Earth into a factory farm for humans.

The writers point out that reducing our birth rate will not require any form of coercion. Evidence from developed countries clearly shows that with education and access to birth control, women freely choose to have fewer children.

The chart below shows that the most recent world population projections by the United Nations sets the probable number of people alive in 2100 (the solid red median line) at 11.3 billion. The needs of that many people will crush the life out of the Earth.

The writers do not attempt to describe the future that someone born this year (2015) will face when the year 2100 arrives. Will that elderly person be living on a food-factory planet still dominated by the growth objectives of corporations and countries, or will they be living in a beautiful world they helped save? Will they be unsure of the future? If the Earth has become a human food factory by 2100, will population and artificial food sources continue to rise, or will businesses find new ways to grow and profit from a static supply of workers and consumers?

Answers: Responding to the Population Problem

Click this link to follow the population and immigration news.

For the past 50 years, our leaders have done almost nothing to slow population growth. There have been a few national programs (see the review in Wikipedia), but certainly no real successes. Looking at the photos in the book, the inaction seems irresponsible, an incredible failure. It will take the utmost pressure from all of us to make our governments form strategies to reduce population. I don’t know what we can do about the universal growth imperative of our businesses, but that is a key problem that we must solve. For a first step, I hope you will go to the Global Population Speak Out website and choose one of the ways to help communicate the seriousness of the population problem. You might also wish to check on the population control programs by the Center for Biological Diversity.

Description:

Title: Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot
Authors: Tom Butler, Musimbi Kanyoro, William N. Ryerson, Eileen Crist
Hardcover: 330 pages
Publisher: Goff Books (February 17, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1939621238

Grieving over Growth. Gary Gripp: To a Future Generation

Posted on October 14, 2015 by GarryRogers

BY GARY GRIPP, to a future generation:

“Everything central to our way of life is in the growth mode: the banks, the corporations, all our extractive and service industries, and, not least of all, our population. More people means: more willing buyers of homes, cars, electronic gadgets, and all the trappings of modern life. More jobs, more prosperity, more everything.

“More, more, more. It is in the interest of banks and corporations, as well as businesses large and small, that the market for products continues to grow. More, more, more. Grow, grow, grow.

“On a finite planet with degraded natural systems and diminishing natural resources, this growth imperative, built-in to our systems and into our lives, is an irresistible force coming up against an immovable object. It is us hitting a wall, and doing so at speed. More and more people in my time now see this crash coming.” blog.edsuom.com

GR: Hey grandkids, we just couldn’t help ourselves. (We really couldn’t. To see what it would take for humans to survive on Earth, read Corr Syl the Warrior.)

Nature News Digests

Posted on October 10, 2015 by GarryRogers

Nature News Digests:

Arizona Wildlife Notebook Revised – #Wildlife, #Arizona, #Conservation

Posted on October 3, 2015 by GarryRogers

Arizona Wildlife Notebook

A new edition of the “Arizona Wildlife Notebook” is available.

In the year, 2015, lethal heat waves and storms made it clear that humanity was changing the Earth. Anyone who paid attention to the news knew that Earth’s animals and plants were disappearing.

This figure from the review by the World Wildlife Fund (2014) shows that, from 1970 to 2010, Earth’s animals declined by 52%.

I have come to believe that nature conservation is the great challenge of our time. Human beings are imposing a mass extinction that will eliminate almost all animals on Earth. We may not be able to stop this, but I believe that the Notebook will be useful for anyone who hasn’t given up and wishes to work to protect Earth’s creatures.

Arizona Species Conservation Status

For this edition of the Notebook, I added more information on conservation. The table below shows group status for species that AZGFD specialists consider critically imperiled (S1), imperiled (S2), and vulnerable (S3). It also shows group status according to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for Threatened (LT) and Endangered (LE) species. I didn’t include butterflies, moths, damselflies, and dragonflies in this table because the status of most species in those groups is unknown.

Many species that the AZGFD says are critically imperiled are not given national recognition and protection by the U. S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). It seems that only after species are mostly gone that protection becomes available. Thus, the ESA achieves very little overall protection from biodiversity loss.

ARIZONA WILDLIFE CONSERVATION STATUS
Species Group	Total minus Exotic & Extinct	AZGFD S1+S2+S3	ESA LT+LE
Amphibians	31	18 (58%)	2
Birds	451	260 (58%)	9
Fish	40	40 (100%)	13
Lizards	67	27 (40%)	0
Mammals	189	64 (34%)	15
Snakes	76	35 (46%)	1
Turtles	10	6 (67%)	2
TOTAL	864	450 (52%)	42

The third column shows how many species AZGFD considers at risk. For instance, all native Arizona fish species are at risk, and about one-third of native Arizona mammals are at risk. Being “at risk” usually means that numbers are dropping. The principal causes are construction of buildings and roads, and invasive plants and animals.

Click–Arizona Wildlife Notebook–for a free copy of the 168-page book formatted as a PDF “fillable form.” If you like the book, tell others. Write a review for Amazon: http://mybook.to/AZWildlifeNotebook , or Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1Mkgmei. If you would like to review a printed copy of the book, send a note using the form below. Thank you.

Now that you’ve downloaded the book, you have a conversation-starter for tonight’s warm-up party for World Animal Day!

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Record-Breaking Wildfires, Greenland Melting and Earth’s Hottest Month Ever

Posted on September 3, 2015 by GarryRogers

Humans have some advantages over other animal species, but like the animals, we can’t control our urge to reproduce and our desire for the security of material wealth. Sentient but not sapient, sensitive but not wise, our advantages have let us to eliminate competition, disease, and danger. Thus, nothing can stop our booming population and our world-destroying “environmental footprint.” (ACD = anthropogenic climate disruption)

Exposing the Big Game

The following article from Truthout.org covers all that I was going to go over in Part 2 of Global Warming: the Future is Now, so here’s this instead:

Dahr Jamail | The World on Fire:

The US is now officially in the worst wildfire season in its history, as almost 7.5 million acres across the country have burned up since spring.

Articles about ACD’s impacts are now being published in more mainstream outlets, carrying titles that include verbiage like “the point of no return,” and it is high time for that, given what we are witnessing.

A recently published study by the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Reliance revealed that “major shocks” to worldwide food production will become at least three times more likely within the next 25 years due to increasingly extreme weather events generated by ACD. One of the coauthors of the report…

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Deforestation in Mexico butterfly reserve more than triples

Posted on August 25, 2015 by GarryRogers

In this Jan. 4, 2015 file photo, a kaleidoscope of Monarch butterflies hang from a tree branch, in the Piedra Herrada sanctuary, near Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Illegal logging has almost tripled in the monarch butterfly’s wintering grounds in …more.

“Illegal logging more than tripled in the monarch butterfly’s wintering grounds In central Mexico, reversing several years of steady improvements, investigators announced Tuesday.

“Almost all of the loss occurred in just one rural hamlet in the state of Michoacan. Loggers cut down 47 acres (19 hectares) of trees in San Felipe de los Alzati since last year’s gathering of butterflies. A total of 52 acres (21 hectares) of forest in the reserve were lost overall, including losses due to drought or pests.”

That’s the highest figure since 2009, well above the 20 acres (8 hectares) lost in 2014, according to the announcement by the World Wildlife fund and the Institute of Biology of Mexico’s National Autonomous University. The 2014 loss was about 12 acres (5 hectares) due to logging and 8 acres (3 hectares) to drought.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: phys.org

Eco-Sabotage is Planetary Self-Defense | Deep Green Resistance Blog

Posted on August 20, 2015 by GarryRogers

Max Wilbert and other members of Deep Green Resistance Seattle participated in a May “ShellNO” protest against Shell’s arctic drilling rig. Their display of signs reading “Sabotage the Machine” and “Eco-Sabotage is Planetary Self-Defense” attracted a lot of attention. Elliot Stoller conducted a short video interview in which Wilbert explains his concern about ineffective tactics and strategies in the face of dramatic threats to biodiversity, climate, and social justice.

Wilbert discusses DGR’s radical evaluation of systems of power and what might actually work to alter their destructive course: targeting critical communication, electrical, and oil infrastructures, and addresses some common questions about what that means for the safety of activists who undertake such work, and what sort of life humans can live without the comforts and elegancies of industrial civilization. Sourced through Scoop.it from: deepgreenresistance.blogspot.com

GR: In this video (http://bit.ly/1MA5av2) Wilbert describes eco-sabotage as necessary self-defense for nature. This radical perspective is gaining momentum as it becomes apparent that Earth ecosystems are deteriorating due to excessive corporate resource extraction and government mismanagement of natural resources. Worth watching.