The Skagit Land Trust in Washington protects another 50 more acres!

Posted on 8:00pm Thursday 15th Apr 2021

The Skagit Land Trust is a local non-profit conservation organisation located in the beautiful state of Washington. It is supported by over 1,600 people (indidivduals, families and businesses). It protects key natural land for future generations of people and wildlife and for the benefit of the community.

And great news!

The Skagit Land Trust has protected over 8,560 acres of land and 46 miles of marine and freshwater shoreline in Skagit County. It’s done this working with communities, landowners and partners.

And good news! They’ve purchased 50 more acres. These are at the entrance to Samish Island and the land will be managed as part of the Samish Island Conservation Area.

The Trust now protects 100 acres at the entrance to Samish Island and over half a mile of marine shoreline. It includes a beach, freshwater wetlands, a tidal marsh, a small creek and tidelands. And it means that the entrance will be natural open space forever!

The purchase was possible thanks to over 200 families, businesses and organisations who donated to help purchase the property, and the Washington State Department of Ecology who helped secure a grant of$875,000 from the National Coastal Weltands Conservation Grant Program.

The Trust is working to secure further grant funds and these will help repay loans taken out for the purchase and also to help restore the property.

The 100 acres includes the Samish Island Conservation Area, and the Samish Flower Farm. It also includes an adjoining private conservation easement, kindly donated over 15 years ago by Jim Squires Jr and Cliff Squires. Take a look at the areas protected by the Skagit Land Trust and you’ll see how important conservation easement is.

The first step is a site clean up.

Find out all about the Skagit Land Trust’s Conservation Strategy here.

This just shows what can be done when people pull together towards a common conservation goal, so well done to every one involved. Donate here.

Rainforest Foundation UK have good news from the DRC about 29,142 hectares of forest!

Posted on 8:00am Wednesday 14th Apr 2021

Rainforest Foundation UK have good news from the Democratic Republic of the Congo!

Its community forest programme there has gained momentum, as the Bamasobha community has been granted their community forest! This secures 29,142 hectares! Find out more about it here.

There are now over 100 community forests which are either established or applied for, in the world’s second largest rainforest. They total over 2 million acres!

Rainforest Foundation UK works in the two largest rainforests, the Congo Basin and the Amazon. The forests are spread over billions of acres but as we all know, they are threatened by illegal logging and mining. Destroy the forest habitats, and you also undermine the livelihoods of locals living there. You also destroy eco systems.

ForestLink fights illegal activities in the forest

So communities are important in the fight against illegal activities, and the Rainforest Foundation UK’s ForestLink monitoring system enables communities to send low-cost alerts about illegal logging. It’s been so effective that it’s been expanded to the Ivory Coast!

There was also a landmark conviction of eco-guards for human rights abuses which were committed in the Salonga National Park. It sends a strong message that abuses won’t be tolerated.

Rainforest Foundation UK says that much needs to be done to address the risks from a poorly designed UN plan to double protect areas within the next decade. It is working to “amplify the voices of those on the frontline of deforestation on the international stage” as the climate summit in Glasgow approaches.

Visit Rainforest Foundation UK's website here

Don’t miss: Climate Change: Ade on the Frontline

Posted on 5:00pm Sunday 11th Apr 2021

There’s a new series on BBC2 on Sunday evenings: Climate Change: Ade on the Frontline.

Ade Adepitan looks at climate change and the impact it is having on the environment – however, he is also looking at some amazing people who are doing what they can to help stop the pace at which is progressing and/or help the species affected by it. He is looking for solutions to climate change around the world.

And he does touch on the fact he is flying around the world to bring this to us. But unless we all find out what is happening in various locations and how people and wildlife and nature are being affected by climate change, there won’t be a story to tell.

Solomon Islands

Ade starts off in the Solomon Islands and we see and hear first-hand from local people who are affected by rising sea levels.

Great Barrier Reef

Adi heads to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the wonders of the world – and a breeding spot for the green turtle. Because the world is getting warmer, so is the sand and that has meant that that nearly all the turtles being born are female. This presents a major problem because it means that there are very few males being born. Adi finds out about a project which is trying to cool the sand so that more male green turtles might be born.

One of the questions Adi asks is “how do we wean ourselves off fossil fuels?”

Rural Queensland

He visits rural Queensland, a heart breaking visit because of the draught, and the city of Sydney where an amazing woman from Sydney Wildlife is working hard to help all the bats which have been affected by the terrible wildfires.

Ozharvest

And he visits the incredible people involved in Ozharvest – they collect food which is due to be chucked from the supermarkets and take it to a market where people can get it for free, to save it being wasted. The young woman from Ozharvest says a simple thing we can all do is to plan what we need when we shop and buy just what we need. When you know that people are going hungry in the world, that fact is made worse by the amount of food being wasted elsewhere – and when you add how much that impacts on the environment and climate change, that makes things much worse.

Tasmania

Finally Adi heads to Tasmania where plants – giant kelp - are being planted under the water as they excel at sucking up CO2 and also they grow at an incredible rate. Their success is hampered by sea urchins so there is a project to try to encourage people to eat sea urchins so that we might gain control over them.

He also sees how wind power in Tasmania could be used to power some of Australia’s mainland cities/places through a cable under the sea.

We can turn things around

Finally, Adi meets one of Australia’s top thinkers on climate change, an ex-Greenpeace employee, Paul Gilding, who warns that the plant is on the verge of total collapse. He believes we can turn things around. The key, he says, is to eliminate all fossil fuels by 2030. Governments must have the strength to enforce it – and it is up to you and I, the people who vote them in, to put the pressure on and show them that they must get on with it.

Next week features Bangladesh and Bhutan – don’t miss it! BBC2 at 8pm, Sunday 18 April 2021.

Useful resources:

Sydney Wildlife

Ozharvest

Turtle Cooling Project

Giant Kelp Restoration Project in Tasmania

International Beaver Day is on 7th April

Posted on 8:00am Wednesday 7th Apr 2021

The 7th April is International Beaver Day.

Beavers can be quite controversial animals in the natural world; personally I admire them for their incredible engineering skills.

About 400 years ago, beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK but they are being re-introduced (with caution) in the hope that they will help restore our wetlands to their natural state and also reduce the impact of flooding.

Forestry England has produced this video showing why beavers build dams. Their teeth are really quite something (the beavers, not Forestry England.)

Now, a number of the UK's Wildlife Trusts have beaver appeals and they are Dorset, Derbyshire, Devon, Cheshire, Cornwall and Kent.

The Wildlife Trust's website describe beavers as the engineers of the animal world and looking at the video above, it's easy to see why.

To support the Wildlife Trust's conservation efforts, you could Adopt a Beaver either for yourself or as a gift for a nature lover!

Of course you should also take a look at the Beaver Trust. I hope they won't mind me quoting their very exciting mission which is:

"to recover Britain’s waterways and landscapes through the rapid and widespread re-establishment of beaver wetlands across whole river catchments."

Their belief is that beavers are a practical, low-cost solution for long-term restoration. They can help revesse the trend of extinction of British wildlife. You can see from their map where beavers are in the UK.

Furthermore, the Beaver Trust reports that in the US West, land managers and scientists hare using beaver dam analogs to do three things:

To heal damaged streams
To re-establish beaver populations
To help wildlife

And they've seen positive changes in 1 to 3 years in many cases! Find out all about it here

Visit their website to have a good look round and see how you can help.

Magnificent investment in gorillas, thanks to one post

Posted on 9:00pm Thursday 18th Mar 2021

It’s been quite a week for gorillas, thanks to Reddit’s WallStreetBets (WSB) community. It’s the group behind the GameStop Movement.

Imagine - 3,500 gorillas have been adopted!

In short, Reddit investors have adopted 3,500 gorillas in just six days to help the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. That’s an incredible investment!

Normally, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International have about 20 new adoptions on a weekend, so this is truly quite an astonishing leap up!

And it started with one post...

It all started to happen on Friday. A member of the WSB community posted that they had sent a donation to Dian Fossey Fund International which allowed them to adopt their own gorilla. The charity protects endangered mountain gorillas.

And the post was upvoted over 112,000 times – members of the WSB community followed suit and adopted a gorilla!

Not only that, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International received over $350,000 (£252,000) in donations as well!

It’s wonderful to see people wanting to do their bit and it just shows what can be done when one person sows the seed and drops an idea into a community.

A huge thank you to the Reddit WSB community for supporting the apes! Dr Stoinski from the charity thanked WSB for their amazing support – the video was posted and upvoted over 159,000 times!