Hi again,
Herewith, some snippets from various sources.
I appeal to you to send me items to distribute to our members for the Cleft Stick, the Game Ranger magazine and to be posted on the web site. These are your magazines and website, so ensure it gets the news that you would like to see in it.
Please let me have any changes to your physical address, phone no. or e-mail address to keep the database up to date. Remember this is the address we will send your Game Ranger Magazine to.
Thanks to all of you who have made the effort. Please will any of you who know of members who do not get this “electric” Cleft~Stick, & have access to e-mail, pass their address along to me.
Don Yunnie
7 Chalet Drive, Hilton, 3245, South Africa Local Tel & Fax (033) 343 1534
Int. Tel & Fax (+2733) 343 1534 cell 082 377 7562, E-mail dyunnie@xsinet.co.za
If you do not wish to receive this e-mail newsletter please send a blank e-mail to me at the above address with the word “Unsubscribe” as the message heading.
Please feel free to write to express your views on the content or the subject of any of the articles in this magazine – to the address above.
Conservation Outreach
Look out for the following magazines this month (October) for articles on the Conservation Outreach trip---
leisure Wheels “Toyota Outreach” on page 48, by Stephen Smith
S A 4X4 “ Touching Base” on page 60, by Grant Spolander
Have you seen warthogs in Africa?
To better understand the distribution of Africa’s warthogs, we would like to know if you have seen desert warthogs or common warthogs in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya or Tanzania. Details and/or a photograph of your record would be highly appreciated. The following information is most important: date (or year) of sighting, species, name of nearest village or town, latitude, longitude, elevation and habitat. Please send your information and/or photograph to:
Yvonne de Jong
P.O. Box 149
Nanyuki 10400, Kenya
yvonne@wildsolutions.nl
Surge in rhino poaching, October 01 2008 at 02:21PM
South Africa's rhino populations are under threat from poachers, with KwaZulu-Natal game parks reporting that at least 12 white rhino have been killed since January.
An investigation, the details of which are under wraps, is underway in the Kruger National Park and it is believed by some that as many as 20 rhino may have been killed in 2008.
Four rhino were killed about the past weekend in the Masinda section of the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, said Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife (EKZNW) spokesperson Jeff Gaisford.
Rangers in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park had initially found only one rhino, but subsequent investigations had revealed a further three carcasses.
"The horns of all four animals had been cleanly removed with a sharp instrument indicating that some one with considerable experience had been at work," said Gaisford.
Post mortems conducted the next day by the EKZNW veterinary surgeon revealed that all four animals had been shot with a heavy calibre rifle some five days previously.
Gaisford said that up until last year poaching numbers had been extremely low and that in some years not a single rhino had been lost.
"We had a long quiet run," he said.
Raymond Travers, spokesperson for Kruger National Park, said that poaching of rhino had "increased dramatically" over the past year.
He declined to comment on how many cases had been reported in the past year.
SA National Parks spokesperson Wanda Mkutshulwa said: "There is an investigation underway. Until we have made headway and got a handle on it we have decided as an organisation not to talk about it."
Police have been called in to investigate the case.
Dr Jacques Flamand, leader of the World Wildlife Fund and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife Black Rhino Range Expansion Project, said he believed that more than 20 rhino had been killed this year.
Private game parks had so far not been affected by the surge in poaching, he said.
There were concerns that a Vietnamese or Chinese syndicate were possibly behind the poaching. Most of the rhino that had been poached were White Rhino.
Flamand said that demand for the rhino horn corresponded with the increasing economic wealth in China.
Ground into a powder, the rhino horn is used in traditional Asian medicine as a fever reducing potion. The horns are also in demand for use as dagger handles in Yemen and Oman.
South Africa has nearly 14 000 white rhino and less than 4 000 black rhino. – Sapa
Stiff new penalties for environmental crimes
The South African Parliament has adopted legislation that will significantly strengthen the enforcement of environmental laws. Business Day reports that the National Environment Laws Amendment Bill will increase the maximum fine for contravention of some environmental measures to R10-million and also introduce the concept of anticipatory costs. These would be those costs borne by the authorities to undertake remedial work when there was a failure to comply with a directive to clean up pollution.
Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in his speech that it had become evident that while prison sentences in environmental legislation were comparable with what was found internationally, the fines were too low. The bill also clarified the retrospective application of the National Environment Management Act, after a court found that it did not apply to pollution caused before 1999 when the act took effect.
From AFRICAN ENERGY NEWS REVIEW – an analysis of energy news for decision makers
BirdLife's State of the World's Birds has been launched --
here is an extract from the press release.
"Common birds are in decline across the world, providing evidence of a rapid deterioration in the global environment that is affecting all life on earth - including human life. All the world's governments have committed themselves to slowing or halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010. But reluctance to commit what are often trivial sums in terms of national budgets means that this target is almost certain to be missed.
These are some of the stark messages from State of the World's Birds, a new publication and website (birdlife.org/sowb) launched today at BirdLife International's World Conference in Buenos Aires. . . .
The report highlights worldwide losses among widespread and once-familiar birds. A staggering 45% of common European birds are declining: the familiar European Turtle-dove Streptopelia turtur, for example,has lost 62% of its population in the last 25 years. On the other side of the globe, resident Australian wading birds have seen population losses of 81% in just quarter of a century. . .
Twenty North American common birds have more than halved in number in the last four decades State of the Worlds Birds identifies many key global threats, including the intensification of industrial-scale agriculture and fishing, the spread of invasive species, logging and the replacement of natural forest with monocultural plantations."
The full press release is available at http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2008/09/SOWB_global.html, and the State of the World's Birds Web site is at http://www.biodiversityinfo.org/sowb/default.php?r=sowbhome.
Best regards, Dwight Peck.
Communications Officer, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
Gland, Switzerland, peck@ramsar.org, www.ramsar.org
Scientists flock to save flamingos on soda-ash prospect
By: Esmarie Swanepoel, Published: 6 Oct 08 - 17:42
More than 250 scientists attending the twelfth Pan-African Ornithological Congress, held in Cape Town, rejected the proposed soda-ash plant on Lake Natron in Tanzania, stating that it could jeopardise the survival of 75% of the world’s flamingos.
The scientists have written to the Tanzanian and Kenyan authorities, seeking cancellation of the project and recognition of Lake Natron as a Ramsar site, which they say is a wetland of international significance and an important bird area, that requires government protection.
Chemical giant Tata Chemicals, of India, and Tanzania’s National Development Corporation want to build a soda-ash plant with an annual production capacity of 0,5-million tons.
However, these plans have provoked stiff opposition from environmental conservationists.
The congress noted that Lake Natron is the world’s most significant breeding site for the lesser flamingo, listed as near-threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list.
The congress further noted that the lake was the only site in Eastern Africa where this species breeds regularly and successfully, and one of only five such sites in the world. The lake was also recognised as a Ramsar site, as well as an important bird area.
The scientists warned that the project would destroy the lake and the 1,5-million to 2,5-million flamingos dependent on it for survival, a claim that was backed by an environmental and social impact assessment study.
South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative
Visit the South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) website and learn all about protecting our fishstocks by only eating those species that are abundant and harvested in a sustainable way. Prawns, the very epitome of gourmat eating in South Africa, have recently been added to the orange list of SASSI species. There are limited fishing areas for prawns off the East coast of South Africa and though there are more extensive areas off the Mozambique coast, over fishing and other environmental factors have reduced the population so that sustainability is in question.
There are a number of prawn species that are harvested locally. Deep water prawns that live on the continental shelf belong to two species, Haliporoides triarthrus and Aristaeomorpha loliacea.
Shallow water prawns consist of three species, Fenneropenaeus indicus, the white or LM prawn. Penaeus monodon, the tiger prawn and Metapenaeus monodon, the brown prawn. All prawns are harvested by trawling and this is also a problem as 80% of the catch is bycatch, which means that it consists of organisms other than prawns and 70% of this is discarded as having no commercial value.
Most prawns available on the local market are imported from India and China where they are farmed.
Dear BIOPLANNERS,
For many years now, Jeff McNeely, Chief Scientist of IUCN, has likened the flow of information via the Internet to "drinking from a fire-hose".
Increasingly, high quality content that was only available in print or on subscription is available online - but it is hard to know that it is available, even with the "thing that makes you stupid"!
Below is a typical example.
Scientific American used to be one of my "must read" stops in the libray of Oxford Polytechnic, where I studied. Today, I do not see it, except occasionally at airports.
However, there is a lot of quality information being made freely-available on the SciAm website - see for example: http://www.sciam.com/special-editions/
Below are the links to three relevant articles from the October 2008 Special Edition:
Is Focusing on "Hot Spots" the Key to Preserving Biodiversity?
By Robert Kunzig http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=is-focusing-on-hot-spots
Bar Code of Life: DNA Tags Help Classify Animals By Mark Y. Stoeckle and Paul D. N. Hebert
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bar-code-of-life
Global Warming: Beyond the Tipping Point By Michael D. Lemonick
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=global-warming-beyond-the-co2
Hard on the heels of my mention of Ecological Overshoot Day and the Ig Nobel Prizes comes the annual release of the IUCN Red List, just in time for their World Congress starting this week in Barcelona, Spain [www.worldcongress.com/].
Below are the links to and the text of three media cover stories of the Red List release, focusing especially on the first complete assesment of the conservation status of mammals.
Cover from ScienceNews http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre4942rx-us-species/
Cover from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7651981.stm
Cover from Nature http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081006/full/455717a.html
Looks like I am reverting to type again - mostly bad news!
Best wishes
David Duthie
UNEP-GEF Biosafety Unit
Geneva
Email: david.duthie(at)unep.ch
POSITION(s) AVAILABLE
Carnivore Conservation Group:
Programme Coordinator, NPO 015502/PBO 930 001 777
The Endangered Wildlife Trust, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, has grown over the past thirty-five years into one of the major non-governmental conservation organisations operating throughout southern Africa.
The Endangered Wildlife Trust seeks to appoint a Programme Coordinator for the Carnivore Conservation
Group (EWT-CCG). This position requires a dedicated and organised individual to coordinate the development of
a strategic framework for Cheetah and Wild Dog conservation and management in South Africa and assist
with the supervision of various EWT-CCG projects as assigned by the EWT-CCG Manager.
The successful candidate will develop a National Conservation Action Plan for Cheetah and Wild Dogs as
well as a 10-year Cheetah Metapopulation Management Plan. This includes collating all existing data on Cheetah
and Wild Dogs in South Africa, networking and liaising with all relevant stakeholders, developing the respective
plans and soliciting support for the acceptance and implementation of the Action Plans and the Management
Plan. An implementation framework for all three plans should be put in place, which includes all relevant stakeholders. Additionally, the successful candidate will assist the EWT-CCG Manager in supervising selected projects of the EWT-CCG and will be responsible for their effective implementation through the respective field staff. Applicants should hold a minimum of a Master’s degree in the biological sciences or related environmental field. The successful candidate will have extensive project management skills and the ability to source existing data, conduct literature searches and demonstrate good report writing skills. The preferred candidate will be completely computer literate, have experience with data analysis and working with GIS programmes. He/she will be able to facilitate networking and information exchange between the relevant stakeholders and comfortably interact with a variety of different stakeholders, including NGO’s, national and provincial parks authorities, private landowners, communities and government officials on alllevels.
Familiarity with carnivore ecology would be an advantage and an understanding of the metapopulation concept, and previous experience in population modeling, is beneficial.
The candidate must hold a valid code 8 driver’s license, with a minimum of 2 years driving experience, and have their own transport. A general willingness to travel (for short periods) throughout South Africa is required.
The candidate should have good people and communication skills, and be able to produce comprehensive action and management plans. A self-driven, professional individual capable of working for long periods on their own is required. Exemplary administrative and organisational skills are essential.
Applicants must demonstrate a passion for conservation and the environment, and an understanding of and/or willingness to work in a well-established non-governmental organisation. This is a 2-year contract appointment, position effective from 1 November 2008. All applications will be treated in the strictest confidence.
The Endangered Wildlife Trust is an equal opportunity employer.
Applicants are to submit a comprehensive CV, as well as a motivation as to how they see their role in this post. Candidates who have not been contacted within 14 days of the closing date must please assume that their applications were not successful.
The EWT reserves the right not to make an appointment.
Closing date for applications: 20 October 2008.
To apply please e-mail your CV to
alisonj@ewt.org.za
Or post to “Human Resource Manager”, Private Bag
X11, Parkview, 2122. Or fax to +27 (11) 486 1506
Threatened Grassland Species Programme:
Programme Coordinator, NPO 015502/PBO 930 001 777
The Endangered Wildlife Trust, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, has grown over the past thirty-five years into one of the major non-governmental conservation organisations operating throughout southern Africa.
The Endangered Wildlife Trust seeks to appoint a coordinator for the EWT Threatened Grassland Species Programme (EWT-TGSP) to develop the programme strategy and manage and supervise the implementation of projects within the framework of this strategy.
Grasslands are currently one of South Africa’s most threatened ecosystems, with only 2.2% formally conserved and more than 40% already irreversibly transformed. The EWT has, through various speciesfocussed projects, addressed various threats to grasslands in the past, and aims to consolidate these activities through the development of EWT-TGSP. The programme will implement projects focussing on grassland conservation by using various flagship species, such as the Blue Swallow, Oribi, Giant Bullfrog and others. A scoping report identifying critically important areas, threats and relevant species will form the basis for the development of this
programme.
The successful candidate will be responsible for developing a comprehensive strategy for the EWTTGSP that examines conservation needs in the grassland biome around threatened species and sets priorities for the programme. The candidate will further evaluate and adjust existing EWT initiatives in grasslands and develop new projects in accordance with the strategy developed. The candidate will be responsible for the management and implementation of all projects within the TGSP and all relevant field staff.
The preferred candidate will have a minimum of an undergraduate degree in environmental management, the biological sciences, or a related conservation field. Experience in strategic planning and development and
implementation of outcome-oriented projects is essential. Knowledge of the grassland biome and relevant grassland species as well as relevant South African legislation is an advantage.
The candidate is expected to have appropriate project planning and management skills, good data-collection
and record-keeping skills, experience in database management, and proven writing skills. Proficiency in the use of major MS Office programs is essential and basic knowledge of Geographic Information Management Systems will be an advantage.
A self-driven, professional individual capable of working on their own is required. Applicants must demonstrate a
passion for conservation and the environment, and an understanding of and/or willingness to work in a wellestablished non-governmental organisation.
The candidate must hold a valid code 8 driver’s license; with a minimum of 2 years driving experience. Successful applicants will be required to attend interviews in Johannesburg, and the selected candidate will
preferably be based in Mpumalanga after an initial 3 months at the EWT head office in Johannesburg (negotiable).
This is a 2-year contract appointment, position effective from 1 November 2008. All applications will be treated in
the strictest confidence. The Endangered Wildlife Trust is an equal opportunity employer.
Applicants are to submit a comprehensive CV which includes e-mail addresses for reference, as well as a motivation as to how they see their role in this post.
Candidates who have not been contacted within 14 days of the closing date must please assume that their
applications were not successful. The EWT reserves the right not to make an appointment.
Closing date for applications: 20 October 2008
To apply please e-mail your CV to alisonj@ewt.org.za
Or post to “Human Resource Manager”, Private Bag X11,
Parkview, 2122. Or fax to +27 (11) 486 1506
Tailpiece
Last night my wife and I were sitting in the living room, talking about life... In-between, we talked about the idea of living or dying.
I said to her: 'Dear, never let me live in a vegetative state, totally dependent on machines and liquids from a bottle. If you see me in that state I want you to disconnect all the contraptions that are keeping me alive, I'd much rather die'.
Then my wife got up from the sofa with this real look of admiration towards me...and proceeded to disconnect the TV, the Cable, the Dish, the DVD, the Computer, the Cell Phone, the iPod, and the Xbox, and then went to the fridge and threw away all my beer!!
....I ALMOST DIED!!!