Hi again,
Herewith, some snippets from various sources.
I appeal to you to send me items to distribute to our members for both the Cleft Stick and to be posted on the website. It is your magazine 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.
Thanks to all of you who have made the effort. Please will any of you who know of members who do not get this “electronic” Cleft~Stick, & have access to e-mail, pass their address along to me.
Mugabe Orders Cull of Elephantsto feed starving villagers
By Basildon Peta in Johannesburg, 28 April 2005
Fresh from his disputed victory in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections, President Robert Mugabe has turned his sights on the country's wildlife reserves in a bid to feed thousands of malnourished villagers.
Zimbabwe's national parks have been ordered to work with rural district councils to begin the wholesale slaughter of big game. National park rangers said they had already shot 10 elephants in the past week. The meat was barbecued at festivities to mark 25 years of independence. Four of the animals were reportedly shot in view of tourists near Lake Kariba, the largest man-made lake in Africa and a major wildlife haven.
Five years after ordering white-owned farms to be confiscated, the Mugabe regime has turned a country once known as the breadbasket of Africa into a famished land. An estimated 4 million rural poor suffer from food shortages.
The wildlife directive is a major blow to efforts by conservationists to rehabilitate a wildlife sector devastated by Mr Mugabe's confiscation policy. The chaotic farm invasions saw party militants storming into conservation areas - private and state-owned - to slaughter animals. Unscrupulous South African hunters also joined in the looting, paying hefty kickbacks to politicians to go into conservation areas and shoot lions, leopards and cheetahs for trophies.
There had been high hopes among conservationists that Zimbabwe's wildlife sector could be restored to its former glory. Certain species of wildlife in southern Zimbabwe are still abundant, and a trans-frontier park, allowing animals from Mozambique and the Kruger Park in South Africa to move freely in and out of Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou National Park (home of the slaughtered elephants), had been set up.
Those conservationists have criticised the new measures and have been scathing about the killings of the elephants for the independence celebrations. A giraffe was also killed to feed peasants in the Binga area during the festivities, but the meat disappeared. It is believed that police and army officials appropriated the meat for themselves and it never reached the intended beneficiaries.
Farmers have relied on their own livestock in the past three years of famine, induced by the land seizures. Their plight has worsened since the government stopped international donors from distributing food aid in a move by Mr Mugabe to take charge of the process himself and punish those who did not support him.
Parks officials say many of the peasants living close to the reserves have already been venturing inside to hunt and kill animals with snares. But they said the impact of snare hunting by the villagers was limited compared to what would happen if armed national park rangers were allowed to enter conservation areas to secure meat to feed millions of hungry farmers.
"Killing of animals for any reasons other than conservation can be very disastrous," said a parks official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The politicians think we have enough animals to feed people without wiping out different species. We as professionals don't think so. We are talking to them [the politicians] and we hope we will reach consensus on protecting our wildlife heritage."
Other government officials said that Mr Mugabe was so happy about his rural constituency - which ensured he achieved a majority of seats in last month's parliamentary elections - that he wanted to do everything to please the voters. His party lost nearly all seats in urban areas, traditional strongholds of the opposition, and won in rural areas where it had created more constituencies. Mr Mugabe has also created a new ministry to look after the rural electorate.
Food ran out in Zimbabwe soon after the election and the country has experienced acute power and fuel shortages over the past two weeks. Basic commodities have disappeared from shops. Mr Mugabe has said he will jail manufacturers whom he accuses of creating shortages to encourage people to revolt.
Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=633666
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New Coral Reefs.
Sydney - Australian scientists on Friday said they had discovered new coral reefs stretching 100km in the remote Gulf of Carpentaria off the country's rugged north coast.
Geoscience Australia said the reefs, estimated to be at least 100 000 years old, were a major discovery. They were found by a survey team that went to the Gulf of Carpentaria to follow up on initial exploration work carried out two years ago, when three "patch" reefs, one 10km across, were found.
"The exciting part of all this is that it really highlights how little we know about the continental shelf around Australia," voyage leader Peter Harris said. "The water is turbid and deep, in a lot of places we can't see the sea floor; there's undoubtedly more large areas of these kind of reefs in the waters of tropical Australia that we haven't found yet."
Harris said the reefs were previously unknown because they were about 20m under water, making them invisible on satellite photographs. He said the reef's existence was confirmed by state-of-the-art sonar mapping carried out by Geoscience Australia's ocean research vessel "Southern Surveyor".
"This discovery makes the Gulf of Carpentaria an important modern coral reef region of Australia, encompassing as many as 50 small coral patch reefs, one to 10km in diameter, plus an elongated platform coral reef that is around 100km in length extending westwards from Mornington Island," Harris said.
"The thickness and wide distribution of the reefs point to a long history of reef growth extending possibly over the past 100 000 years or more," he added. Australia is already home to the world's largest coral reef, the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches over more than 345 000km˛ off Queensland's coast and is home to 1 500 fish species.
It is considered the world's largest living organism and has been listed by the United Nations as a world heritage site. However, coral reefs worldwide have been under threat in recent years from coral bleaching, believed to be caused by rising sea temperatures that result from global warming.
Harris said the newly-discovered reefs could be included in a maritime national park being planned for the area. "We need to know where these reefs are so we can look after them and make sure they're properly managed," he said.
"Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth and they need to be protected."
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2.Ornithologists Visit Northern Angola
The first ornithologists to visit northern Angola since the end of the country's civil war have "rediscovered" three species of bird not seen for decades, says a conservation group.
The six-day expedition at the end of January yielded sightings of the orange-breasted bush-shrike and the white-headed robin-chat, two small birds not seen by scientists since 1957. The group, comprised mostly of South African scientists, also spotted a single pair of black-tailed cisticolas. These are found only in Angola and the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, and had not been seen in the wild since 1972.
"These exciting rediscoveries are welcome news, but illustrate how poorly known the birds of Angola are," said Dr Stuart Butchart of BirdLife International, a British conservation group. "Further surveys are urgently needed in order to establish a more accurate picture of the species' true status and conservation needs," he said.
Angola's civil war ended in 2002 after almost three decades of fighting which left much of the country in tatters.
The enforced absence of development left large parts of the country inaccessible and acted as a shield for many animal species. – Reuters
This article was originally published on page 4 of The Star on April 21, 2005
Against Poverty
Wangari Maathai
Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of environmental degradation. You can't say you'll deal with just one. It’s a trap. When you're in poverty, you're trapped because the poorer you become, the more you degrade the environment, and the more you degrade the environment, the poorer you become. So it's a matter of breaking the cycle.
We cannot solve all the problems that we face: we don't have water, we don't have energy, we don't have food, we don't have incomes, we're not able to send our children to school. But we can do something – something that is cheap, that is within our power, our capacity, our resources. And planting a tree was the best idea I had. For me, it became a wonderful way of breaking the cycle.
For Earth Day, thoughts from an African woman on overcoming environmental degradation - and poverty.
Source: From an interview with Amitabh Pal, The Progressive Magazine
Friends of the Earth Award 2005
This media release by UNEP on the14/04/2005. EWT is in the process of establishing a Strategic Partnership Initiative (SPI). This initiative, once off the ground, is geared towards a partnership between the EWT and private sector, dramatically enhancing the quality of triple bottom line reporting (financial, social and environmental) by large companies and taking South Africa towards obtaining the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
UNEP Names Seven "Champions of the Earth"
New environmental award recognizes outstanding and innovative leaders
Nairobi, 12 April 2005 - The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has named seven leaders in the field of the environment as Champions of the Earth for "setting an example for the world to follow."
The awards - for outstanding environmental achievers and leaders from each region of the world - will be presented on Tuesday 19 April at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to:
The King and people of Bhutan;
Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates (posthumously);
President Thabo Mbeki and the people of South Africa;
His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew;
Julia Carabias Lillo, former environment minister of Mexico;
Sheila Watt-Cloutier of Canada, President of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference; and
Zhou Qiang and the All-China Youth Federation.
UNEP's Executive Director, Mr. Klaus Toepfer, said: "In this inaugural year of the award, UNEP is honoured to recognize the achievements of seven individuals who have, to a large extent, set the environmental agenda and laid the foundations for the many areas of progress we are able to see and celebrate today".
President Thabo Mbeki and the people of South Africa have been given the Africa award for the country's "commitment to cultural and environmental diversity" and its efforts towards achieving the goals encapsulated in the 2000 Millennium Declaration and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) Plan of Implementation. Particularly noteworthy are its achievements in meeting the Johannesburg targets on providing clean water and sanitation, and its world leadership in conservation practices, including "spearheading of the groundbreaking sponsorship of the Peace Parks concept to support cross-border conservation of critically important wild habitats." With the declaration of four new Marine Protected Areas in 2004, South Africa has brought almost 19 per cent of its coastline under protection, nearly achieving the 20 per cent target set at WSSD.
As President of South Africa, Mr. Mbeki is well known as one of the architects of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which has a strong environmental component.
Source, Francois Rogers, Strategic Partnership Coordinator, Endangered Wildlife Trust.
IRF Congress request
A suggestion was made at our last planning meeting that an excellent draw for sponsors of the next Congress would be some background information on what the last four events had actually achieved.
Something a bit more down to earth and personal than the stuff in the declarations and reports.
So we would like examples of individual attendees who have a positive outcome from a previous congress. A technique they learned and implemented, cross border cooperation that was inspired, new assocoiations or services set up. We need these to be tangible and 'sellable' so pictures would be good. It also has to be short and to the point, we hope to produce a two sided glossy to go round companies, government agencies etc and would like it to have several examples from more than one continent.
You have been chosen because you have contacts in various continents that might be suitable, could you think about who might fit the bill and ask them to fill in the pro forma below and append any pictures. Or if you can fill it in on their behalf if they're English isn't up to it.
Thius is a bit urgent, we need it by the end of April.
Thaks for your help.
Tony Wilson
!URGENT! WE NEED THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
5th IRF Congress - 14th - 21st June 2006 Stirling, Scotland
We are collecting some comments, to go into some promotional material, from Rangers who have attended previous IRF Congresses.
We are particularly interested in stories from Rangers who have benefited directly from relationships or partnerships forged at IRF Congress. They might have provided training, equipment, job exchanges, a funding partnership, lead to improved relationships between Rangers and employers or funding bodies, or any number of things that have had a positive impact on your life as a Ranger.
Please fill in the blanks below. High resolution digital photos would be a bonus!
Very many thanks from Tony & Alison and the rest of the organising team in Scotland.
Please fill in the blanks below. High resolution digital photos would be a bonus!
Very many thanks from Tony & Alison and the rest of the organising team in Scotland.
.................................................... (Name of Ranger)
attended the ................... (1st - 4th) IRF Congress
at .................................................................. in the year .....................
During the event I met ....................................................................
from .......................................................................................
The result was that we:
................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................
PLEASE EMAIL THIS BACK TO TONY AS SOON AS YOU CAN.
THANK YOU
SEE YOU IN SCOTLAND NEXT YEAR!
Eastern Africa Freshwater Biodiversity Assessment
NOW AVAILABLE
IUCN’S Species Programme is pleased to announce the publication of the first in a pioneer series of Freshwater Biodiversity Assessments.
Details and an electronic version are available on www.iucn.org/themes/ssc
The Eastern Africa Freshwater Biodiversity Assessment, produced by the Freshwater Biodiversity Programme, is the result of three years research and is the first of an Africa-wide study on freshwater biodiversity. These assessments are being produced in response to the lack of coherent conservation information on freshwater biodiversity in the region. The absence of readily available information has meant that conservation issues have often been overlooked in previous water development projects, causing damage to fragile ecosystems and the livelihoods dependent on them.
These assessments will increase the capacity for effective management by helping to minimize the impacts on biodiversity of water development projects and promote the provision of appropriate mitigation measures.
Bryan Hugill, Species Programme and SSC Species Survival Commission
IUCN - The World Conservation Union, Rue Mauverney 28 , Gland 1196 – SWITZERLAND
Tel: +41 (0)22 999 0156, Email: bryan.hugill@iucn.org , Website: http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/.
Anyone Interested
"John Silver, the producer behind ground-breaking programmes about real people pursuing extraordinary dreams (Grand Designs, Jamie's Kitchen) is looking for people to feature in an inspirational series following those who are attempting to turn their dream projects into reality.
Be it restoring a steam train, renovating a folly, creating their ideal garden or even making a rocket, the amateur craftsmen must be fanatics who pour all their time, emotion and money into their labour of love.
Perhaps you are a 'mad inventor' who spends hours in the garage designing the latest gadget or are painstakingly restoring a Victorian barge? If a passion is truly taking over your life, the programme makers would like to hear from you.
Please contact Natalie and Sam at peoplespassions@yahoo.co.uk
POSITION(s) AVAILABLE
Vacancies for Part Time staff AT LAPALALA WILDERNESS SCHOOL, LIMPOPO.
The Lapalala Wilderness School, which was founded by Clive Walker in 1985, and which has gained international recognition for the outstanding contribution it has made to enriching the lives of thousands of children through a greater knowledge and understanding of nature, wildlife and cultural heritage, is reopening in April 2005 with new staff and new facilities. Learners visiting the 36,000 ha malaria-free Lapalala Wilderness Reserve in the Waterberg Mountains in Limpopo Province will once again have an unrivalled opportunity to experience and enjoy spectacular scenery, towering krantzes and 90 km of rivers with crystal-clear water winding through the natural wilderness. There is a rich diversity of fauna and flora, with over 280 species of birds and a well-established population of both black and white rhino. From every point of view, it is an ideal outdoor classroom, situated in one of South Africa’s genuinely untransformed and unspoilt wilderness areas. The educational experience can be enhanced at the nearby Waterberg Environmental Centre with its cultural, natural history and rhino museum.
Vacancies exist for part-time trails guides and teachers to work at Lapalala for periods of five to eight days throughout the year. Candidates must have a genuine commitment to working with children of all age groups, particularly from previously disadvantaged communities, and should ideally have experience of leading and teaching adult groups.
Trail Guides: Preference will be given to candidates who are registered as nature guides with DEAT and have at least three years experience of leading small groups in the field. The candidates must be prepared to sleep out in the wilderness area.
Teachers based at the Wilderness School: The successful candidates should either be registered as a nature guide with DEAT with good verbal and written communication skills, or be a qualified teacher with at least two years experience in running environmental education programmes in the field.
Candidates are requested to submit, at any time during the year, a comprehensive CV with the names and addresses of three referees by post, fax or e-mail to Dr John Hanks, International Conservation Services, P.O. Box 254, Greyton 7233.
Phone & Fax: 028.254-9792; hanksppt@iafrica.com
Tailpiece-
A blonde lady motorist was two hours from San Diego when she was flagged down by a man whose truck had broken down. The man walked up to her car and asked, "Are you going to San Diego?" "Sure," answered the blonde, "do you need a lift?" "No thanks...not for me. I'll be spending the next three hours trying to fix my truck. But I’ve got a bit of a problem... I have two chimpanzees in the back which need to be delivered to the San Diego Zoo. They're a bit stressed already so I don't want to keep them on the road all day. Could you possibly take them to the zoo for me? I'll give you fifty dollars for your trouble."
"I'd be happy to," said the blonde. So the two chimpanzees were ushered into the back seat of the blonde's car and carefully strapped into their seat belts. Off they went. Five hours later, the truck driver was driving through the heart of San Diego when suddenly he was horrified!!
There was the blonde walking down the street and holding hands with the two chimps and much to the amusement of the crowd. With a screech of brakes he pulled off the road and ran over to the blonde.
"What the heck are you doing here?" he demanded, "I gave you fifty dollars to take these chimpanzees to the zoo."
"Yes, I know you did," said the blonde, but we had money left over---so we went to the movies!!
Matter of Fact
This is an electronic newsletter of the Game Rangers' Association of Africa. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Association, nor of the Editor. This is intended to be an exchange of news snips, ideas and communication between members. Newsletter content may be copied and re-distributed without authorisation. Correspondence should be addressed to the Editor at dyunnie@xsinet.co.za
