To Beaver or not to Beaver?

A new concept that I learnt today was that of key species, the example being that of a European beaver which have been completely driven from the UK by land owners as they “damage” trees.

However, it is this damage of trees that leads to them to build a habitat on which other species depend. The building of dams, creates areas of still water within an other wise turbid lotic system and as such, new species find a niche, moor hens paddle about on the surface feeding
on weed which may grow from the bed, other mammals may ustilise the lodge that the beaver lives in, the felled trees create ponding and encourage still more bio diversity, I feel whilst typing this that these key stone species are very important but there is a reason why they have been so unpopular, after all if you were a forester and 10% of you trees were stripped of their bark and died then what would you do (I would have less sympathy if the woods were grown on a commercial scale) Also in our current predicament with the climate would it not be better to preserve the trees, do they store more carbon than the ecosystem created by the beaver?

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Destruction of the mangrove in the Bombay Estuary

The destruction of the mangrove in the Bombay estuary, of which 90% has been lost since it has become the chosen settling ground of some of the 300 families a day that migrate in to Mumbai from rural areas every week. It is the worlds most densely populated city, I can vouch for that as I went there in 2006, the poverty gap is huge, the 4 star newly built hotel we were staying in fronted directly on to shanty towns, and when stacking up your plate at the buffet you could see people walking down the street with no shoes and torn clothes the whole thing is very uncomfortable.

The blame is placed with these vagrant community for the destruction of the the mangrove, but there is a sinister governmental under tone, these settlements built out of very basic single story huts are often cleared as "illegal settlements" the clear spaces are then sold for development, for BIG money the blame for the clearance falls on the poor but is the rich which force them off to clear a fresh patch of mangrove. Very unjust.

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Stopping Amazon Smash and Grab . . . not so Simple.

Stopping Amazon Smash and Grab . . . not so Simple.

I have been watching Amazon with Bruce Parry, a series on the BBC has shown a very good representation of the people living along the Amazon. In the lower reaches of the river, the logging industry, gold mining (a Brazilian can earn £70 a week mining gold) and cattle ranchers have a massive destructive effect of the rain forest, all involve clear felling vast areas, and exposing the poor soils to leaching from the heavy rain. I wonder as to what effort we can make to stop this process that ties up so many people in employment. These people rely on stripping these natural resources for there lively hood, and it will take some strong economic factors to alter this pattern. Even if logging were to become.

illegal it is hard to imagine a complete stop to felling as it is impossible to police such a large area, in one episode it was shown how three officers had to patrol an area the size of Wales. Impossible. How can we change this entrenched system on to the path of right? Is tourism the answer? Can anything be done under international law, or perhaps international trade? If we prevented the import of Brazilian meat in to this country would that halt the spread of the ranches, or would it push more people in to logging? The minimum wage in Brazil is 200RS a month (£60) a gold miner can earn over 4 times this amount? Change has to occur and occur quickly but how?

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What is Life?

What is Life? Well after much conflabing no satisfactory conclusion can be reached,
you might sum up by saying that life was the transfer of “data” from one living thing to
the next through RNA and DNA, although this will not be agreed on by all I am sure.

However, there is something more to life especially in mammals, all the information that is learnt after birth and passed on like the otter breaking a shellfish on a stone anvil, or a cat showing kitten how to catch a mouse. Also there is the spark when back in the primordial goop, something, some amino acids and some oxides of sulphur sprung in to life, that was life but it was not passed on it was created.

Some sexual organisms evolve, other asexual organisms pass on there genetic matter as a unchanging process, life is (as another lecturer once told me ) a thermo dynamic dis-equilibrium, it a bit catch all but I think that life in all its complexity needs that kind of catch all equation.

I once again found my self considering the precarious balance that we (humans) hold in the cosmos, the earths positioning in relation to the sun, the “skin on the apple” atmosphere for which humans on the whole have such a callous disregard.

Surely the knowledge has been in the domain long enough from the wheels of change (with regards to the protect of the atmosphere) to start turning there are signs of a start, Kyoto etc. but it needs more, what could be more precious than the air that we breath.

Population

Here is a simple concept;

A species reproduces via a breeding pair.

The breeding pair has two kids, population remians stable (ish).

The breeding pair has four kids, population double in one generation (ish).

So bearing that in mind. . . . .

Why is everyone adverse to talk of a "keep at two" policy, and at the same time moaning about new housing development spoiling their view.


More kids = more people = more houses.

If you like to see this issue discussed in UK parliment please sign the official UK Government petition on population:



More Info on Over population.

Population Matters UK

Eco Labelling