Beware Red Roses

Well its Valentine's Day and the florists are awash with red roses. They may look beautiful but they are contributing greatly to habitat damage in countries such as Kenya where vast flower plantations raise the flowers for the western markets.

In Kenya, flowers are the third largest export and the industry employs thousands of people.  Many of these flower plantations are located around the beautiful Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley. The lake is an important wetland area rich in wildlife, but as flower production grows, so does the demand for water and this vitally important wetland is under threat.  The warning regarding the risk to the wetlands comes from ecologist  Dr David Harper at the University of Leicester who has spent 30 years researching these wetlands.

Many supermarkets sell these flowers with a fair trade label, which may mean that the workers get paid fair pay and treatment, but does not mean that the production of the flowers is environmentally friendly.

 

 Then these flowers are then shipped halfway across the world by air, so have a pretty hefty carbon tag too.

When you buy that bouquet of flowers check the label. Many come through Amsterdam, so a label saying the flowers are from Holland can mean they come from somewhere like Kenya. Far better is to go for something produced locally, or better still avoid buying the flowers altogether and donate the money to charity.

Photos Red roses by Peter Landon, Flower plantation and Lake Naivasha by Chinch Gryniewicz

Global Food Crisis Looming

Is another global food crisis around the corner? The UN’s food and agriculture organization, FAO, has been warning that global food prices continue to rise and are a cause for concern. FAO’s cereal price index is now at its highest level since July 2008, but still 11% below the peak in April that year.

The world’s poor live mainly on cereals and rising prices have a direct effect on their livelihood.

Extreme weather has been responsible for shortfalls among many of the world’s major cereal producers: drought in Russia and Argentina, a heat wave and heavy rains in the U.S. and widespread flooding in Australia and Canada. And now China, the world’s largest wheat producer, is bracing itself for the worst drought in 200 years, at least in the province of Shandong.

Canada is the world’s third largest wheat exporter, after the U.S. and France, according to the International Grains Council. But production in 2010 was down 14% and extreme weather is by no means the only cause for the decline. A report just released by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute concludes that Canada is in need of a significant overhaul of its agricultural policy in order to compete in global markets and help feed the world.

But it’s not just wheat production that’s the problem. The increasing demand on corn or maize (see photo) and soybeans for livestock feed and bio-fuels only adds to the pressure when grain is short for human consumption.

While the world has been warned that a major food crisis could develop this year, the good news is that global cereal stocks are higher than they were in 2007-08. But in a world struggling to recover from economic recession, the haves will be less able to share with the have-nots without running their deficits higher.

Penguins and Commercial Krill Fishing

These Chinstrap Penguins on Half Moon Island in the South Shetlands have stained the ground pink with their guano as their principal food is krill, a small shrimp. When humans first discovered the Antarctic they pillaged it and drove the whales and the seals to the very edge of extinction. Now with the arrival of commercial krill fishing are we about to see history repeating itself?

Antarctic Damage inevitable?

Adélie penguins on Paulet Island bathe in the summer sun. With the recent grounding of the cruise ship Polar Star in the Weddell Sea you have to ask is the possibility of environmetal damage from one of these ships getting closer?

Toursim in the Antarctic is on the up and fortunately the IAATO does a superb job in making sure that vists are carried out in a resopnsible manner.

TOSSERS AND JERKS

Thanks to the wonder of the internet I know what they call a person who throws litter out of a car window in the UK. They are called “tossers” and I am continually amazed that people still carry on tossing beer bottles and burning cigarette ends out of cars in South Africa too. Apart from the fundamental stupidity of the action accompanied by the litter and broken glass we also have the risk of bush fires. The prolonged drought (while the rest of the country is experiencing floods) is not helping either.

Over the weekend I was reminded of another type of person we have here. I do not know what they are called in the rest of the world so I have decided to label them “jerks.” I wanted to photograph a cute “penguins crossing the road” sign outside a penguin rehabilitation centre called the South African Marine Rehabilitation and Education Centre in Port Elizabeth. Someone had fired a metal dart similar to a hypodermic syringe needle into the sign using a blow pipe.

Apart from being just a stupid thing to do I am sure that someone like that would think nothing of shooting a dart into a random passing bird or person. The bird would eventually die and the person could lose an eye.

But we have people in South Africa that are even more stupid than this! There are road signs warning of animals crossing the roads all over South Africa. Kudu are especially dangerous at night as the car lights blind them and they try to leap over the car. They tend to hit the car at windscreen height and there are several deaths resulting from this every year.

Amazingly we have gun owners who shoot at these signs and try to hit the drawing of the animal. Obviously these are low intellect people who shouldn’t own firearms and to top it off they are lousy shots as they seldom hit the animal. When they miss the sign they could hit an innocent passer by and I presume that any animal they see is fair game. Maybe something as stupid as this is done when one is drunk?

I really do not like people as stupid as this and I do not know what to say about them except perhaps to use stronger words than tossers and jerks.

Why I hate gardening.......

I had a bad night last night. It all started perfectly fine when my left eye started burning a bit. I grumbled a bit and poured a glass of wine. It was not my turn to cook and I was preparing to enjoy the evening and take it very easy. No cricket to watch, just a bit of soccer, and little to distract me. Perfect!

And then my left eye started behaving badly. It started streaming tears and got a little painful. Luckily I have an expired first aid kit which has some eye drops and I dripped some drops and went back to my couch. This was when my eye became more irritating than Manchester United and their supporters. It hurt when open and also hurt when closed and was time for drastic measures like a deep hot bath and aspirin. This did not work either.

One of the things I should never do when in pain is look in a medical reference book or google the complaint. By then my eye was streaming tears to the extent that I thought of drinking water to prevent dehydration. Google did not help as I was not prepared to let someone urinate in my eye (apparently good for Spitting Cobras) and irrigating the eye with water did nothing. The only thing I had done that afternoon was a little gardening and cut down a Euphorbia mauritanica. The flower books don’t say much apart from “succulent shrub, up to 1m. Flowers mustard coloured in terminal clusters. Dry hillsides.”* It did not mention the toxic nature of the white sticky sap but it was something I had been warned about. I must have had a little sap on my hand and wiped my brow. Sweat must have carried the sap to my eye.

I also remembered an old first aid tip from long ago and bathed my eye in milk and the relief was almost instantaneous.*

Avoid gardening and rather do something healthy running a marathon or bungee jumping.





Vanderplank, Helen J. Wildflowers of the Port Elizabeth Area Gamtoos to Swarkops Rivers. Bluecliff Publishing; 1999.
* I have a friend who is a nurse and I trust her more than any doctor - she mailed me and said this was good advice.

Asiatic Lion

This juvenile Asiatic Lion male is walking through the woodlands in the Gir National Park, Gujarat, India. The park is the only area in the world where lions still live in the wild outside of Africa and is a major success with over 700 animals now living in some nineteen prides.

SERENDIPITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

I don’t profess to know much about education let alone environmental education in Africa or the rest of the world. I do know that people have become more distanced from nature and that the knowledge of nature is decreasing.

I suppose the main reason is urbanisation and the lack of formal environmental education in schools. Moving to the city takes kids out of the rural environment away from nature and school learning is often just book learning and no attempt is made to link the learning to the environment. If you are poor and live in a township the chances are that you will never encounter anything wild or natural and you will hardly leave the township.

Serendipity made the last penguin release by the South African Marine Rehabilitation and Education Centre (SAMREC) a much bigger success than usual. A large group of kids had been bussed to the beach and were there at the same time the penguins were released. It was wonderful to watch how the kids followed the penguins as they swam along the beach. The teachers (or organisers) had to answer many questions about penguins, where they came from, why they came and where they were going.

A small victory for environmental education but none the less a sweet one!

New Print Shop

Ecoscene is delighted to announce that their new Print Shop is open for business. Now you can buy prints, mousemats, fridge magnets of your favourite images. More images will be added in the coming months. Happy shopping! www.ecosceneprints.com