The Sichaun province government has secured %1.58 billion in funding during the next 5 years for a planned Giant Panda National Park.

The park will be three times the size of the US Yellowstone National Park, so it will be enormous – 10,476 square miles in all.

The park will protect wild pandas living across the Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.  The environment ministry said it had agreed to plans by 15 provinces and regions to draw up red lines to keep large areas of land off limits to economic development.   These large areas include wetlands, forests, national parks and protected nature zones. 

Over 80% of wild pandas live in Sichuan, and the rest in Shaanxi and Gansu.  The park plans will link up the pandas who are isolated in these areas and encourage them to breed.  Pandas are terribly slow at reproducing and there are several breeding centres in China to help with panda conservation.

Although the number of wild pandas have increased in recent years, the continued increase in numbers depends on having the right habitat available to pandas to breed so the announcement of the Giant Panda National Park is a step in the right direction to ensuring they have the right environment in which to thrive. 

Pandas International is a US based charity working to help with panda conservation.  Visit Pandas International here. 

There’s some amazing news from Scotland.

The charity Trees for Life have just totted up the number of trees they planted in 2017 and it comes to a record breaking:

156,869 trees!

Of these, 133,000 were planted at the Allt Ruadh exclosure at the Dundreggan Conservation Estate, thus helping to restore the Caledonian Forest in the stunning Highlands.

Volunteers spent over 5,000 planting trees, and members, donors and supporters similarly played a vital role in ensuring the trees could be planted.

What’s more, Trees for Life have been invited to join the growing European Rewildling Network which puts the restoration of the Caledonian Forest in the Highalnds firmly on the European map.

The network shows how re-wilding can benefit from economic development, including nature based tourism such as wildlife watching, nature-based tourism and volunteer opportunities.

Trees for Life has a number of Conservation Weeks and Conservation Days throughout the year, bringing visitors to Scotland.  

The Caledonian Forest is Scotland’s equivalent of the Amazonian rainforest.  Today, just 1% of the original area is left, but Trees for Life has already restored large areas in Glen Affric and at the Dundreggan Conservatoin Estate by planting over 1.3 million trees and encouraging natural restoration. 

The charity’s Caledonian Pinewood Recovery Project will help to restore 50 acres of remnant pinewoods – mostly ancient 200 year old “Granny” Scots pines which are dying.  There are no young trees to succeed them, so the fragments are in danger of vanishing without action.

You can find out more about Trees for Life here  and how to help here.

If you're looking for a way to help plant trees yourself, here's a very easy way to do it!   Choose the search engine Ecosia to search online for the things you want! 

This short You Tube video tells you  how Ecosia started.   It explains why they are planting teres, and how they decide where to plant trees. 

Their goal is to plant 1 BILLION trees and you can help every time you search online.  So far, nearly 23 million trees have been planted already!   

You can use Ecosia on a whole range of devices, such as computers, mobiles and tablets and help them plant more. 

You only need to make a small change to have a big impact - the information about Ecosia is followed by an interview with conservationist Jane Goodall.  

Research undertaken by the University of Exeter shows that drones are rapidly becoming a key resource for scientists. 

In a paper published in the Endangered Species Review, scientists noted a number of benefits drones have to turtle conservation.

Drones enable scientists to track turtles over big areas and in places which are hard to reach.  And they can gather information in much greater detail.  They are cheaper than alternative ways to gather data, such as satellite systems. 

The information they collect enable scientists to discover more about turtle behaviour and their movements in the water.   Drones also give an extra weapon with which to fight poaching.

What’s more, stunning footage collected by the drones really increases public interest and involvement.

What scientists don’t know at the moment is if the turtles can pick up drones in flight, and what impact it has on them, so the University says more research is needed to investigate these points.

Visit the University of Exeter's Biosciences website

Responsible Travel lists a number of turtle conservation holidays 

International bird conservation charity BirdLife International report that a group in Nigeiria is empowering women and the community to protect the very productive but rapidly disappearing mangrove forests there.

Groups of women are helping commuinties to restore and manage mangrove forests in 5 villages in South East Nigeria.   It’s a important breeding site.  Crocodiles, tortoises, turtles, fish, shrimps, crab, snails, clam and oysters call this area home.  Local people depend on the forest to support their livelihoods. 

For the forests have been overharvested.  Trees have been used for firewood in homes and to build canoes.  Patches of forest have been cleared for housing.   This means that ecosystems and economic benefits have put the mangroves at risk. 

But the good news is that 7 women on the frontline are working with communities.

Workshops reaching 330 women are raising awareness about the importance of mangrove restoration and tree planting.

Just 9 months after the project was started, over 400 trees have been planted in key areas.  Another 600 have been ear-marked for distribution to women in the communities to promote agro-forestry practice.

And 2 nursery sites have been established in 2 communities to grow the Rhizophora species of mangrove tree, and over 400 seedlings grown!