"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead, American anthropologist, 1901-1978
Chris Packham and a team of wildlife experts spent a year exploring every inch of a series of back gardens in Welwyn Garden City. The gardens are all interlinked, and Packham and the team want to find out how much wildlife lives beyond our back doors, and how good is wildlife for the British garden?
Amongst other things, Chris meets a family of foxes and a ball of frisky frogs.
By the end of the year, Chris will find out how well our gardens support wildlife and how many different species call our gardens home.
A team from London’s Natural History Museum are among those who are involved in the programme.
The World Land Trust is a conservation charity that works with local conservation partners all over the world. It is an amazing charity and one of my favourites.
One of things it has is an Action Fund. This is something people who care about conservation can donate to, and what it enables the Trust to do is to put the donations into action fast if a piece of vital wildlife habitat is in danger of being lost. The Trust can work with partners on the ground and ensure that the habitat is purchased and saved for wildlife and for local people living in the area.
The Action Fund was put into action recently; and as a result, there’s a natural safe habitat for the incredible 1,000 mature black-and-chestnut eagle. There are fewer than 1,000 of these left in the world, so very few indeed.
But they now have a natural safe haven in Ecuador!
Scientists have already recorded 344 plant species, 152 bird species, 57 amphibian, 47 mammals and 11 reptiles in the area so it is full of wildlife.
It expands a key corridor- the Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor – and it sits between two national parks in Ecuador. Last year the corridor became Ecuador’s first corridor – is covers 1.4 million acres of diverse, fragile ecosystems, and includes a bit of another reserve – the Podocarpus – El Condor Biosphere Reserve. WLT works here with NCE. Animals such as the jaguar and bear will be able to roam safely.
The connections go further, because north of the corridor is 200 mile long spine of reserves and national parks along the eastern Andes, connected by reserves backed by the World Land Trust in the llanganates-Sangay Biological Corridor with Fundacion Ecominga.
The networked protected areas cover about 4 million acres!
How was this money raised to buy this 34,000 acres? In part, by World Land Trust supporters who donated to the Action Fund. It really does make a difference.
Beavers can be quite controversial animals in the natural world; personally I admire them for their incredible engineering skills.
About 400 years ago, beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK but they are being re-introduced (with caution) in the hope that they will help restore our wetlands to their natural state and also reduce the impact of flooding.
Forestry England has produced this video showing why beavers build dams. Their teeth are really quite something (the beavers, not Forestry England.)
Now, a number of the UK's Wildlife Trusts have beaver appeals and they are Dorset, Derbyshire, Devon, Cheshire, Cornwall and Kent.
The Wildlife Trust's website describe beavers as the engineers of the animal world and looking at the video above, it's easy to see why.
To support the Wildlife Trust's conservation efforts, you could Adopt a Beaver either for yourself or as a gift for a nature lover!
Of course you should also take a look at the Beaver Trust. I hope they won't mind me quoting their very exciting mission which is:
"to recover Britain’s waterways and landscapes through the rapid and widespread re-establishment of beaver wetlands across whole river catchments."
Their belief is that beavers are a practical, low-cost solution for long-term restoration. They can help revesse the trend of extinction of British wildlife. You can see from their map where beavers are in the UK.
Furthermore, the Beaver Trust reports that in the US West, land managers and scientists hare using beaver dam analogs to do three things:
What’s more, the French government may back this plan and make it a reality.
French President Macron had called the project “reckless” and “incoherent” – but SumofUs say he is about to grant a €700 million loan guarantee to Total!
A global outcry would embarrass Macron – we need to raise a global public outcry and stop him becoming a Total Arctic Destroyer.
Tell Macron to withdraw from Total's deadly Arctic project and stick to his international climate commitments!
The Arctic is home to Indigenous communities like the Gwich'in, the Inuit, and the Sámi – and endangered species such as polar bears.
SumofUs say “Total's plan will assault the Arctic landscape and life with methane explosions, pollution and more deadly heat waves.”
We need to stop the French government financing this project and make other world leaders sit up and take notice.
Polar bears are just some of the species counting on us to do the right thing.
1. The Forest Elephant – the number in the wild has fallen by over 86% in three decades – they are now critically endangered, a step away from extinction
Getting involved
ZSL is working to help forest elephants in Cameroon, specifically in the forest landscape of the Dja Biosphere Reserve.
The Aspinall Foundation funds and coordinates PALF, an anti-wildlife crime project in Congo and it works with the ANPN in Gabon (Gabon’s National Park Authorities) to protect forest elephants.
