Do you love bats and want to know how to help them?

Have you found a bat in your home?

One of the problems facing bats is that many people who find them in their homes try to kill them with poison.   This is wrong – there are alternatives to dealing with bats.

Batpoison.com was set up because research showed that 400 to a thousand people in the US search for the term “bat poison” every month;   even more looked for “how to kill bats”. 

Batpoison.com is designed to help people discover why bat poison is bad, and to give you alternatives to removing bats from homes.   It’s also got information on how bats benefit us.

Visit Batpoison.com to find out more.

Birdlife International report that there’s a new forest conservation initiative to save one of West Africa’s few remaining tropical forests.

The area covers over 350,000 hectares and it’s called the Gola Forest.   It goes across the Liberia and Sierra Leone borders, and it’s the largest remaining block of Upper Guinean Forest.

The area is an important for one for biodiversity – it boasts:

• 49 mammal species
• 327 bird species
• 43 amphibians species
• over 200 species of tree
• over 60 species there threatened call this home including - it’s got the world’s second biggest population of Western chimpanzees.
• it’s an overall carbon sink and helps to reduce the impacts of climate change.
  
  

But the area has suffered deforestation and degradation

Logging, agriculture, mining and conflict have caused the loss of vital biodiversity.   It’s reduced the ability of the area to cope with climate change – and impacted on local people who depend on the forests for their livelihood.

There’s protection now in place

The governments of Liberia and Sierra Leone have signed agreements in 2011 and 2020 to manage the forest and protect the biodiversity there. 

And back in August 2020, the EC funded Programme to Support the Conservation of Forest Ecosystems in West Africa was implemented to conserve the Gola Forest. 

The programme has been implemented by:

• BirdLife Partners the Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia (SCNL) and the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone,
• The Gola Rainforest Conservation Limited by Guarantee
• Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB - BirdLife in the UK), and 
• BirdLife International.

The impact on locals

The project should help to manage conflict between communities sharing the same forest resources.  It will support the management of five protected areas.   Local people will be trained and empowered to undertake the management of the forest – the programme will be training community eco-guards so that there are joint patrols by the two countries.   A bio-monitoring programme will also be put in place.

As eco-guards, local communities will be involved in protecting the forests which will in turn give them an income.  Many were hunters, miners, loggers and farmers before.

Two community based ecotourism ventures will be supported by the project, and a sustainable logging model in Liberia will be piloted.  Over 50,000 people in 160 communities will benefit from the programme.

Visit Birdlife International for more information

The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital is going to partner with several leading research institutions to breed koalas and protect the future of the species!   And the koalas will be released into the wild!

The goal is to have up to 60 breeding koalas on site. 

In the first instance, these will be sourced from the mid north coast, with a view to releasing selected offspring to certain areas within a couple of areas.  Selected koalas from other New South Wales locations will be bred in separate areas for eventual release back to their places of origin.

The hospital is partnering with the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, the Australian Museum and the University of Sydney.

Each partner brings its own specialist knowledge and expertise:

The Australian Museum specialises in population genetics, and by applying DNA-based tools, it will be possible to gain a better understanding of the unique history and habitat requirements of specific threatened populations, and that will enable the partners involved in the project to develop more targeted management strategies.

The University of Sydney has expertise in genetics and understanding how to improve breeding and translocation decisions for koalas. 

The incredible part of all this is that the breeding facility is going to be funded by the donations made from the public to the Go Fund Me fundraiser during the terrible bushfires of 2019/2020. 

It’s a very exciting development for koalas and will help the hospital stop the decline of koala populations and establish new koala groups in New South Wales.

The Go Fund Me fundraiser is still going, and you can donate here.

Sign Care2’s petition demanding that they abandon the proposed facility in Australia, and ban the use of exotic skins from its products completely!

Where does the material for handbags and shoes come from?

Well, Hermès, the French fashion brand, want to build a new facility in Australia.  Here 50,000 crocodiles will be born into captivity.  They will be skinned and turned into handbags and shoes.

Incredibly, the project has been granted development and environmental approvals.

How is it that someone can say it’s okay to breed crocodiles into captivity to be skinned for handbags and shoes?

The fashion brand plan to steal eggs from mother crocodiles in the wild.  This will cause fear, stress and aggression.

When the eggs hatch in the factory farm walls, the baby crocs will kept in tight concrete enclosures.  Their movement will be restricted and they will have no stimulation. 

And when they have grown big enough, their skin will be ready to be harvested.

PETA have reported that on other crocodile farms, crocodiles are electrocuted. Their bodies shake and protest wildly.

Some may even still be alive as their necks are slit.  Metal rods are rammed down their spine in an attempt to kill them.  Some have been seen to be alive as the skinning starts.

Hermès says it "has defined and implemented a very strict, science-based, animal welfare policy."

Hmm...really?

Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and Mulberry have banned exotic animal skins in their products.  They use vegan alternatives which look the same.

Tell Hermès that’s not too late to join the right side of history. Sign the petition demanding that they abandon the proposed facility in Australia, and ban the use of exotic skins from its products completely!

Please sign the petition here

Good news for Gorillas

Tea plantation operators will not be allowed in the Kafuga Forest, Uganda.

A court has put the forest under the stewardship of the local district, and they’ve also said the forest must be made into a protected area within a year!

This area is on the borders of gorilla habitat and the forest keeps threats at a distance from the Bwindi National Park.   The park is home to about a third of the last mountain gorillas on earth – less than 1,100. 

 
The Kafuga Forest is safe
image ©CC BY-SA 2.0

And Kafuga Forest is home to hundreds of species of birds, rodents and chimpanzees.

The struggle has been going on for years, with 12 people being arrested for cutting down trees there in 2016.  

The High Court wanted evidence from the envrionmentalists that the suspects had done this inside of the Kafuga Forest – and the area had been mapped, with the financial support of Rainforest Rescue.  This mapping was crucial because it showed the court that the defendants’ claim that they were felling trees on their property wasn’t right.

A quarter of a million people signed a petition with Rainforest Rescue about it and many people donated towards it as well.

Rainforest Rescue report that the next step is to make the forest a protected area in the next year!

Visit Rainforest Rescue's website here.