A Phuket Non-Hunting Area the entrance

 
Not as it used to be but closer than some!

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The Berlin .. Kongo er .. Oxford .. Conference of 2012

The Ituri forest in the NE Congo basin October 2011 - a red river - in spate, yet the adjacent forest is '+/- untouched'

The African continent contains some 30% of the world’s tropical rainforest, so it is second only to the Amazon. 

"Scientists and conservationists" gathered in England at Oxford University to discuss what changes these African forests are likely to experience in the next hundred years.

Africa’s tropical forests are facing ever increasing threats. Indigenous destruction e.g. that resulting from traditional slash-and-burn deforestation to feed the rapidly expanded families to be seen in nearly all the "host nations" or the commercialisation of bush-meat hunting as disposable incomes increase with "Chinese cash and well-intended international development assistance". And internationally-driven ones, such as commercial logging for export and ravenous mineral extraction (especially open-cast mining - now termed "the mooning of Africa") largely to supply the production economies of the Far East. Add to this the hazards from above; atmospheric ones generated by an increasingly unavoidable climate chaos. Devils unknown, unleashed by industrialised nations, "richer people" and far away.

Climate change will be a formidable challenge for much of the "developed world". For the essentially leaderless societies of much of sub-Saharan Africa it may be overwhelming. 

Consequently there’s supposedly "much interest and concern" about Africa’s forests. After all this is the second largest area of tropical forest in the world, after the Amazon forest, so there should be "some concern" about planning, for its retirement, if not its future. 

"And yet there’s been very little synthesis of the research that’s there." There’s much less known about both climate and forest and people and there interaction in Africa compared to many other regions of the world,” said Yadvinder Malhi, a professor of ecosystems science at Oxford University and director of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests.

Malhi said the January 2012 conference brought together experts in climate change, ecology, social sciences, economics, anthropology and archeology. They assembled to discuss Africa’s rainforest(s). Incidentally one wonders how many africans were there in Oxford last week.

The Congo forests in particular, are increasingly important "at a global level for a host of reasons. They store a huge amount of carbon. By absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the trees of these great forests are significantly reducing the rate of climate change. 

In the terms of the whole of Africa and its highly vulnerable water resources, the ecosystem communities of the Congo forests recycle water and deliver it both across the old continent and elsewhere. So truly they are vital. Water that falls in the Congo region gets taken up by the roots of trees. It is transpired up into the atmosphere, pumping-out the extensive cloudscapes of the ITCZ, moisture which descends to earth as the seasonal rains, maintaining life right across Africa. Even to her farthest corners.

In fact these clouds, especially those made by the forests of the Congo basin have very long range effects determining weather patterns and water supply in parts of Asia and even into North America.

There’s a massive difference between the forests of the Congo and those of Upper Guinea in West Africa. There’s been extensive deforestation in West Africa. Much of the primary forest has been felled and burned for subsistence agriculture during the past 30 years.

In the Congo Basin there's a very different situation. "That’s an area that is at the moment almost all intact forest and has had relatively low rates of deforestation. And the reasons why those rates have been low are varied from country to country. But in the largest area, the Democratic Republic, it’s been political instability and poor infrastructure linked to that instability that has meant that this large forest reserve has not currently really faced very heavy pressure, at least compared to forests of Asia or the Amazon,” Malhi said.

However, he said that could change with new investment and infrastructure and expansion of industrial scale plantations.

About 3,000 years ago, the Congo forests were affected by natural climate drying. Forests retreated and were replaced by grasslands.

“At the same time, around two and a half thousand years ago, Iron Age humans settled in much of the forest, cleared it with axes, with iron axes. And then they had a population collapse around a thousand years ago and the forest regrew. And this is quite a different history from the history we see in the Amazon rainforest". In the Amazon there’s been continuous forest cover during human history and earlier. "And also where there was human impact it was not with iron instruments. There was no Iron Age in the Amazon,” Malhi said.

The combination of natural climate drying and widespread human deforestation left fewer species of trees compared to the tropical forests of South America and South-east Asia. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing (for our future).

“The species that are left seem to be relatively resilient to a large extent. They can recolonize disturbed areas quite quickly. They can spread quite quickly, regrow quite quickly. So if one area gets deforested, you can still find the species elsewhere,” he said.

Similarly these days tropical forest are cleared for "agriculture". Felled by the demands of a globalised agribusiness. Increasingly something the world really needs is being destroyed to provide land where we can produce tropical crops to satisfy the super markets of the "poleward global-consumer", someone who expects to get "fresh fruit and veg" in every season. 

New road gnawing into the {untouched} forests of northern DRC October 2010

The U.N. suggests that by 2050 the world population will have risen to nine billion. Even without our obsessive consumptionism the global demand for food will go astronomic. But Malhi the Oxford professor hopes that there are ways of satisfying that demand which will not require widespread deforestation  (how much more can we take?). As one would expect the chief mechanism for this is to make existing agricultural land "much more productive". Another "Green Revolution" then?

“Much of agriculture in Africa is of very low productivity. Very low inputs of fertilizers and nutrients. You could have the current agricultural output of the Africa tropical forest region in 40 percent of its current agricultural land, leaving 60 percent of the land available for forests if the agriculture was intensified. So, it’s not a simple tradeoff between more food means more land and therefore less forests,” he said.

The information from the conference will be "analysed, recommendations will be made to governments, U.N. agencies and others." 

These are expected to include:

proposals for protecting remaining rainforests (watch this - currently rather empty - space) 

better land management for agriculture

and of course new research ... into the effects of climate change."

The Oxford conference ran from January 4-6 2012

New logging roads and an active camp (quality wood to make stuff for that fancy house and garden) in upper Congo Brazzaville - October 2010

from Wikipedia: "The Berlin Conference (German: Kongokonferenz or "Congo Conference") of 1884–85 regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period, and coincided with Germany's sudden emergence as an imperial power. Called for by Portugal and organized by Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as the formalisation of the Scramble for Africa. The conference ushered in a period of heightened colonial activity by European powers, while simultaneously eliminating most existing forms of African autonomy and self-governance."

European claims in Africa, 1913

  Belgium   Germany   Spain   France
  Great Britain   Italy   Portugal   Independent

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A belated Pallid Harrier New Year to everyone from Ranong in deepest Thailand! 

In all the gloom and for many e.g. "our" raptors yes! the doom!

Seems to me we have (here below) an explanation for the heart warming increase in those exquisitely beautiful Pallid Harriers which we are seeing in savanna Africa. 

Pallid Harriers, like more steppe conditions, rather than open woodland or forests with extensive glades. Now such conditions appear to be spreading rapidly north and west across the Eurasian continent.

During the coming decades 

"as the Northern Hemisphere grows drier and hotter, researchers knew the forests would struggle. The surprise, Andrea Lloyd said, was finding such a sudden shift in the tree line: Across the north country, trees are dying back and being replaced with drought-tolerant grasslands in response to fairly minor changes in moisture." 

Sadly there must be grave doubt whether populations of the equally handsome Montagu's Harrier will be faring half as well - pitted as they are against the sterilisation wrought by the "profits-for-the-1%" whose agri-business eats ever deeper into the remaining healthy heartlands across the eastern half of this species' breeding range.

Anyway, wishing you good birding wherever on our much abused Earth you are just now,

James Birdman .... from a damp 'Rain-ong' in the Kra Isthmus.

From Doug Harebottle here's an extract from his email written on 24th May 2010

"There have been numerous recent postings about (potential) massive declines in raptors across Africa (e.g. Secretarybird, Hooded Vulture). 

But have there been any raptors that seem to show an increase. The SABAP2 team looked at the Pallid Harrier and the result is a news story and range change map on the SABAP2 websitehttp://sabap2.adu.org.za/index.php  which makes for fascinating debate.
Considering the comparison between SABAP1 and SABAP2 data on the map this seems to show an increase in the occurrence of Pallid Harrier in central South Africa.

We'd be interested to hear what other African or Eurasian birders or raptorphiles think, particularly regarding trends in breeding populations!

Project Manager: 

Southern African Bird Atlas Project 2

AFRING Coordinator
Animal Demography Unit
Department of Zoology
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701 South Africa

The scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting drilling ever deeper into the evidence – said, in broad terms, 'Change is worse than we thought.'

"The planet is going through incredible change," said Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota's Institute of the Environment. 




"Through rapid (barely thought through) uses of the environment, we are pushing our planet in extreme ways."

Renowned Kenya birder Brian Finch reported to the "kenyabirdsnet" ( i.e. consider joining kenyabirdsnet@yahoogroups.com ) on October 17, 2011 as follows.

"It rained nearly every day I was away in Uganda throughout September.
Freak storms washed away bridges on the Ishasha Road, Queen Elizabeth National Park, and closed Kaajjaanse Airfield in Kampala just as we were about to land, so we had to
go all the way back to Soroti for the night.

There has been some steady rain on the west side of Nairobi (Langata), but hardly anything obvious to the southeast of the city at Athi River, this has been the situation for the past two weeks, although rain is sporadic. 

Northern half of Nairobi NP green and lush, dams are very healthy, southern portions remain in the grip of drought and look like semi-desert, and the largest dam will not see out (survive) another month.

Floods in the north west in Kitale, where there has been a serious volume of rain during much of this year; good rains in Rift Naivasha and Nakuru; flooding on the coast in Mombasa, Watamu and also Kibwezi, whilst parts of Makueni only sixty kilometres distant have not seen rain for three years! 

A storm over Kibwezi last week was so intense that it prevented small aircraft from going to the coast. 

That is just the jist of this crazy climate."

Good Birding is Good for Business, and it can make you healthy and wise.

Save the Birds Capitalism 

... or kiss your purse goodbye!

" Back in the Saddle - A Birder's Life is to Quest "

Rewarded with Merops at Last!

A fond hello to all you screening birders as we pass the Second Equinox of CE: 2011

I've just got home from three fine days of excellent birding at the best of my local patches.

It was my first 'proper birding' since before the hernia operation in mid-August, after I had been 'exploring' the titanium-bearing sand dunes of Kenya's south coast, back in mid-July.

So, proper birding, at this September Equinox, in our nearest rain-making forest, that of Arusha National Park.
198 species of birds in a lot less than three full days around the base of Mount Meru in Tanzania. Nearly two hundred species then, of which 188 were seen and seen well, as they say in the typical tour bumpf. Incidentally eight of these birds were recorded on Monday morning only, from within my increasingly suburbia-bound garden at 1,400 metres on the south-west flank of the mountain.

The Equinox is passing, and at last "Palearctic birds" are filtering farther south - 'beyond' equatorial Africa.
A pristine-fringes adult male Canadian Northern Wheatear, some of 'ours' allegedly breed in the Mackenzie Delta, was in Arusha National Park on Sunday 25. And at long last yesterday a flock of 22 European Bee-eaters came circling high over this Arusha garden at 1015hrs.

It seems to me that the first south-bound European Bee-eaters are passing Mount Meru nearly two weeks later than in any of the previous four Septembers.

We better watch those skies ....

From the Ark-lives - deep in this Macbook 13 and its Sent Items: 

30 September 2009

Since arriving back in Arusha from Ulaya (that's Europe in Kiswahili) on August 27, 2009 we have seen or heard remarkably few European Bee-eaters. Especially when compared with the moister years of 2006 and 2007; though 2008 was not so good either. Few lovely northern bee-eaters on what used to be a significant bee-eater flyway that passed around the shoulder of Mount Meru out across Arusha and the over the vast Maasai steppe between us and the southern mountains near to Zambia and Mozambique. 

Typically in September they are heard or seen here in Arusha daily, most often in the early evening. I think that in the main they are coming down to roost in well-timbered coffee plantations and relict riparian woodland around the western tatters of the Arusha urban area, that is before the brand new desert fringe.

By way of contrast Madagascar Bee-eaters have been passing through the "Monduli" gap, (also Arusha) in good numbers (also in 2011). This gap is the name I use to describe the rather dry cultivated corridor of 'lowland' between the western slopes of Mount Meru and the mountain block above Monduli.

This lack of European Bee-eaters is 'corroborated' by our African Morning Thrushes who at the appropriate season repeatedly imitate any highly vocal migrants; especially any fluty-sounding migrants; who might be passing overhead at that season. Even nocturnal ones are copied - e.g. Northern Greenshank a species which I still 'need' for the garden!

Thus we have: plenty of Madagscar "dree-dtreeeps" but very few European "pruup-pruups" from the African Morning Thrushes in these dusty September days.

Incidentally there were plenty of Madagascar Bee-eaters 'wired and foraging' over the lush green landscape of TPC Sugar Estate, 40km south of Kilimanjaro, during the Eidd holiday.

Also, thankfully, we are still seeing small groups (< 10 individuals in each) of White-fronted Bee-eater in the irrigated alfalfa and sports fields of Mringa-Kimemo-Burka estate; and in the adjacent Friedkin-Tanzania Game Trackers recreation grounds. Together these form a well-timbered 'green' wedge between the Nairobi and Dodoma roads on the dry west boundary of the town.

Honey Bee numbers generally seem to be holding-up quite well here; it's certainly buzzing around the exotic palms that are flowering in our wild garden just now.
Neverthelesst it's hardly the Itigi thicket - where it's said you will find the best honey in the world.

Good Birds 'n all,
James

PS: There were at least 15 European Bee-eaters today (30/9/09) at a site near Sanya Juu in West Kilimanjaro. Where also 2 Cinnamon-chested (yesterday) at 1,300m.

And whilst we are on the subject of change and Ark-life-ism here's another great photo I just found in my laptop here:

The place? On the way to Mu Goh Similan, in the Andaman Sea  off western peninsular Thailand. 

The time? Taken early in April, probably 1989 or was it already 1990?

The folk? Clegg Lobson, Faz Fallow, and a full frontal Iwo Jimo, plus a bemused and Beardless Tyrannulet - Jomo Ndege - with a truly scary resemblance to images of Heinrich Himmler. 

Images which are, I hope, worse than the heads-on Bins-Blazen-look which one may see today!

Thanks to Martin Goodey, and of course to Gaia, for documenting and sharing such lives with us.

Many thanks once again to another dear friend and renowned quest man Dr Derek Scott.

"We are documenting disaster"

Extinct is the same as Out of Danger - in truth that's our only Least Concern