IT’S sad that I have to headline a report back story, ‘Road kills etc…’. A while back I wrote a column on the re-emergence of the grey wolf in Europe, just how successful it was proving to be in a modern (human) society. And yet on my desk has arrived a report about the first wolf seen in the Netherlands in nearly 150 years and some motorist in a hurry ran over it and killed it. How very, very sad.
This follows a report from Denmark, where the first wolf in about 200 years has been seen. Fortunately the Danes must be better drivers because the animal survived the sighting. The comeback of wolves has been attributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990, when wolves began to expand their natural populations in eastern Europe into the West – rather like their former human communist counterparts, I suppose.
Much further north, deep in the frozen rock of the Norwegian Svalbard Islands way inside the Arctic Circle, just 1,300km from the North Pole, is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Duplications of seed samples from all over the world and held in national gene banks have been collected here as an insurance against a global disaster of some kind, either natural or man-made.
Funded entirely by the Norwegians, it is managed by the government of Norway, the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre. Deep in the ice are over 10,000 seeds representing more than 2,000 cultivars of some 300 species, in turn representing plant genetic diversity from every corner of the world, including ours. In addition to this general seed bank, seed samples from the Southern African Development Community are locked up there too. Well, isn’t that all good to know, but let’s just hope we never have that global crisis.
Here’s aninteresting snippet of news about elephant poaching. China does still have a handful of elephants in the wild, down in the Yunan province on the border with Laos. Now, if a local Chinese is found poaching one of these elephants the punishment is the immediate execution of the death penalty. By extraordinary contrast, a Chinese citizen recently found with 439 pieces of ivory while in transit from the Congo to Kenya, was sentenced to a fine of just US$350, less than a dollar a piece. Note: there isn’t much elephant poaching in China.
And while we’re around China and Laos, the Laotian government has started construction on a massive R30-billion dam on the Mekong River, flouting agreements with neighbouring countries which believe the dam will disrupt the river’s entire ecosystem throughout South East Asia.
The Mekong rises in China and flows through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, sustaining the world’s most productive inland fishing industry and giving protein to 65 million people. Laos is land-locked and claims that the dam is essential for power production for its economy, however, the dam could change the entire region for the worse. All very interesting. Cheers!
Sources: The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media, London; Wikipedia; Save the Elephants New Service.
