Believe it or not, the world is apparently running out of sand. Sand is used for all sorts of things, including the making of glass and water filtration, but most importantly, it is used in concrete for the building industry. A report by the United Nations Environment Programme states that after water, sand and gravel (for concrete) are the highest volume of natural materials used on Earth.
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More than 26-billion tons of aggregate, as it’s called, is used every year. The main culprit is the massive building boom in Asia and in the Gulf States. The UN report says that the right sand for aggregate comes from land quarries, river beds, fresh water lakes, some beaches and even the sea bed.
Sadly, the vast quantities of sand in the world’s huge deserts, like the Sahara, the Gobi and the Namib, is the wrong kind of sand because it has been polished by wind erosion and therefore useless as a binder in concrete. Illegal, and even some legal, sand mining is causing major environmental problems worldwide, especially in coastal areas and on the sea bed.
As a matter of interest, the United Arab Emirates recently imported R6-billion worth of sand from places as far afield as Australia; just one fresh water lake in China is producing 10 000 tons of sand an hour, but the lake is disappearing; what are known as the ‘Sand Mafia’ in India handle R30 billion worth of sand a year, in one state alone 50 000 lorry loads of sand a day are ‘smuggled’ into neighbouring states; staying in India, 75 000 men work under appalling conditions to dive for sand from the sea bed near Mumbai – all this, just for sand.*
Back home, we have just seen a tweet of wagtails. We often have the pleasure of the company of an African pied wagtail, and often its partner too, on the lawn, but today there were five of them.
Ken Newman says that they may be found as singles, or in pairs or family groups.
We must assume that what we have just seen was indeed a family group gathered for a tweeting competition. That it was a family group is also borne out by the fact that was some squabbling going on, and that’s very much a family thing.
Wagtails are very endearing little birds, particularly the Cape wagtail. Back in Johannesburg we often had them in the garden, but they would also come into the kitchen to see what was happening, they would frequent the stoep, wagging around our feet as we sat there, and once we even had one land on the garden table while we sitting there having lunch. It’s always good to have them around.
A word of warning, though, wagtails, like so many other birds, feed off the lawn, so please be very careful about what sort of pesticide you use. There are many natural and home-made pesticides, you may just want to search them out.
*The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media.
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