Category Archives: Travel

From Wonderland to Wasteland

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Ecocide, Environmental Apocalypse, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

Some ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest, or the North American prairies, have been assaulted by humans. As a result, vast tracts of each have been destroyed in favor of human designed systems.  For example, rainforests contain more than half of all terrestrial species and those forests depend on diversity. Yet, in places like Borneo, and others, humans have devastated the rainforest ecosystem by turning it into mono-cultures of oil palms. We did the same with prairies of course. Humans have been doing this over and over again.  In a single small parcel of tropical rainforest there could be as many as 700 species of trees. That is as much diversity of trees as all of North America put together.  David Attenborough said that the mono-culture of what was once a tropical rainforest is dead in comparison to the diversity of a rainforest.

 

We could say the same about the farmers’ field in comparison to the ecosystem of North American tall grass prairie. One is dead. Humans benefit two times when the cut down a forest. First, they can use the timber. Secondly, they can use the bare land that is left for agricultural crops.  As Attenborough said, “That is why we have cut down 3 trillion trees across the world. Half of the world’s rainforests have already been cleared.” It is a gross understatement to say that we are a rapacious species. Similarly, we have cut down 70% of the North American prairies and ploughed 98 to 99% of its tall grass prairie.

 

During Attenborough’s lifetime and mine, we have reduced the population of orangutans by 2/3rds. As Attenborough said, “We can’t cut down the rainforest forever, and what we can’t do forever is by definition unsustainable.”

I would say the same thing about the prairies and tall grass prairies of North America. Also unsustainable. The same goes for the ocean.

By 1997 the word population had risen to 5.9 billion, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had risen to 360 ppm while the remaining wilderness was reduced by 46%.  By now we can all see the pattern is clear.

The ocean of course was the world’s first ecosystem. That is where scientists believe life on the planet began. Most of the ocean is barren of life, but there are hot spots where there occurs an explosion of life. Colourful and beautiful life. Huge shoals of fish gather in such spots. But humans have learned how to find these hotspots too. And they have come equipped with the best of modern equipment.

Humans have been harvesting these hotspots on an industrial scale. Industrial style fishing really started in the 1950s and, as Attenborough said, “yet we’ve removed 90% of the large fish in the sea.” Bizarrely, governments around the world started to subsidize these industrial fleets in order to maintain them while they refrained from maintaining marine life on the planet. We allowed it to be ravished. We have also relentlessly attacked other marine species. Our species is by far the worst serial predators on the planet because we kill  species with astonishing mechanical tools. That is one of the reasons that those who believe humans might be headed to extinction along with their rapacious society sometimes cheer for the other side.

David Attenborough pointed out that “without large fish and other marine predators the oceanic nutrient cycle stutters.” The predators help the oceans to recycle marine life. Without them the hotspots diminish and the oceans start to die.

But, as Attenborough said, “ocean life was also unravelling in the shallows.”  The film crews he was working with stumbled across an event that was poorly understood at the time. “Coral reefs were turning white.” This was frightening because coral reefs contain about 25% of all the creatures of the sea even though they covered a small percentage of the planet. This was a serious challenge. The white colours are caused by the fact that the coral expel symbiotic algae that lived inside their bodies. Attenborough described this process as “turning from wonderland to wasteland.”

That is what our current attitude to nature is leading us to. A wasteland.

 

Champions for the Earth

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Decline of the west, Ecocide, Environmental Apocalypse, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

By 1978, when I had recently begun a legal career the population of the world was numbered at 4.3 billion, the carbon in the atmosphere was 335 ppm and the remaining wilderness of the world had been reduced to 55%.

David Attenborough travelled around the world that year to create a portrait of life on the planet.  He said he already noticed that some wildlife was getting noticeably harder to find.  I was not that smart yet at that time. Not that I am much smarter now.

I remember going on some fly-in fishing trips with friends in Northern Manitoba at about that time. We thought fish were endless. Of course, that was not true.  We thought birds were everywhere. They weren’t. I took as many photographs as I could when I was not fishing. Soon photographing and exploring nature would overwhelm my interest in fishing. My attitudes to nature were changing, but they had not changed enough.

I remember being disgusted at one member of our group on one of those trips tossing a beer bottle into the water from his fishing boat. I knew this was abhorrent, but I said nothing. I did not want to rock the boat. He was a client of ours and I did not want to insult him. I am not proud of the cowardice I showed that day. It’s like keeping quite when you hear someone utter a racial slur. The planet needs better champions than that. It needs even better ones today!

David Attenborough was lucky enough to see Mountain gorillas in the wild. But there were very few left.   But even those numbers needed to have a 24 hour human guard to protect them from human poachers. There were only about 300 left on a remote mountain reserve.  Baby gorillas were treasured. Poachers might kill 10 or more adults to get at one young gorilla. Sometimes people are scum. The scum of the earth.

Some think that people have outlived their usefulness on the planet. They want humans to be the next extinct species. That is pretty drastic. But who deserves it more than us?

 

Africa Needs Lions

Africa, Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Natural History, Nature, New Attitude to Nature

 

 

When we were in Africa 10 years ago (2013) we visited Antelope Park in Zimbabwe. They claim to be Southern Africa’s Most Intriguing Destination. It is home to the world famous ALERT lion. That is a sophisticated program to re-introduce lions into the wild to support the declining lion population.

It is set in more than 3,000 acres of open savannah grassland. In addition to walking with lions it offers elephant rides [of which I don’t approve], canoeing on the tranquil lake or river and a swimming pool.  Of course, it is most famous for allowing people to walk with a lion!  Their motto is very apt, “Where else in the world?’

Their goal is to ethically re-introduce lions into the world by doing that with the offspring of captive bred lions.  ALERT was founded in 2005. It is a non-profit organization dedicated to the facilitation and promotion of sound conservation strategies and management plans for the African lion in consultation with governments and wild life authorities and African communities.

The Trust that was established has a four stage African Lion Rehabilitation and Release into the Wild Program. They want to augment proposals to stop the serious decline in lion populations in Africa.

No human contact is permitted at stage 2 of the program to ensure that the lions that are introduced to the wild have had no human contact. These are the offspring of the lions that had contact with humans. The young of the captive lions has no contact with humans whatsoever.

In every pride of lions, there is a male lion that takes over the group of lions. This is the dominant lion. The humans keep a close eye so they know which is the dominant male.  When food is put out for them it is quickly obvious which is the dominant male. When the dominant male comes to the carcass, as we saw, he flings himself right on top of it to hog the meat. He does not care about any of the other lions even those who have caught the prey. The dominant lion eats first.  There is no sharing if he can help it. He does not subscribe to the maxim ‘sharing is caring.’

While we visited the park, we were taken to a pen where there was an animal carcass, cut into a few pieces, right in front of the fences behind which we stood. We were warned to get ready. The gate at the far end of the pen was opened and 3 male lions—huge male lions—rushed right at us. They were loud and aggressive and fast.  They made deep ominous sounds. Had I been the prey, the sound alone would have killed me.  It was terrifying.  It was extremely exciting. I sure was glad to be behind a strong (I hoped) chain link fence. I would not have wanted to be the prey.  It would have been a very short life. They lunged at the carcass. Two lions each grabbed a small piece of meat, before the dominant male leaped onto the carcass, hogging it for himself.

 

To photograph the event, I placed my camera on continuous shooting mode. I shot the images through the chain link fence which is basically invisible because I was so close to the fence. It blurred into invisibility.  I fired away as the lions bolted right at me. It was amazingly exciting. Even though I knew the fence was there, it was thrilling.

When we saw the 3 males lions bounding at the carcass the 2 non-dominant males ran as fast as they could because they realized that when the dominant male arrived there would not be any sharing after that. So they tried to get a piece of meat before the king arrived.

Lions in the wild learn to eat fast. They have to eat before competitors come for the carcass. They have to eat before the dominant male if they can. It took these 3 males a few minutes to consume the carcass.

 

While I was there, I purchased a T-shirt that read, “Africa needs lions.” African lions are disappearing fast. That really is the point. We need lions. We need nature.

This is how humans do it.  they drive animals toward extinction and at the 11th hour, or later, we make heroic efforts at great expense to save them. Now humans are trying to make amends for the havoc they have imposed on lions. It is really too little too late. But I hope it is part of a revaluation of our attitude to nature. We really need a new attitude to nature. And we need it fast before its too late.

Serengeti: The Garden of Eden

Africa, Bio-Diversity, Decline of the west, Ecocide, Environmental Apocalypse, New Attitude to Nature

 

When we went to Africa, we experienced some astounding wildlife reserves including Chobe National Park and Kruger National Park. But sadly, we did not get to go to the Serengeti. That is still a dream. I had a chance to go to it earlier this year, but that did not work out.

According to my cousin, Erich Vogt, the Serengeti is the Garden of Eden. He understand, I believe, that the world was sacred. The Masai word “Serengeti” means “endless plains.”  Well, the Serengeti is no longer the Garden of Eden and it is certainly not endless. But we once thought it was endless. Wish it were so.

The wildebeest is certainly one o f the ugliest of animals, but it endless fascinating. The Serengeti contains millions of wildebeest, hundreds of thousands of gazelles and many other species in astonishing abundance. Yet scientists now know that the Serengeti requires enormous grasslands to support such abundance and if those grasslands are lost or degraded the entire incredible ecosystem can collapse. The wilderness is finite. It is fragile, and it needs protection.

Frankly that is exactly what happened in North America.  Now you can drive from Manitoba to Arizona as we have done a number of times and see very little wildlife.  Nearly none. That is a pity because when Europeans contacted North America there were more wild life than all of Africa. That seems unbelievable today, but that is what happened. We lost those wild spaces. They were ploughed over and built over. This to my mind is a clear sign of decline.

In 1968 astronauts for the first time travelled far enough into space to see the entire globe at one time. They broadcast amazing photographs of this pale blue dot floating in the void. It was a remarkable photograph. It changed the attitudes of a lot of people to our planet. Many of us realized that the world was limited. We could see it was limited. But it did not change us enough. We still have not changed enough. We still need a new attitude to nature.

David Attenborough said a fundamental truth was revealed the day that photograph was broadcast:

“Our home was not limitless. There was an edge to our existence. It was a rediscovery of a fundamental truth: we are ultimately bound by and reliant upon the finite natural world around us.”

 

That fact must settle in. We must really come understand it. We must live that truth. Or we are destined to continue desecrating our sacred world. We must retain the sacred in the earth.

Rhinos

Africa, Anthropocene, New Attitude to Nature

In 2013 this man, who looked supremely competent, lead about 10 of us into the bush carrying a rifle to try to find rhinos.  Our intent was not to shoot them. But we were walking on the ground where we could be attacked by wild animals. It was a bit scary.  We encountered no dangerous animals and did not find any rhinos.

As a consequence of the current attitude to nature, which says everything in nature is a resource for humans to do as they choose, rhinoceros are also in deep trouble in Africa. This is another  dreadful pity. As Peter Matthiessen said in his book Sand Rivers, “I am in pure breathless awe of this protean life form, six hundred thousand centuries on earth…the ugliest and most beautiful life imaginable.”  And is deeply appalling to think that some foul smelling evil little man shoots it to lie dying on the ground as its rough prong of compacted hair is hacked off for some puerile superstition. Sometimes life stinks with injustice. The stink of humans.

This was also part of that walk in Zimbabwe.

In 1981 already, Peter Gwin described the issue this way, in National Geographic, “Rivaling the price of gold on the black market, rhino horn is at the center of a bloody poaching battle.” In 2011, two years before we went to Africa, more than 1,000 rhinos were slaughtered in South Africa alone.  22 poachers were gunned down and more than 200 arrested.

Today, authorities are taking poaching seriously. As they should. It is a serious problem.  At the time, South Africa, which was  home to 73% of the world’s rhinos, had stockpiled a billion dollars of rhino horn.  From time to time, they say they want to sell the horns to get money for conservation efforts.

This was 2 rhinos in Kruger National Park South Africa

The problem is the rhino’s horn was thought by many people in Asia in particular to be a vitally useful in Asian medicine.  In 2011, prices according to Gwin ranged from $33 to $133 a gram. At $133 that is double the cost of gold! It can exceed the value of cocaine! In Vietnam for example, a pair of rhino horns could produce a net profit of $200,000!  It is no wonder that it is at the center of such a battle.

Poaching since the 1970s and 1980s has devastated rhino numbers.  In time, China succumbed to pressure to ban rhino horn from their traditional medicines. At the same time Yemen prohibited its use for ceremonial dagger handles. Things were looking good.

There was evidence a lot of rhino horns were going to Vietnam. Hugely increased profits just poured fuel on the problem. Another part of the problem is that the Vietnamese who also lust after rhino horns, had exploited the rhinos of Java to the point of extinction. So they had to find an alternate source. Now it seems like the rhino market is centered in Vietnam.

In Asia unsubstantiated rumors persist that rhino horns after being ground into powder cure a wide range of ailments including cancer. Of course the placebo effect of such powder is in turn juiced up by the wild prices. If it is so expensive it must be good!  Naturally rich people in particular facing death are willing to try anything. Who wouldn’t?

In a tour of Vietnam for his article in National Geographic, Gwin said he found rhino horn everywhere he looked. Even western trained doctors were using it. Their patients demanded it. Families would often pool money to purchase it. Rich people gave it to poor people. Mothers gave it to their children for measles. It is seen as a miracle drug.

It has been said of the rhino that they wake up surly and quickly go downhill from there.  Yet the black rhino has been around for 6 million years. 100 years ago there were hundreds of thousands of rhinos in Africa, now poaching has reduced them to about 18,000. We were privileged to see them. It might be that my granddaughters will never have a chance to see one.

I really think we need a new attitude to nature. Don’t you?

Policing in a Broken Society

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Alienation, Decline of the west, Fear, guns, Hate, Mass killings, Police, violence

This past year in America 5 black  cops brutally killed a young black man for no apparent reason that has been revealed. Why did that happen?

Bill Maher was  right when he said on his television show earlier this year, “What’s going on, in my view, is that society is broken. We don’t educate people anymore, discipline is all broken down, families are broken down.” I agree this is a product of a broken society and then we ask the police to solve it.  Among all the other jobs they have to deal with they are expected to hold society together as it is shredded.  They are being asked to be psychologists, marriage counsellors, social workers advocates. As Bill Maher said, “No one ever calls the cops to tell them how well the marriage is going.” It is what I always said about schools. The principal never called us ot a team meeting to tell us how well the lads were doing in school.

How could that possibly work? Trust is gone. Guns sluice through American society. That doesn’t help. Violence is bred in the bone, particularly in America. What can the police do to mend this mess? As Bill Maher said, “They are the ones who get the slop of a broken society.”  And then they are asked to do far too much. And sometimes they contribute to it.

Yet, of course, the cops are also part of that broken society. Why those 5 black cops did what they did may always remain a mystery.  They just did it.   The cops perhaps were going through a divorce, or under pressure from their landlord to pay the rent, or their kids are trying drugs and disrespect their parents. What can the cops do about that?  They can break is about all they can do under impossible conditions.

There is a bigger question: where is all the rage coming from?  This is a vitally important question without any apparent answers. The rage is clearly out there, but where did it come from? The police like the rest of us are suffering from anxiety and fear. Every day they drive into harm’s way as part of their jobs.  The cops live in a society transfused with fear, anxiety, depression, and above all hate. It is a toxic mess that no Sunday School can cure.

Of course, we must always remember that a very high percentage of cops don’t resort to killing people out of frustration.  Most of them are just trying to do an honourable job as best they can.  Yet we must not accept it when they don’t do their best or abuse the trust given to them. Society is entitled to their best. Also, we must not be surprised when the police abuse the trust and fall short. It is going to happen. A broken society cannot deliver a perfect result. Fear, anxiety, depression and hate will never produce perfection. We will never get perfect policing until we get a perfect society, at which time we won’t need the police.

As Brett Stephens also said on Maher’s show, “Every day a cop in America is shot and killed. And police deserve a lot more respect than they get.”[2]

 I do not want to be taken to be giving in to fatalism. We must insist police do a better job. We must give them the support and respect they deserve, but not blind automatic acceptance of all they do.

 The real issue about cops is the same as the real issue of guns.  It is not inadequate laws that are the problem.  The real problem is the incredible rage in American society. In many ways it is a broken society. And that means that when the pieces of glass fly, people will get hurt. The rage let loose in a broken society is going to hurt someone. Whoever is in the way will get hurt. Police and guns just happen to be right on the edge of the tears in society. And we just have to look out.

Africa a place of unbounding Abundance: Elephants

Africa, Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Extinction, New Attitude to Nature

 

David Attenborough made his first trip to Africa in 1960.  Back then it really did seem inconceivable that a single species could threaten life on the planet. We were ignorant. There was such a species—Homo sapiens.

We went to Chobe National Park in Botswana where there are more elephants than anywhere else in the world. You have to work hard not to see any.

 

53 years later, when I went to Africa in 2013, I was blown away by the astonishing amount of wildlife. It seemed like every few minutes in our safari vehicles we would see an amazing array of wildlife. And compared to wildlife back home it was amazing. But compared to what it had been when Attenborough had gone 53 years earlier it was already cheap beer.

As far as wildlife is concerned, my experience in Africa was unparalleled. I had never seen animals in such abundance anywhere else in the world. It was not even close. All kinds of animals. But today I want to concentrate on one of them—elephants.

Yet we learned there that elephants were facing tough times—they were under siege. A survey in 1979 estimated that there were about 1.3 million elephants left in the wild. It is thought that in 2013 when we were there some 34 years later those numbers had been reduced to about 500,000. Less than half were left!

The worst part of it is that elephants were facing increasing challenges to their existence. Things were not getting better in many places, they were getting worse. Even though Chobe National Park was one of the few places where elephants were thriving this is what Damian Carrington of The Guardian said about them and their prospects:

 

 

The forest elephants of Africa have lost almost two-thirds of their number in the past decade due to poaching for ivory…There are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with 400,00 of the slightly larger savannah elephants. The total population was over 1 million 30 years ago, but has been devastated by poaching driven by the rising demand for ivory ornaments in Asia.   

What has made things worse for elephants is that they range over central Africa and that region had suffered greatly on account of wars and competition. Poachers in such regions had easy access to weapons, and enforcement officers that were distracted by wars raging around them. Loss of habitat was not the primary problem as it was for many other species that were endangered. Many of the forests were already empty of elephants. That demonstrated that was a poaching problem not a habitat degradation issue.

China in particular was a large part of the problem. Their craving for elephant tusks had driven the price up to more than $1,000 per kg. Just 3 years before I was in Africa, the price was $150 per kg. 90% of Kenyan ivory ended up in China. As Africans told the Chinese, ‘China does not need ivory, but Africa needs elephants.’

The poachers were usually part of criminal gangs. They can be violent and ruthless. The guards on whom the elephants depended for their survival were often harassed and feared for their lives.  One guard said that he had become part of the national psychosis.

What was really weird then was that elephants by then depended on their mortal enemy for their survival.  That was us by the way. We were their enemy.  We had driven them to the brink of extinction by our wanton, foolish desires, and yet without us they would likely not survive because some of our species were working hard to save them.  The world is not just crazy. It is much more whacky than that. It is weirder than we could conceive it to be.

These two were from Kruger National Park in South Africa.

 

 

This group of elephants were actually part of a much  larger group. They actually surrounded our safari vehicle. It was a bit disconcerting to be surrounded by such large animals.  It was an experience I will never forget.  the elephants were actually difficult to photograph because they were too close!

I don’t know about you, but I think a world without elephants would be a paltry thing. Yes we need a new attitude to elephants. We also need a new attitude to nature.

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Anthropocene, Bio-Diversity, Ecocide, New Attitude to Nature

 

When we were in Africa,  in 2013 we were stunned by the amount of wild life we saw. One of the best places was Chobe National Park in Botswana.  It seemed like around every corner every couple of minutes, there was more to see. When we travel from Manitoba to Arizona each winter we rarely see any. Yet when Europeans arrived on the North American continent there were more wild animals than in Africa! Where did they all go? You  know where they went.

Although the Holocene era was fantastic it was not all perfect. As Dickens said, about another era, they were the best of times, they were the worst of times. Really our times were better than the times of the French revolution the time he was referring to in his great novel A Tale of Two Cities. But life created by humans was far from unmixed forward progress. We created the atomic bomb.  Our actions led to the Great Depression. We conquered some diseases; we ushered in others. We created the holocaust where we killed 6 millions of our own species.

By 1954, when I was 6 years old the population of the world had increased to 2.7 billion, carbon in the atmosphere increased to 310 parts per million in the atmosphere, and the remaining wilderness around the world had shrunk to 64%. But few of us noticed things had already changed. Even less were concerned. After all, we were the lucky ones living in the Holocene. So we thought. Actually, we were wrong. Another epoch had begun, though the exact starting date is still not certain.

Our technologies were making life easier. And the pace of change was speeding up dramatically. Our ideas were bearing fruit. And it all seemed good. Though there were a few shadows on the horizon. One was shaped like a mushroom in the sky. The Holocaust was behind us. We were convinced it was an aberration. We had learned from it and progress would proceed unhindered. Lucky us. These were illusions. There were problems out there. Big ones. And they were real.

By 1960 the world population increased to 3 billion people.  Carbon in the atmosphere increased to 315 parts per million and the remaining wilderness shrunk to 62%.

A lot of those problems have been created by the immense pressure on the planet by so many people and so many of those people getting richer so they could afford to affect the planet more drastically.

As a result, people were not realizing that the traditional attitude to nature—that it was a resource for us to do with as we pleased was exactly the wrong attitude.  We need a new attitude to nature, and we need it fast.