We teamed up with a couple of friends and headed off into the interior. First stop was the Wat Chalong Temple. Incredibly ornate. Had a thing about elephants.
There was a firecracker resonator that scared the shit out of us. It went off unexpectedly making a deafening racket as if someone was throwing grenades in our ears! There wouldn’t be many evil spirits left around after that!!
Even as a devout atheist Buddhism has a great appeal to me. We got married in a Buddhist temple.
All over the world the population of humans is soaring, the habitats are being polluted or destroyed, jungles being cleared, strip mining, logging and farming are taking their toll, and the animals are being slaughtered for meat or superstitious medicine.
We seem to be sleep-walking towards a concrete jungle.
The seas and rivers are overfished, the natural world is built over.
It’s time to make clear lines of demarcation – 50% for us and 50% for the rest of the animal life.
It is almost too late.
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Shut down ivory island
Rewan Al-Haddad – Avaaz
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There is a crucial summit to protect elephants by totally banning ivory sales. This is essential. Every fifteen minutes an elephant is killed by these selfish, greedy poachers. Please put a message on Therese Coffey’s facebook and twitter. Britain is blocking this ban
Dear friends in Britain,
In days, a crucial global summit could call for the closure of ivory markets and help save elephants from extinction.
African countries are pushing hard to close a giant loophole that lets ivory be sold domestically, even though the international trade is banned! They’ve got powerful supporters: the US is on board, and China is ready to join the ban.
But Britain just announced a half-baked plan that will keep ivory sales ticking over at home — and even worse, is refusing to support global efforts to stamp out domestic trade everywhere. Join the massive public call for Minister Therese Coffey, who is at the talks, to stand up for elephants and support the closure of domestic ivory markets in the UK and around the world.
Click to add your voice on social media!
The amazing Avaaz movement has already played a crucial role in getting governments and wildlife organisations to call for closure of the domestic ivory loophole at another key meeting earlier this month. But the UK, once a champion of wildlife protection, refused to support the motion, and now it’s crunch time — let’s make sure our government helps lead the world to an ivory-free future!
In hope and determination,
Bert, Pascal, Mike, Antonia and rest of the Avaaz team
In days, a global summit could call for the closure of all ivory markets and help save elephants from extinction. But Britain has a half-baked proposal that could derail the whole plan. Let’s call on Minister Therese Coffey to change track, take a stand for elephants, and help shut down ivory markets everywhere — send a personal message now:
| send a message |
More information:
Britain can lead the way in helping to save elephants (Telegraph)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/21/britain-can-lead-the-way-in-helping-to-save-elephants/
Prince William calls for strong CITES move on ivory trade, despite UK’s limp stance (News 24)
http://traveller24.news24.com/Explore/Green/prince-william-calls-for-strong-cites-move-on-ivory-trade-despite-uk-limp-stance-20160923
The animals we have now are midgets compared to animals in the past. There used to be giant versions of nearly every animal – from tigers to beavers, mammoths to bears, deer to sloths. They have all gone.
The megafauna have not become extinct due to natural causes. They were systematically hunted to death by man.
I was listening to a radio programme last week in which a palaeontologist was commenting that there was little fossil evidence for the arrival of man into the area. The first indications were the complete disappearance of all the megafauna.
We’ve already been responsible for the mass extinction of many of the world’s most incredible beasts. We are now busily working our way through what is left.
Unless governments act in unison and enforce the laws we will completely destroy the whole environment.
Is that the sort of world we want to live in?
When will we ever learn? 30% of the African herds have been cruelly decimated in the last 7 years. Butchered by callous poachers for their tusks. Machine gunned in the bush for the Asian market.
Nothing is sacred. There is no respect for life or nature in this short-term stupidity. They destroy the planet for a handful of silver.
Elephant tusks are large canine teeth. Ivory is the same dentine we have in our own teeth. It has not intrinsic value yet, just because certain Asian people value it, it has an artificial price. These poor animals are being brutally killed by sadistic poachers for a worthless product.
The poachers should be hunted down and locked up for life. The people who deal with ivory should be hunted down and locked up. The corrupt officials and those who sell ivory should be locked up too. This madness has to stop!
Rhino horn is made of keratin. Exactly the same material that finger-nails are made off. Nothing more. It has absolutely no medicinal value. It does not cure impotence. That is quackery and superstition. Yet rhinos are hunted down and slaughtered in the most horrendous way. Their horns are slashed out of their head before they are dead.
Lock up all who deal with this trade – the Chinese medicine and all officials who corruptly sanction this abhorrent trade.
The Chinese need telling to stop destroying our planet! The government needs to act. All the shops and medicine shops stocking illegal animal products should be shut down immediately!
Join Greenpeace and help put a stop to this slaughter!
Once upon a time we had the great white hunter tracking through the jungle with his entourage to fearlessly shoot the great beasts and display the gruesome heads so that all could admire his manliness. Not that there was much to admire.
But those days are long gone. Now they simply shoot the hapless creatures with machine guns and hack the tusks and horn from their dying bodies.
It is time the whole world turned against this cruel destructive trade.
It is time to track down and arrest the ivory carvers, the Chinese medicine practices, the racketeers, merchants, exporters, hunters and all who are involved in this cruel and utterly pointless exercise.
They are robbing all of us. They are robbing the world of its wonders.
Lock them up, confiscate all their ill-gotten wealth and eradicate this trade.
For anybody who cares for nature this book is a must. This is written by somebody who loves animals in the wild and despairs at the degradation of the environment that he has witnessed first-hand in his life-time. You reel at the cruelty and thoughtlessness, the stupidity and crass superstition. You boggle at the numbers of this mad population explosion that is to blame. You can see the panic setting in as we career towards an inevitable human catastrophe.
Yet it is not all doom and gloom. The passion rips through your heart and the fury saddens you. But also in there is the ecstasy and love of the wonder that is this planet with its bountiful treasure-trove of nature.
We write so that it may not come true.
This book is not a mass of scientific facts or boggling information; it is one mans view from the vantage point of a long life of what is happening to this jewel of a planet.
It is also a book about hope; hope that we can use our intelligence to put a stop to this pollution and cruelty before it is too late. There are ways we can make it work. They are outlined. The way forward is clear.
All that is needed is the will to make it happen.
If you care about the planet you should read this. It will change your life. Hopefully it will also change the world for the better!
In Britain you can access my books on Amazon:
Anthropocene Apocalypse:
Kindle Edition
£2.94 Read with Our Free App
In the USA:
I think the index gives you a bit of a clue as to the content.
Index
Quote & dedication
Introduction
My worst nightmare
My best outcome
The most likely scenario
The long term effects of the Anthropocene
The decline in British Wildlife
Extinction of Species – Zambia & Zimbabwe
Extinction of Species – Cambodia & Vietnam
Extinction of Species – North America
Good things
Deforestation & Extinction – Peru
Road Kill – Australia
Road Kill – America
Further adventures in Peru
Heading out of Lima to the Ballesteros Islands
The Nazca Lines and Lake Titicaca experience
The Colca Canyon and that condor moment
Species extinction – Tasmania
Deforestation in Britain & Europe
The China tiger
Britain in Shakespeare’s time
Wales and the brigands
Los Angeles Smog and mountains
The Chinese experience
Modern man
Deforestation of Tasmania
Deforestation in Vietnam
Alteration of climate due to global warming
The argument against the global warming deniers
World population
Safari in Zimbabwe and Botswana
Second safari in Botswana
Sadness on safari
Zambia and flying round the farm
Hull and Urbanisation
Los Angeles – a tale of urban sprawl
Chongqing City
A cat in the road
New research and new dangers
Nuclear disasters
Spanish Field trip
Portugal & the chameleons
Australian wonderland
More Australian wonders
The start of Greenpeace
Mass migration
Australia – still going
Uneducated education
South Africa and the Whale
India – a place like no other
Australia – Cairns
Road kill yesterday
Senseless death of the toads
The Animal House
Natural History Museum
Yellowstone Park
My Davies the Biologist & Mr Tranter the Rural Scientist
Nuclear dumps
Louisiana swamps
Australia and the ozone layer
Travelling around Scotland
Fracking, the Seven Estuary Barrier, Nuclear and Wind Farms
The decline in wild-life in Britain in my life-time
Solutions
In Britain you can access my books on Amazon:
Anthropocene Apocalypse:
Kindle Edition
£2.94 Read with Our Free App
In the USA:
