Animal Rescue
There are now just a few thousand tigers left. Seven hundred mountain gorillas. A hundred Iberian lynx. Can we do anything to help them? Emine Saner of The Guardian looks at 10 animals we just have to save – and how you can get involved. Remember you can adopt an animal for just a small monthly fee.
1. Tiger – there are twice as many privately owned tigers in America as there are in the wild across the world. Outside zoos and private collections, there are thought to be just 3,000 and 4,500 Bengal tigers, 1,500 Indo-Chinese tigers and 500 Sumatran tigers. There may possibly be 20-30 South China tigers left – if they aren’t extinct already. In the past 150 years, 93% of tigers’ original habitat has been lost; in the past 100 years, the world’s tiger population has declined by 95%. Habitat loss results in a lack of prey for tigers and makes for fragmented populations; this in turn causes inbreeding and all the health and fertility problems that go with it.
Last month, the WWF warned that illegal coffee plantations in Indonesia were threatening wildlife, especially Sumatran tigers. The beans were being bought, unknowingly, by some of the world’s biggest coffee manufacturers, including Nestlé and Kraft. More generally, poaching is one of the biggest threats, especially to Bengal tigers. Everything from their bones to their organs have historically been key ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), although most practitioners no longer use them. “But some do,” says Mark Wright, science advisor for the WWF. “Even now, products containing ingredients from tigers are still sold in this country.” This is illegal, by the way. “It’s for us to say we don’t want this in our country. We need to take away the demand at this end of the supply chain.”
What can we do? Write to coffee manufacturers and ask them to show that their products come from sustainable sources. Insist they put in place rigorous chain-of-custody controls to ensure they don’t support illegal plantations. Keep an eye out for practitioners of TCM who are still selling products containing ingredients derived from tigers. Contact your local police wildlife crime officer, the National Wildlife Crime Unit www.nwcu.police.uk or Crimestoppers (0800 555111 ).
As well as WWF, there are several tiger conservation projects that are worth backing, including the Wildlife Trust of India and the Phoenix Fund in Russia www.phoenix.vl.ru which is working to protect the Amur tiger.
2. Orang-utan – there are thought to be around 30,000 orang-utans in the wild in Borneo and Sumatra; they tend to inhabit lowland forest, in fertile areas that are coveted by farmers. Their habitats are fast disappearing as Indonesia expands its palm oil production to meet global demand (palm oil it is the world’s second-largest oil crop after soy). This could be done sustainably, by using land that has already been cleared and minimising impact on ecosystems (such as using water and agrochemicals carefully), rather than chopping down more forest, which the orang-utans need for food and shelter.
The burgeoning biofuel industry is a big worry for environmental campaigners. “We want energy companies to stop using palm oil,” says Ed Matthew, palm oil campaigner for Friends of the Earth. “We don’t want to create an even bigger market for it. Even if energy companies say their palm oil is sustainable, the indirect impact is expansion elsewhere into forests to meet demand. Ironically, it could have a devastating effect on global warming, the problem biofuels are supposed to solve.”
What can we do? Palm oil is found in one in 10 supermarket products The major supermarkets have signed up to the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO; www.rspo.org) – but not Somerfield and Iceland, so write to them. “Keep up pressure on the supermarkets that have signed to make sure they follow through on their promise to buy sustainable palm oil,” says Matthew. “It sends a strong message to Indonesia and Malaysia that sustainable palm oil is what consumers want.”
Write to energy companies that use palm oil (the big ones are Biofuels Corporation and Greenergy Biofuels). And don’t forget Tesco: it may have signed up to the RSPO but it has invested heavily in Greenergy. Visit www.biofuelwatch.org.uk for more information.
Several charities are working in the field. Here are some of the best that desperately need funds: Sumatran Orang-utan Society (www.orangutans-sos.org) the Orang-utan Foundation (www.orangutan.org.uk) and the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation (www.orangutan.or.id)
3. Cod – cod is not the most attractive creature on our list, but we’ll miss it when it’s gone – which experts predict could be within the next few years. In the past 30 years, cod catches have decreased by 70%, a reflection of the shrinking population, not of us leaving it alone. “Overfishing is the main reason, but climate change is an additional threat,” says Sally Bailey, sustainable fishing officer at WWF. ” If we carry on like this, in less than 15 years we won’t have any more cod on our menus.”
What can we do? Britain consumes a third of the world’s cod catch. “There are plenty more fish in the sea, if you’ll excuse the pun,” says Bailey. “In the past, we used to eat many different types of fish, but now we tend to eat only five types – cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns. Vary your diet and buy different types of fish.” Pollock, hake and hoki are all good white-fish alternatives.
Buy fish with the Marine Stewardship Council (www.msc.org) label – this means the fish has come from sustainable fisheries. Ask your fishmonger or supermarket fish counter where the fish has come from. “Cod caught around Iceland is OK, but not cod from the North Sea, which we think is unsustainable,” says Bailey. Write to your supermarket to ask them to stock different types of fish, and more fish with the MSC label. Tell them you’re not happy with fish coming from unsustainable stocks.
“The more people who ask questions and challenge their supermarket, the easier we find it to get them to take on board our points,” says Bailey. “And it sends a strong message all the way down the supply chain.” The WWF website has a letter you can print out to give to retailers: go to www.passport.panda.org/campaigns
4. Leatherback turtle – it seems a little unfair that having been around for 150m years, outliving the dinosaurs and surviving asteroid impacts, the world’s largest sea turtles have declined by 95% in just the past 20 years because of our demand for fish. The main problem is fishing practices, particularly in the Pacific ocean. Because of longline fishing, where boats put out lines bearing thousands of hooks, turtles become trapped and drown. Campaigners are trying to persuade commercial fisheries to switch to different hooks, called circular or G hooks because of their shape, which would drastically reduce turtle by catch.
Leatherbacks are also the victims of pollution: they have been known to eat plastic bags thinking they are jellyfish, and suffocate or get them lodged in their digestive systems. Tourism, meanwhile, has affected beaches where turtles lay their eggs, and the eggs themselves are considered delicacies in some areas of South America and Asia. They are occasional visitors to our shores, usually arriving at the end of May.
What can we do? “I would like to see us use and abuse far fewer plastic bags,” says Simon Walmsley, head of the marine programme at WWF. “If you live near the coast, or you’re at the beach, or on a boat, you need to be very careful not to allow the bags to get into the sea because the turtles will think they’re food.” Buy MSC-certified fish – the level of bycatch of turtles will be the lowest among these fisheries. Write to your supermarket asking it to have all its fish MSC-certified.
Be careful about where you go on holiday. Mass tourism in parts of Malaysia and Costa Rica has affected turtles’ nesting sites.
5. Wandering albatross – from Coleridge’s ancient mariner to Ellen MacArthur, who last month said the albatross was “the most amazing bird I’ve been lucky enough to see”, these iconic birds have long been considered a good omen for sailors. But of the 21 albatross species, 19 are threatened with extinction, including the wandering albatross. There are 28,000 left in the wild but they are rapidly decreasing. In one of their breeding grounds, around South Georgia in the south Atlantic, their numbers are down by a third since 1984. They only breed about once every two years and there are just 9,000 breeding pairs. They tend to breed in the south Atlantic and Indian oceans.
As with the leatherback turtle, the biggest threat is longline fishing. The birds are attracted to the bait set out for fish, hooked, dragged underwater and drowned. “We are working with the fishing industry to try to get them to put in measures that won’t be so harmful to the albatross,” says Richard Thomas of Birdlife International. These include getting longline fishing boats to fly brightly coloured plastic streamers from the back of boats to scare the birds off and using bait that has been dyed blue to make it less visible from the air.
What can we do? Ask your fishmonger if your fish is albatross-friendly (it should be if it is accredited by the Marine Stewardship Council, so look out for the stickers). The catching of some types of fish kills more albatrosses than others – avoid bluefin tuna (often served in Japanese restaurants and sushi bars), swordfish and Patagonian toothfish (often marketed as Chilean sea bass). Support the campaign run by Birdlife International and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds: www.savethealbatross.net
6. Iberian lynx – the world’s most endangered cat lives not in Africa or Asia but right here in western Europe. If the Iberian lynx becomes extinct, it will be the first big cat the world has lost since the demise of the sabre-toothed tiger 10,000 years ago, and when you consider that there are only 100 left in the wild, it’s not such an unlikely outcome. The spotty dark yellow or brown cat is now found only in Spain and Portugal, in two breeding areas.
The lynx’s main prey is rabbit, but the rabbit population has been drastically depleted by myxomatosis in the past decade. The lynx is also a target of poachers. The greatest threat to its survival, however, is the road that has been built through its habitat: getting run over is now the biggest cause of death for the Iberian lynx. WWF has been urging the Spanish government to close the Villamanrique-El Rocio road, which runs through the Doñana National Park in Andalusia. New roads and dams in lynx territory are being built using EU subsidies and these physical barriers, as well as the loss of habitat, have resulted in difficulty in finding mates and inbreeding.
The decline in the cork industry is also having a knock-on effect: as the wine industry moves over to screwcaps and plastic stoppers, well-managed cork oak forests in Spain in particular, where the lynx live, are under threat.
What can we do? Support WWF, which has been trying to get the Spanish government to close the Villamanrique-El Rocio road. The charity SOS Lynx (www.soslynx.org) raises money for captive breeding programmes, restocking wild prey and buying land used by the lynx.
Write to your MEP about the EU cash used in regional developments, pointing out that there is a mismatch between the European Commission’s positive stance on conservation and the cash it gives for regional development.
Buy wine with corks and write to wine merchants (the Wine and Spirit Trade Association has a list of all its members, including the big retailers such as Majestic and Oddbins, as well as the supermarkets, on its website www.wsta.co.uk telling them you will not buy screwcaps or bottles with artificial stoppers. It can be difficult to know if the wine you are buying has a cork or not so demand clear labelling – and if your bottle has a plastic stopper, complain. There’s also a Real Cork campaign: www.realcork.org
7. Mountain gorilla – in the forests around Africa’s Great Lakes region, there are around 700 mountain gorillas left. The conflicts that have raged through the area, which takes in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have also affected the apes. This month, two male gorillas were killed by Congo rebels, probably for meat – and when there are so few, each individual loss has a big impact. Poaching is an ongoing problem.
There are fears that the gorillas’ habitat is being destroyed by cattle ranching and even villagers going into the forest to collect firewood. The gorillas are also being exposed to human diseases (eco-tourists at least are screened before being allowed near the animals).
What can we do? The best way to ensure the survival of the mountain gorillas is to support eco-tourism, which is worth around £1.7m a year to the area. If the governments and local population sees that it brings a lot of money to the region, they will have an incentive to protect the gorillas. The DRC is still a no-go area, but Rwanda has largely recovered from the genocide in 1994 and needs money from tourism. “I know it requires a flight to get there, but this is pretty much the only way to save the gorillas,” says Mark Wright of WWF. “Just make sure you offset your carbon emissions.”
8. Western Pacific grey whale – the Eastern Pacific grey whale, which travels along the west coast of America, has bounced back in recent years. But not its Western cousin. There are just 100 of them left in the world – and just two dozen or so females of breeding age. Their only feeding ground is around Sakhalin Island, off the far eastern coast of Russia, and thanks to Shell (and now Russia’s energy giant Gazprom), their survival looks increasingly unlikely. A huge gas and oil platform development is being built there, and is due to start operations next year. The project was being led by Shell until December, when it ceded control to Gazprom. It retains a 27.5% stake. An independent panel of whale experts said the development posed a “potentially catastrophic threat” to the whales. The pipelines cause noise disturbance and damage to their feeding ground, while the project puts the whales in danger of spillages and being hit by ships.
“Our concern is that they didn’t follow the impact assessments as closely as they should have done,” says Mark Wright of WWF.
What can we do? Write to James Smith, chairman of Shell UK (Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA) and ask him to explain the company’s stance. It probably wouldn’t hurt to boycott Shell garages too. The Japanese companies Mitsui and Mitsubishi also own stakes in the project. Gazprom hopes to have a 10% share of the UK’s energy market by 2010, so voice your concerns to its UK subsidiary (Gazprom, Camellia House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5BB or www.gazpromretail.co.uk) The Royal Bank of Scotland is one of the banks that might finance the controversial project, after the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development recently said it would not provide a loan. For more information, visit Sakhalin Environment Watch (www.sakhalin.environment.ru/en/)
9. Mediterranean monk seal – they were once found in colonies throughout the Mediterranean and Black seas, and along the Atlantic coast of Africa. Greek sailors believed seeing one was good luck. “Until the 20th century, the Mediterranean monk seal could be found ‘hauling out’ on mainland France, Spain and the Balearic Islands, Italy, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Tunisia,” says Rosa Hill from the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Today only 300 to 500 Mediterranean monk seals survive in two main colonies – in the eastern Mediterranean and off the northeastern coast of Africa. “They are threatened by deliberate killings (fishermen consider the species a pest and a competitor for increasingly scarce resources), incidental capture in fishing gear, decreased food availability, destruction of habitat, and pollution,” says Hill. “Because the Mediterranean monk seal is sensitive to human disturbance, continued development of once-isolated habitat has had a significant impact.” The monk seal became extinct along the coasts of France and Italy as hotels and developments mushroomed in the 1970s, damaging their habitats (they come ashore to seek caves for breeding and shelter). Now, they are endangered by overdevelopment along the Turkish coast.
What can we do? Give to the Greece-based Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal (www.mom.gr) which works on research and conservation projects, or the Underwater Research Society in Turkey (its website www.sad.org.tr doesn’t yet have an English-language version but will soon). And beware of mass tourism, which can disturb monk seal colonies. “If you’re planning to go to Greece for a beach holiday, you could check with www.mom.gr which will know which resorts you should avoid,” says Gunther Pauls, from the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s EU office.
10. Polar bear – polar bears live on floating ice in the Arctic, drifting for miles to hunt seals and find mates – but the sea ice is shrinking at a rate of 10% each decade. In 30 years, the Arctic could have no ice at all during summer.
“Polar bears have a fairly bleak prognosis,” says Mark Wright of WWF. “They need sea ice in order to hunt and breed but the season of sea ice is shortening. It is a direct result of global warming.” Polar bears are also at risk of drowning as they have to swim further distances for food – scientists have found them swimming up to 60 miles of open sea. “We are seeing signs of polar bears starving, cannibalising each other and coming into human areas to scavenge,” says Wright. “At the rate we are going, by 2040, sea ice will have dropped back significantly and we will see a significant decline in polar bears.”
What can we do? Cut greenhouse gas emissions – there is no other answer. Use energy-efficient light bulbs, buy energy-efficient appliances, reduce the number of flights you take (or carbon offset them), buy green energy, reduce car use or stop it altogether … “If we all made changes, it would have a significant effect,” says Wright. Lobby your MP to call for tough action on emissions, support the campaigns on climate change run by WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, or join the Campaign against Climate Change (www.campaigncc.org tel: 020-7833 9311 ).
Source: Friday February 2, 2007 The Guardian
