World Wildlife Fund CN Tower Climb

Took part for the second year in the annual World Wildlife Fund CN Tower Climb last weekend. Amazingly, this years climb raised over $ 1.1 million dollars with 6200 people participating over two separate events - team and individual. It is extremely well organised, and the more I find out about the organisation here in Canada, the more impressive it becomes. WWF - Canada really does some superb work, and further details can be found in last years Annual Report at http://assets.wwf.ca/downloads/wwfcanada_annualreport2008.pdf. As an example during 2008, and after probably 10 years of negotiation, WWF-Canada was a part of historical agreements with NAFO, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation. Agreements were signed committing to a cod recovery plan, as well as banning bottom fishing on the southwest slope of the Grand Banks in order to protect cold water corals. Some real achievements being made amongst a very sad state globally on the destruction of wildlife and the environment. Included in the details is that the efforts not only benefit the marine environment, but also the people and communities dependant on what used to be one of the richest fishing areas in the world. New breakthroughs in net design reduce the bycatch, and add to the efficiency of the shipping crews.

Hockley Valley Provincial Park

We continue to explore conservation areas not too far from where we live in Mississauga, Toronto. On Easter Friday we completed a terrific and challenging hike in the Hockley Valley Provincial Park, another of the conservation areas located on the Niagara Escarpment. It turned out to be one of my favourite hikes in all the areas we have hiked close to Toronto. There are no facilities, and we walked for long periods with no sign of human construction or habitation, other than wooden bridges crossing streams. The terrain is also challenging winding up and down the valley slopes.

Beamer Memorial Conservation Area, Grimsby

One of the wildlife sights that has sparked our interest is the bird migrations in this part of the world. Just an hour from where we live, we spent a couple of hours yesterday at Beamer Memorial Conservation Area, a wooded area on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. At this time of year it provides a good vantage point to view migrating raptors. A stong pair of binoculars is needed to view most of the birds, but it really is an astonishing sight to see the birds heading north to their summer breeding grounds. The majority of the birds we saw were turkey vultures, but there were also a couple of hawks that we could not specifically identify, and at least one immature bald eagle (so we were told by one of the other birders !). The escarpment with it's updraft provides good conditions for the birds to travel, and during March and April, tens of thousands of the birds migrate that way.

Photo Selected for Daily Dozen by National Geographic

Really pleased that so far one of the photographs from our South American trip has been recognised beyond this website. The above photograph was selected as one of the daily dozen on the National Geographic website for the second week of March (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/daily-dozen). As a reminder from a previous blog entry, we spent over two hours with this exhausted Magellanic Penguin on one of the beaches close to Punta del Diablo, Uruguay. The chest feathers were covered in a petroleum residue, the result of a recent oil spill. This was one of the birds still alive, but we also came across a number of dead birds washed up on the beach.

South Africa Seizes Shark Fishing Boat

Cape Town - South African authorities have seized a Taiwanese fishing boat accused of violating limits on shark fishing. Inspectors confiscated 1.6 tons of dried shark fins from the vessel and said it was "the biggest alleged illegal consignment during recent years." The boat's permit was valid for just 100kg of shark fins. The environment ministry said the amount of dried shark fin suggested that the vessel had caught at least 30 tons of sharks, nearly 15 times what the crew claimed to have caught. In a statement on Saturday it said the vessel would remain in Cape Town pending criminal proceedings and would be blacklisted worldwide. Shark-finning is fuelled by big profit margins with shark fins estimated to fetch between $400-$700 per kilogram.
- SAPA - (http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2485681,00.html)

Scuba Diving, The Reef House, Roatan Island, Honduras

Three of us, Heather, Louise and myself, just returned from an excellent week long trip to Roatan Island, Honduras, my first trip to Central America and the Caribbean region. We flew directly from Toronto to the island, and the contrast in climate and landscape at this time of year is vast - a stark cold wintery landscape in Toronto, replaced by a lush wooded island with beautifully coloured seas and reefs. After 15 dives during the week, Heather's and my skill and comfort levels underwater have jumped a level. The reefs were in good condition with some amazing wildlife, although we understand the proper protection and monitoring of the marine environment is only slowly being implemented. We stayed at the Reef House Resort all week which was relaxed with great food, and a competent dive team we were confident with. The Reef House also provided some close encounters with turtles. Rescued, tagged and quarantined for a period in a fenced-off pool in front of the resort, before being relelased into the wild. Other than 15 dives in six days, the trip also provided two other firsts - a sea night dive, and an afternoon dive with a female group of Caribbean Reef Sharks.

Roatan Island, Honduras

United Nations Environment Programme - World Conservation Monitoring Centre

An interesting source of conservation related material, and specifically biodiversity management ...

http://www.unep-wcmc.org/biodiversity/

Take a look at the presentation: http://www.unep-wcmc.org/biodiversity/presentation/4422/index.html

Climate Change ?

As part of my ongoing interest, education and involvement in conservation and wildlife, I joined the North American Wildlife Society during 2008. Unlike most of the membership who work full time in the industry, my involvement is only part-time and certainly with far less academic qualifications to most of those I interact with occasionally. Even so, the latest issue of The Wildlife Professional magazine (Winter, 2008) caught me by surprise, and I thought required comment. A number of letters to the editor strongly reacted to a previous edition of the magazine and it's stance on climate change. More specifically, one letter states, "… Clearly, climate change is currently not a mainstream area of research for TWS (The Wildlife Society). Although climate change is an important subject, we suggest TWP (The Wildlife Professional) redirect the topical nature of future issues to better reflect our published science while providing practical, objective, and science-based information for practicing wildlife biologists…" Wow ! In my view that is just a remarkable statement to be making in the year 2009, when numerous other publications are dominated by issues around climate and the response required by wildlife managers. In fact the letters in general claim to represent a huge scientific community in the United States. Coming from where I do in South Africa, this reminded me of our previous President Thabo Mbeki and his stance on the AIDS crisis ! I hardly have the scientific credentials to argue details, but just from my limited reading and interest, a view like that on climate change has got be questioned. For example, as a general member of the public, I subscribe to much of the available general reading coming out of Algonquin Provincial Park in Southern Ontario. Amongst their magazines are many references to data on the changing arrival dates of migratory bird species, and the impact on the breeding success due to decreased availability of food with the earlier arrival. As a second example, the changing southern and northern limits of tree species distribution with the current and predicted future average increase in temperatures. If these sorts of issues are not important to wildlife managers and their plans for the future, I am not sure what is. As another example from South Africa, a friend of mine has worked on a mini-thesis as part of a course, examining the current available data on predicted biome distribution, temperature and rainfall changes, and how this should be taken into account when wildlife managers plan burning cycles and regimens. Now all these examples might be taken as small and irrelevant, but if all of that is available to me out of general interest in the topic, surely the main current is that climate change is accepted as a very big thing in our current world, and what are we going to do about it as wildlife enthusiasts and managers?