Enviro-Blah!

Environmental Observations

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Saturday, October 4, 2008

One of the biggest threats that wildlife faces, other than habitat loss, is direct persecution from humans. The illegal trade in wildlife is still a huge industry in many parts of the world, particularly southeast Asia, and this unsustainable harvesting of wildlife poses a real threat of extinction to many species.

Tigers and rhinoceros are species which are under great threat of total extermination due to poaching for parts involved in traditional medicines and even in developed nations such as the United Kingdom, direct persecution is still a problem for raptors, especially the Hen Harrier.

On thaibirding.com I have catalogued persecution events of birds as I have heard of them or discovered them myself and unfortuantely there will be many hundreds of cases that I am unaware of: Bird Persecution. In Thailand birds are captured for food, to prevent them from eating farmed fish, for the cage bird trade and for releasing to make merit in Buddhist culture.

Unfortunately, as well as suffering loss of habitat at an accelerating rate, wildlife is still under direct threat of destruction at the hands of humans.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Everyone but those that live in caves must now be aware of the so called Greenhouse Effect and that carbon dioxide is thought to be highly influential in the process of climate change.

What is talked about far less often is the role that Methane plays in global warming. In fact, there are a whole group of other gases that are thought to contribute to the greenhouse effect; water vapour being amongst them.

Methane though has been rapidly increasing in the earth's atmosphere from a variety of sources. Some of these sources appear natural but after a little thought it becomes apparent that man has a hand in the increased release of methane into the atmosphere.

Sources of methane include;

  • cattle

  • rice growing

  • landfill sites

  • termites

  • warming seas

  • melting permafrost

  • I have built a page on squidoo.com which discusses these issues; please take a look at it: Methane is a Greenhouse Gas.


    This page expands upon that whioch I have mentioned here and also suggests some reading material. There is also place to vote on which source of methane poses the greatest threat to the environment in terms of its contribution to the greenhouse effect.

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    hnnn
    This blog is purely designed to provide me with a device to moan, groan, gripe and waffle about environmental issues; any interest it may have to others is completely coincidental.