To stand a chance, conservation has to back interventions that can go big
Tag: Rainforest
Machetes and seedlings: the key to saving Borneo’s logged rainforests, or the next phase in their degradation?
It’s 1998, and as Borneo’s rainforests are being ravaged by some of the most unsustainable logging the world has ever known, one timber company is bucking the trend and investing in its future. Twenty years later, the results of Sari Bumi Kasuma’s (SBK) foresight are clear to see. Elsewhere across […]
52 things to do in a rainforest
A tropical rainforest, apart from being galalactically important, is also just a swell place to be. Sure it’s sweaty, sometimes there are leeches, and sometimes those leeches wriggle into places they shouldn’t. But for the most part a rainforest is one of the best places you can ever visit. Here […]
A globulating necklace of leeches
This is how Redmond O’Hanlan starts his fantastic book Into the Heart of Borneo: As a former academic and natural history book reviewer I was astonished to discover, on being threatened with a two-month exile to the primary jungles of Borneo, just how fast a man can read. Powerful as […]
Grazing The Amazon
There are certain conservation issues that always seem sexy to the documentarian. Anything to do with rhino or elephant poaching. Anything where there are two clear polarised sides–say trophy hunters vs animal rights activists. And stuff with apes, some nice shots in a rescue sanctuary and a good corruption scandal […]
I once had a leech on my willy
Picture this if you dare. I’m less than halfway through a morning of traipsing through the rainforest collecting dung beetle traps when the sudden urge to empty my bowels hits. To many a tropical ecologist this is not a problem. Simply drop your sweaty trousers, pick a suitably unprickly leaf […]
The galactic importance of tropical rainforests
Here are two facts that are rarely put together, but which I think should be much more often. 1) Tropical rainforests today cover around 16% of Earth’s land surface but harbour an estimated 50% of all terrestrial biodiversity. 2) So far, Earth is the only planet in our galaxy that […]
Don’t buy bad machetes
Ten days ago my machete snapped clean in half trying to cut through a fallen tree trunk on a jungle trail. The week before, Paddy broke two others. He bent the blade of the first one chopping through some branches on the logging track which were blocking the car. He […]