Environment Archive
Spears & Signatures
Posted by jimheck in Big Game Hunting, Environment, Politics, Wildlife Management on April 18, 2013
A major fight if not an actual civil war is about to erupt in northern Tanzania, as Maasai prepare to battle government authorities in Loliondo, according to a BBC report this morning. The dispute is over a Tanzania government decision to evict 30,000 Maasai from traditional grazing lands near the Serengeti National Park so that [...]
Techtonic in Nature
Posted by jimheck in Ecology, Economy, Environment, Wildlife Management on March 28, 2013
Separate but Equal: A chilling phrase used throughout history to justify such barbaric ideas as apartheid and reenforce the power of the status quo has now been applied to African wilderness in an attempt to save lions. It’s more naive than offensive. Sorry to be such a drag on your week, but when the world’s [...]
David? Debby?
Posted by jimheck in Environment, Kenya, Poaching, War on January 25, 2013
Yesterday’s prickly article in Science that there aren’t as many species going extinct as you thought might be because we’re using drones to nuke rhino poachers. The journal Science is no teenage blog. The rigors of getting published in magazines of this caliber are legend, and the author, Dr. Nigel Stork, comes well credentialed. He’s [...]
Ripped Off Paradise
Posted by jimheck in Corruption, Ecology, Environment, Ngorongoro Crater on January 17, 2013
Paradise is being abandoned. Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater, its greatest single tourist attraction and one of the most pristine areas on earth, is in the midst of a political crisis that threatens normal tourism there. Officialdom in Tanzania is rarely much more than organized crime, but even that can be better than the mayhem currently being [...]
Black Gold
Posted by jimheck in Economy, Environment, Global Relations, History, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda on September 25, 2012
As the U.S. and Europe teeter with their economies their investors are turning to Africa where energy companies are growing rich overnight. Fed up with the failures of austerity in Europe and the even greater failures of politics in the U.S., giant multinationals are directing investment out of their home turfs to Africa. Facilitated especially [...]
No More Mali than Madagascar
Posted by jimheck in Environment, Madagascar, Politics on September 10, 2012
The increasing destruction of Madagascar’s environment is no less critical to mankind than the destruction of libraries and temples in Mali. Two scientific studies completed last month now confirm that the incredible rate of Madagascar deforestation is so severe now that the runoff erosion is “smothering local coral reefs.” This is the first time that [...]
Death Becomes Them
Posted by jimheck in Ecology, Economy, Environment, Poaching on September 4, 2012
There are many different kinds of poaching and some I actually sympathize with. But a particular type of child poaching in Kenya is uniquely tragic. Poaching is hardly confined to Africa. The legendary boar poachers in my childhood home of Arkansas, or deer poachers in my neighboring state of Wisconsin have fed grand literature as [...]
Anything for A Buck!
Posted by jimheck in Big Game Hunting, Corruption, Environment on August 13, 2012
Tanzania’s scandals and sheer wastefulness of its bountiful natural resources are legendary. But last month’s incident took the prize. In addition to the world’s second largest single vein of gold, countless copper and recent rumors of off-shore oil, large deposits of uranium were discovered hardly 100 miles from the port of Dar-es-Salaam last year. The [...]
The Real Terror Within
Posted by jimheck in Ecology, Economy, Environment, Politics on August 7, 2012
Terror in travel is a wonderful way for us guides to get our clients into the car on time, and in Africa, snakes seems to be the trick! In East Africa where I guide there are 42 venomous snakes and every single one is a killer! But now a wonderful assistant professor of biology at [...]
Eat And/Or Die
Posted by jimheck in "Modern" Africa, Ecology, Economy, Environment on July 9, 2012
Organic brats and burgers covered with organic lettuce as Nigeria berated our summer holiday grill obsessions and viciously debated a national law to accelerate the use of genetically modified crop seeds. If my relatives are any indication, America is turning neon green. We couldn’t even use non-organic salt for the July 4th barbecues. And the [...]
The Discriminate Marketing of Death
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Economy, Environment, Poaching on June 21, 2012
Today Tanzanian officials confirmed that a pesticide banned in the US but still produced by an US agrochemical giant is killing elephants and people in East Africa. The pesticide Aldicarb, responsible for a wave of child deaths in California in 1985, is banned from use in the U.S. and 60 other countries, but the EPA [...]
Weeding the World
Posted by jimheck in Environment, Evolution, Wildlife Management on June 12, 2012
The loss of wilderness critically impacts our lives. African compromises known as “same species intervention” and “protected wilderness” may be bitter sweet solutions. I just returned from a visit to the Amazon where I saw first hand the destruction of the planet’s jungles, the transformation of its rivers into commercial pathways for man’s insatiable consumables, [...]
Better Visit The Selous Soon
Posted by jimheck in "Modern" Africa, Ecology, Economy, Environment on May 7, 2012
Bruised but recovered from the embarrassing loss of the Serengeti Highway project, Tanzania looks truly set on creating one of Africa’s largest dams over currently one of its largest game parks. Friday, Energy and Minerals minister William Ngeleja announced during a visit to the area that “This is not a ghost project…Tanzanians will see it [...]
Land Grabs Really a Proxy for Water Grabs
Posted by jimheck in Ecology, Economy, Environment, Uncategorized on March 22, 2012
By Conor Godfrey Paolo Bacigalupi is a master science fiction writer, and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and any other Sci-fi award you can think of. His blockbuster hit was entitled “The Windup Girl.” The story imagined a world in the near-mid future where food-crop biodiversity had plunged due to constant genetic tampering in an [...]