Sea buckthorn: from the Mongolian steppe to Canada. Genghis Khan unavailable for comment.
Another bad joke
“Conserving Biodiversity – The UK Approach” has just been launched, and very worthy it is too. There are many sensible suggestions, including about what individuals can do. And there’s much talk of “joined up working across the public, voluntary and business sectors,” and of “a more holistic or ecosystems approach” which recognizes “the interconnections between living things, their environment, and the services they provide.” In fact, the press release kinda reminded me of a recent article about buzzwords whose whole first paragraph consisted of one buzzword after another.
The one buzzword that’s missing, of course, is agrobiodiversity. But you knew that.
Despite all the hand-waving about joined-up holistic interconnected strategic partnerships, in 24 pages there is one — oblique — reference to traditional farming, and one sentence on the desirability of something called “agri-environment schemes.” There’s also a weird table on the implementation of the strategy in the four countries that make up the UK, which is supposed to outline the biodiversity duty of public bodies as determined by legislation (p. 10). The word “agriculture” appears in the sections on England and Northern Ireland, but it really is very difficult to understand what that actually means. And that’s it.
Maybe somebody who knows more about this document — and the process which gave rise to it — can help us out here. Was the exclusion of agricultural biodiversity from the national strategic framework for biodiversity conservation in the UK a matter of conscious choice? Or did it just fall through the cracks, as usual?
All the tea in India
National Geographic video on Indian tea industry.
Creating and curing obesity
Better late than never, I guess. I’ve only just realized that the September issue of Scientific American was entitled Feast and Famine, and juxtaposed the ironic twin killer trends of hunger and obesity. Most of the material is unfortunately behind a paywall, but I have borrowed a hardcopy from a colleague and will be reading through it in the near future. If you’ve already done so and have any comments on what the various high-profile authors involved say about agrobiodiversity, let us know. One commentator has said:
This issue of Scientific American tells us there’s money to be made by creating and then curing obesity. That’s what the science approach to obesity is about and what the prevention-based approach is up against. ((I’ve borrowed my title from this article.))
Do you agree with this take?
Culling badgers backfires
There’s been a lot of news and discussion recently in the UK on animal diseases such as mad cow, foot and mouth, and bluetongue. Here’s another one to worry about: bovine tuberculosis. A paper just out in the Journal of Applied Biology explores the interaction between agricultural and wild biodiversity in the context of the spread of this disease in the UK ((H.E. Jenkins et al. (2007) Effects of culling on spatial associations of Mycobacterium bovis infections in badgers and cattle. Journal of Applied Ecology 44 (5), 897–908. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2664.2007.01372.x)).
Bovine tuberculosis can be spread by badgers, which have therefore been routinely culled for some years in many areas. But it turns out that badgers are in fact more mobile and adventurous in areas where their numbers have been thinned out. Which means they are most effective in spreading tuberculosis to cattle in exactly those areas where measures have been taken which were supposed to control the disease. The law of unintended consequences in action, I suppose.
Meanwhile, a big cull of feral pigs is on in Australia. ((Our occasional contributor Michael Kubisch wrote an interesting post on feral animals a few months back.)) Is this going to have some unintended consequences too?