The Welsh pony story gets a happy ending, maybe

I mentioned earlier that DAD-Net is holding an e-consultation on threats to livestock diversity. There was a bit of discussion on the nature of the threats last week. One of the more interesting contributions came from Dafydd Pilling of the animal genetic resources group at FAO. He offered “an example in which the threat does not correspond exactly to any of the categories listed in the background document.”

The threat in question is the financial burden imposed on the owners of mountain ponies by the EU “horse passport” scheme. The story can be traced by visiting each of the following web pages in turn:

Passport threat to wild ponies

Time running out for wild ponies

Ponies saved from passport threat

Our little ponies facing extinction

Carneddau wild ponies

The problem goes back to 2004, and we noted it two years ago, but not the dénouement.

Three years ago the European Union passed a law that all such animals had to have a passport and be tagged. This costs £50 per animal, and at that time the ponies were only worth around £15 each so it just wasn’t going to be financially viable for us to keep protecting them.

Then seven local farmers got together, managed to secure Objective One funding and set up the Carneddau Ponies Association to fund and carry out this work.

We also want them classed as a rare breed, which would allow us to sell a group on one passport instead of individually.

Looks like livestock diversity is no less at risk from some EU regulation than the crop kind. Although Dr Pilling does add that “EU rules on ear tagging of cattle had been amended” when they were found to pose “a threat to extensive livestock management practices” in Europe. I’ll try to find out more about that one.

Kava future bright, but not yet

Mental Floss has a longish, well-informed post on kava in Vanuatu, accompanied by some nice photos. You may remember a post I did a couple of years ago now during the last attempt to clear the drink’s name in Europe. Seems like only yesterday. Anyway, this got me wondering whether kava exports to Europe from places like Vanuatu and, in particular, Fiji had indeed resumed. It seems not, but, according to a recent piece on Radio Australia, the prospects for the Fiji kava industry look reasonable. Or at least they did in January, before the latest round of political uncertainty.

Wild fruit relatives threatened in Central Asia

Fauna & Flora International and Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) have published a Red List of Trees of Central Asia. This is part of the Global Trees Campaign.

The new report identifies 44 tree species in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as globally threatened with extinction. Many of these species occur in the unique fruit and nut forests of Central Asia, an estimated 90% of which have been destroyed in the past 50 years.

One of the threatened fruit trees is the red-fleshed Malus niedzwetzkyana, from Kyrgyzstan.

Working with the Kyrgyz National Academy of Sciences, the Global Trees Campaign is identifying populations of this rare tree in Kyrgyzstan and taking measures to improve their conservation. With distinctive red-fleshed fruit, the Niedzwetzky apple is an excellent flagship for the conservation and sustainable management of this beleagured forest type.

The report is available online.