“This means we will have plenty of the corn and beans, but a poor rice harvest,” astrologer Kang Ken announced after the ceremony which was presided over by King Norodom Sihamoni.
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
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.
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.
Baroque painting celebrates agrobiodiversity
I did not expect much agrobiodiversity in the Victoria & Albert’s exhibition on the baroque. But I found some anyway, in the mid-17th century Flemish oil painting Flower Garland with the Holy Sacrament and an Angel’s Head, possibly by Daniel Seghers (1590-1661). It’s reproduced below, but you can consult a better image on Flickr.
It looks to me that what I’ve marked are maize cobs, although the one on the right could, I suppose, be sorghum. If they are maize, it is interesting that they seem to show three distinct varieties. There’s variation in the other cereals too. I guess it goes with the general exuberance of the baroque. But what’s with those peduncles?
Nibbles: Asparagus, Eels, ICT, Dingoes, Phoenix dactylifera, Apples, Bear-pit
- Liguria’s asparago violetto gets Slow Food treatment.
- “The bottom line is we just don’t know why they are struggling so badly.”
- Using mobile phones to treat plant pests and diseases in Uganda.
- Dingoes have positive effect on biodiversity.
- Date palm genome mapped.
- Boffins see the light, explain negative effect of fertilizers on biodiversity.
- Brogdale situation “better,” but for how long?
- Wait, Bern has a bear-pit?