WHAT CAN WE DO NOW?
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic is a direct consequence of
our broken relationship with nature. Scientists have long been warning us that
humanity’s destruction of nature, left unchecked, will result in the spread of
deadly diseases, droughts, famines and other disasters. For decades, amid the
hustle and bustle of our daily lives, these warnings fell on deaf ears. But we
no longer have the luxury to ignore the deep interconnection between human
health and nature. The continuous loss of habitats and biodiversity is threatening
the existence of all living beings, including us.
This is where conservation comes into play. Conservation is
the strongest weapon we have to protect the planet we call home. But while
conservation is crucial for our survival, its importance is not being
communicated to masses in an efficient way, especially where it matters the
most in the world. interiorsafarisea.com
Challenges to Shell’s seismic blasting on South Africa’s Wild Coast
From the Centre for Environmental Rights, South Africa: Challenges to Shell’s seismic blasting on South Africa’s Wild Coast
6 DECEMBER 2021
Background
In early 2013 Impact Africa applied for an Exploration Right for petroleum resources in terms of section 79 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, 2002 (MPRDA). The Application was accompanied by an Environmental Management Programme (EMPr) which was submitted for approval in terms of (the then) section 39 of the MPRDA. After submission of the EMPr, the Petroleum Agency of South Africa (PASA) accepted the application on 1 March 2013, and required a Public Participation Process to be conducted.
PASA and the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy issued Impact Africa with the Exploration Right on 20 May 2014. This right was renewed in 2017 and for the second time in 2020, effective for a period of two years from August 2021.
Royal Dutch Shell PLC and its subsidiaries, as Operator of the Exploration Right, intend to commence with 3D seismic surveys for the exploration of petroleum resources in certain licence blocks off the Wild Coast region of South Africa.
According to the EMPr, the seismic survey involves extremely loud (220 decibels) underwater explosions or discharges at intervals of 10 to 20 seconds which are to continue 24 hours per day for four to five months. The EMPr provides that a vessel will tow an airgun array with up to 12 or more lines of hydrophones spaced 5 to 10 meters apart and between 3 and 25 meters below the water surface. The array can be upwards of 12,000 meters long and 1,200 meters wide.
Many prominent South African marine scientists have called on the government to halt the survey due to concerns about harmful impacts on South Africa’s marine ecosystems and coastal communities.
Two urgent applications were brought challenging the seismic surveys on behalf of interested and affected parties including local associations, environmental justice organisations and residents of the Wild Coast region.
Note that the Centre for Environmental Rights does not represent any of the parties in these matters.
Urgent interdict application brought by Border Deep Sea Angling Association, Kei Mouth Ski Boat Club, Natural Justice and GreenPeace Environmental Organisation in the High Court of South Africa (Eastern Cape Division, Grahamstown) and represented by Cullinan & Associates Inc and Ricky Stone:
Letters:
- Letter to Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment (23 Nov 2021)
- Letter to Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy and Petroleum Agency of South Africa (23 Nov 2021)
Pleadings:
- Notice of Motion (29 November 2021)
- Founding Affidavit of Tyrone Gower, president of Border Deep Sea Angling Association (First Applicant)
- Answering Affidavit of Hloniphizwe Mtolo, Country Chair of Shell Downstream (Pty) Ltd
- Supplementary affidavit of Ricky Stone, Attorney to the Applicants (2 December 2021)
- Shell’s supplementary affidavit
Confirmatory Affidavits:
- Confirmatory Affidavit – Climate, Risk GIS Specialist David Ogier
- 2. Second Applicant – CA- KMSBC-BDSAA
- 3. Third Applicant – CA – P Moodley
- 4. Fourth Applicant – CA – GPAF
Heads of Argument
- Applicants’ Heads of Argument (1 December 2021)
- First Respondent (Shell) Heads of Argument (1 December 2021)
Judgment
- Judgment of the High Court of South Africa (Eastern Cape Division, Grahamstown) (3 December 2021)
- Outcome: Acting Judge Govindjee, for the court, dismissed the application, with costs. The court held that the applicants had failed to establish one of the requirements for an interdict – a well grounded apprehension of irreparable harm. The court found that the evidence used by the Applicants to establish this ground was speculative and that the mitigation measures proposed by Shell mean that the seismic survey activities must remain ‘low-risk.’
Urgent interdict application brought by Sustaining the Wild Coast NPC, Mashona Dlamini, Dwesa-Cwebe Communal Property Association and four Others in the High Court of South Africa (Eastern Cape Division, Grahamstown) represented by the Legal Resources Centre and Richard Spoor Inc.
Pleadings:
The hurdles of working in conservation films
As a wildlife filmmaker based in a country like India that is high on blue chip and large scale productions and popular voices doing voice overs, specializing in conservation filmmaking is harder than one can imagine.
India is home to Bollywood, an industry that producers over 300-350 Hindi language films each year, my conservation film on roadkills stands almost no chance of getting noticed.
This makes it a challenge to hit that mark with your target audience and get the publicity ball rolling.
How do I address this gap? Well, we make them feel emotionally attached to the animal.
You make it relatable.
You could look at the Big 5 or similar megafauna or make the story feel relatable and humanized. Personified.
Add the drama. Add conflict.
Add the sense of adventure and the idea of pursuing something.
Make them feel like their involvement in this story is worth their time :)
The Unsustainable Underbelly of Ski Resorts by George Kingston
George Kingston is an all-out outdoor person. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and an M.S. in Sustainability Science & Practices from Stanford University. His training has motivated him to advocate for greater sustainability and accessibility within outdoor activities. These days, George is working as an actor and screenwriter to depict our relationships with the natural world.
We never thought about this and here at Mojostreaming, we thank George for educating us!
We would like to hear from you. Do you have any other suggestions on what other changes can be made?
A Tale of Two Species
Is Trophy Hunting Killing or Conservation! We want to hear from you!
If one trophy hunter can spend $200,000 to hunt exotic animals and say it is not about killing, and it is about helping wildlife conservation is he/she being realistic? Wouldn't one say if it is not about the thrill of killing an animal and it is about the love you have for wildlife then why not use the money in a way that saves our wildlife and their future?
Isn't Trophy hunting more about the money versus conservation? Breeding and raising wildlife is a million-dollar business. Do you believe it is about conservation or about the money that flows into one's pocket?
Let us take a look at one organization in Texas that claims to be about conservation: This organization run by 2 people has convinced wildlife lovers and organizations that they care about conservation and with this approach has easily raised millions of dollars to get the business up and running!
Mojostreaming has spoken with the founder and he believes we are not fully educated on what the organization is about. We have invited him to be our guest on our talk show to help us better understand. We are still waiting on his reply.
We encourage you to look up wildlife ranching in America (most are in Texas) One rancher received over 11 million from investors and I believe they easily convince people they are about conservation versus making money off of selling exotic animals to zoos and making money off of enclosed trophy hunting where people easily pay 10,000+ for a kill.
Please research and see what you find and come up with your own impressions.
Let us watch this news documentary and ask yourself if it is okay to kill 8 to 14 other wild animals to bait one leopard so you can kill that one leopard. The fee to participate in this sport cost over 26,000 with the loss of up to 15 animals. Why? just so you can place the head on your wall, take a photo and brag to your friends, and then sell the skin for you to make money off of? Then tell yourself that you love wildlife and you are helping conservation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NdopGBtb0A
ILLEGAL WILDLIFE TRADE IS A HUGE PROBLEM- it generates millions of dollars at the expense of the species. Many animals are on the brink of extinction and one country to blame is the United States of America because that is where the big buyers come from: Click on the link below to learn more:
Not only do we have to worry about the illegal trade of wildlife we have to worry about whether our Zoos are participating in such acts.
Please watch: mojostreaming.com
We can also debate hunting in your local state to control wild animals such as deer, raccoons, turkey, and more. We are not doing enough to make sure hunters are following proper protocol. Are licenses being purchased? Are they tagging and reporting their kill and keeping it to their assigned limit? Are they baiting- using salt block, night cameras, feeding stations? Are they using dogs, scents, and other enticing products to fool the animal? Are they hunting in enclosed fencing like they do in Peru, Indiana? Are they dumping the carcass or taking it to the properly assigned stations for their area? Are they hunting for food or for the trophy and bragging rights? Are they completing the proper permits to be on someone's property, and tagging their stand? It is easy to not follow such guidelines when you have stores like Rural King promoting special feed, salt blocks, and other baiting products during hunting season. How about the hunting contest that is going on in America.
Coyotes were killed at the Southern Illinois Predator Challenge in 2017. COURTESY OF MARC AYERS/HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES
MojoStreaming Art exhibition - Charlotte Williams - starting Monday October 4th
Charlotte Williams is a
highly respected and increasingly celebrated British fine artist with a
particular interest in wildlife. She is entirely self-taught and was
drawing her first animal portraits as young as nine years old.
Despite being afforded a scholarship to Farnham Art College
in her late teens, she headed instead for South Africa and the ‘bush’, where
she spent several years living and working on a game reserve in the Eastern
Transvaal. Immersed in the raw environment of the veldt, it was here
that Charlotte’s life-long passion for animals and the wild was born, and
where she passed many hundreds of hours wandering, observing and sketching all
that she saw.
On her return to the
UK in the mid-1990s, Charlotte continued to dedicate herself to art,
this time in Brighton. She went on to exhibit her work in numerous shows -
locally, and in London. She has since been in great demand and
the majority of her work today is by commission, both at home and
abroad.
Charlotte’s consuming affection for wildlife
conservation has remained paramount, and her depiction of Cecil The Lion,
who lived primarily in the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, has become one of
her iconic portraits. She later auctioned the portrait to
raise funds and awareness of the battle against poaching, and she today
continues to support myriad conservation enterprises and wildlife foundations
across the globe.
Each of Charlotte’s meticulous artworks aims to capture the
soul and spirit of her subjects, from behind the eyes, so that you might know
them and feel them, as if they were living and breathing before you. Her
appreciation of wild animals, coupled with her unapologetic perfectionism -
enable her to create paintings and drawings that are unique and wholly
authentic.
Though now based in her studio in rural East Sussex since
2010 she has an ever growing global following on social media and has
recently been made a signature member of Artists For Conservation. She is
represented by numerous people, including the prestigious London and Sussex
based gallery Rountree Tryon and has exhibited at, amongst others, Masterpiece
Art and Gallery Different in London
.
Mojostreaming is a proud sponsor of this year's 2021 WCFF!
Mojostreaming is a proud sponsor of this year's 2021 WCFF!
Be sure to watch last year's WCFF finalist and Mojo's favorite Documentary: Trailer: youtu.be
Wach the film here:
https://www.mojostreaming.com/video/635/roam4wild-the-documentary-film
Wildlife Conservation Film Festival (WCFF) is an international film festival based in New York and Los Angeles, that promotes and produces interactive events around independent films that promote sustainability and the conservation of biodiversity. The WCFF has global partnerships in Brazil, China, Kenya, and Scandinavia as of November 2019.
The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival was founded in 2010 by Christopher J. Gervais, FRGS at first as a 2-day event and has now grown to a 10-day festival.[1] It is a juried event with attendees and participants that include international wildlife conservationists, filmmakers, photographers, scientists, and people across the globe that work toward the preservation of global biodiversity. WCFF has a global educational outreach program with secondary and post-secondary institutions in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe as of 2019.
2019 Award Winners
- Ecosystem/Habitat: "Desert Wetlands-Pulse of the Outback" by Geoff Spanner
- Education: "I Am Lion" - Tauana Films
- Endangered Species: "Dammed to Extinction" Peterson Hawley Productions
- Feature: "Lost Kings of Bioko" by Oliver Goetzl and Ivo Nörenberg[2]
- Foreign: "Otters and the Exotic Pet Trade" - Four Corners Film Collective and World Animal Protection
- Humans & Nature - "Humans and Nature" - produced by Ian Mauro and David Suzuki
- Music & Nature - "The View South: Puma's in Patagonia" produced by Richard Szikler and Manuela Iglesias
- Newcomer: "Queen of Taru" - Aishwarya Sridhar
- Ocean’s: "The Secret Lives of Humpbacks" Andrew Stevenson, producer
- Short: "African Drivrs-Lion Lights Story" Hector Salgado and Diana Soto, producers
- Wildlife Conservation: "Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan" - Offspring Films Ltd and BBC Natural World
- Wildlife Crime: "The Hidden Tiger" - Rescue Doc Films
Be sure to visit their website: wcff.org
Board of Advisors:
Jane Alexander
Casey Anderson
Gale Brewer
Holly Marie Combs
Fabien Cousteau
Dr. Sylvia Earle
Dr. Birute’ Mary Galdikas
Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE
Dr. David Guggenheim
Dr. Paula Kahumbu, OGW
Ron Magill
Ian Redmond, OBE
Dr. E.O. Wilson
Dr. Patricia C. Wright
David Hamlin
It is about time you learned a thing or two about empathy towards wildlife
It is about time you learned a thing or two about empathy towards wildlife. Here are a few books that will help
03 Min Read
A Zoo in My Luggage by Gerald Durrell
In 1957, Gerald Durrell and his wife set out to "collect" animals from Bafut in the British Cameroons of West Africa for their zoo, a location for which was yet to be secured. They returned with a menagerie of creatures and the novel is an account of how he shifts the animals around England while scouting for a permanent location. 'Throughout my life,' he writes, 'I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in a logical fashion.' A Zoo in my Luggage is a hilarious true story of animal relocation written in Durrell's inimitable style that combines charming descriptions with dry humour. His timeless classic, My Family and Other Animals, is a childhood adventure. This novel captures his unwavering love for wildlife and nature as an adult.
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Who can forget Mowgli? The little boy who was raised by a pack of wolves in the jungles of India. The book follows his adventures with all kinds of animals—Bagheera the black panther and Baloo the bear who teach him the important laws of the jungle to Sher Khan, the tiger who is Mowgli's mortal enemy. Other stories include Rikki-Tiki-Tavi, the tale of a brave mongoose who saves a family from two vicious cobras and Toomai, a young mahout and his elephant. The book transports you to a world of forests and animals, one riddled with meaning and symbolism in a way that can be enjoyed by both children and adults alike.
Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett
After much persuasion from his friends and family, Jim Corbett finally penned down this riveting memoir of his encounters with big cats in the Indian Himalayas. First published in 1944 by Oxford University Press, Corbett used stories from his previous book titled Jungle Stories as its basis. The stories follow him as he tracks and kills several man-eating tigers in India, including the terrifying Champawat Tigress, who set a world record by killing 436 people in Nepal and India before being shot by Corbett in 1907.
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
The Snow Leopard is a day-by-day account of the author's journey into the remote Dolpo region of the Nepal Himalayas with his friend, the biologist George Schaller, to study the mating patterns of the Himalayan blue sheep. He also hopes to catch a glimpse of the elusive snow leopard which ultimately becomes a metaphor for his own spiritual quest as the book progresses. "Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders." His empathy towards the natural makes this book one of the greatest examples of both nature and travel writing.
The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence
Lawrence Anthony, the wildlife conservationist, took in a herd of wild African elephants at his Thula Thula game reserve. The matriarch and her baby had been shot leaving the herd traumatized and highly dangerous. Anthony realized he might be their last chance of survival. This book is the incredible story of his struggle to form a bond with these elephants who ultimately accepted Anthony as their matriarch. When he died in 2012, the same herd of elephants made a twelve-hour journey to his home to mourn his death.
Lucy the elephant
