Forest guards in India’s Kaziranga National Park might be closer to getting the weapons - and permissions - they need to fight poachers.

New Delhi has been asked by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee (WHC) to step up anti-poaching efforts in Kaziranga National Park, where a greater one-horned rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) was recently killed. According to the Times of India, resource requests are likely to include acquisition of stronger equipment for forest officials, such as powerful firearms and night vision tools, as well as increased financial support. There is also an emphasis on local community involvement - important because poachers tempt locals with financial rewards to assist them in their killings of the park’s protected species.

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On 21 may 2009, we apprehended 5 poachers who had snared and killed a grey duiker and 2 red necked francolin.  They also made 10 bags of charcoal.  The following day we apprehended 4 illegal charcoal makers with 10 bags charcoal in their possession. After taking them back to Caua Camp, under guard, it was discovered that one of the poachers in our custody was Mr Fuma, who we’ve been looking for since 2004 for shooting and killing an elephant, (whose tusks we have been in possession of since the incident).

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The effort will facilitate research that could help protect these endangered species from going extinct– or at least leave a record of their genetic makeup behind. The first specimens to enter the collection will be blood samples from California’s endangered Channel Island fox. They will be followed by genetic material from the American crocodile and the Hawaiian goose.

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Good news from Afghanistan this week: the country declared its first internationally recognized national park today, called Band-e-Amir, which includes a striking series of six deep blue lakes in one of the country’s best-known natural areas.

The area of Band-e-Amir is near the Bamyan Valley, where 1,500-year-old giant Buddha statues once stood before being destroyed by the Taliban.

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The tall waterfall is known as the “Great Falls,” and has been featured in a philosophical poem by William Carlos Williams, and even as a nice spot for a murder in a Sopranos episode. Williams’s poem focuses upon Sam Hatch, who jumped over the falls, and later gained notoriety for becoming the first known person to survive a ride over New York’s Niagara Falls.

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That is what I asked myself after reading this article from the BBC, about how a western region of Scotland known as “Harris Island” is voting on whether or not to attempt to make the area a national park (Harris is not actually an island).

The area’s population has decreased by 25% over the last twenty years, prompting residents to search for methods to develop Harris’ economy and halt its declining population trend. Other than that, the BBC has provided little additional information.

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On Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty ordered the National Park Service to ease existing mountain biking restrictions, possibly opening nearly eight million acres of recommended or proposed wilderness lands in approximately 30 parks to mountain biking.

The Bush administration has released several controversial rule changes and “clarifications” over the last few months that have put even the most critical of Bush’s environmental record into a state of disbelief at the potential environmental consequences of those regulations. But this one is a little different.

The rule change issued Thursday pits the sometimes-allied (non-motorized) recreational environmentalists against the “preservationists,” who see the rule change as just another human incursion into pristine areas that would further degrade its ecological integrity. Opponents argue that mountain biking can lead to erosion thus threatening stream health and that mountain bikers are often at the root of on-trail conflicts with hikers and horseback riders.

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The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the government of Cameroon have just created a new national park to preserve habitat for the Cross River gorilla, the world’s most endangered great ape.

Besides the Cross River gorillas, the 261 square mile Takamanda National Park will also protect populations of forest elephants, chimpanzees, and a rare primate and close relative of the mandrill, the drill.

Takamanda also forms part of a trans-boundary protected area with Cross River National Park in Nigeria, safeguarding about 115 gorillas (a third of the Cross River gorilla population). Trans-boundary protected areas allow species to roam freely between nations.

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Perhaps smarting over a judge’s recent decision to scratch the Bush administration’s plan to allow snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, now Bush has said, “Damn it! If I can’t snowmobile in Yellowstone, at least I want to go mountain biking!”

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The group in favor of protecting the private land from development plans to ask for $1.2 billion from both the U.S. government and Florida State government to cover the cost of buying the property from its landowners. About 7,372 acres of land that contains sensitive vegetation would be bought and would comprise the national park– not the entirety of the Florida Keys. A lawyer who represents some of the landowners has already said that it’s “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

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Thank you for welcoming me back after an extended hiatus travelling our great American countryside.  Burned out from the stresses of the Sust Enable project, my partner Scott and I took off for the great wilds of U.S. National Parks in early August.  I haven’t written a blog since, as my adventures swept me far from the reaches of the Internet, for the most part.  Now I am back in Pittsburgh, not living sustainably, yet still reeling from the life lessons reaped from the past four months.

I anticipated having a slew of breathtaking photographs to offer you, alongside commentary from the trip in which I reflected on our often-severed connection with nature, and the deep wisdom such a connection provides.  Instead, one night while we camped in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, our video and digital camera were stolen from the glovebox of Scott’s car.  In the middle of a peaceful campsite, in which the sense of goodwill invoked a dozen campers to leave their car doors unlocked that night, a band of thiefs took advantage, slipped in after dark, and robbed a handful of people… not only of material possessions, but of their precious trip memories.

I wept inconsolably when I learned that the camera which held our trip photographs had been taken from us.  I cared little for the money-cost of these items, but I couldn’t stop hurting from the void that the thief left in me–having robbed me of the potential for life-long memories.

Memories surely live on in one’s mind… but as an avid student of the sciences, psychology easily reminds me that minds distort experiences.  I was hoping to use the photographs from our trip as a guideline for revisiting the feelings and sights that this wonderful trip stirred in me.  That hope is gone now, exchanged for a fleeting handful of cash to another.

And so, in the middle of my meditations on how the entire human race might be unified if we each and all had the opportunity to pause in the arms of nature’s bounty… I was sharply reminded with a single malicious act… that we have much further to go before then.

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Burns says he was fascinated by the idea of telling the story of how Yellowstone and other national parks were created: “in a culture so dedicated to the almighty dollar, so dedicated to a kind of extractive and acquisitive mentality. It’s phenomenal. So how did this happen? Who were these people?” The documentary will be broadcast on PBS in six parts of two hours each. It is scheduled to debut in the Fall of 2009.

Via Los Angeles Times

Image: backpackphotography on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Mallipo beach, on the Taean peninsula, is considered one of South Korea’s most beautiful beaches. It’s 3 km of white sands call to beach-goers and eco-tourists alike. Today, however, Mallipo’s white sands are buried under a 10-cm thick blanket of black crude that stretches over 50 km of coastline.

The Taean Peninsula itself is listed as one of the top “22 Priority Sites for Conservation” in the Yellow Sea, according to the South Korean-Chinese Government Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem Program. Taeanhaean National Park boasts 250 species of flora, and in the winter the area serves as an important stopover for many species of migrating birds. The area is home to a number of unique species such as the Finless Porpoise and the Bar-tailed Godwit, which makes the longest non-stop migration flight of any bird.

Some of the most delicate wetland ecosystems in Korea are also located on the same peninsula, south of the spill. To date, oil from the spill remains concentrated in the north, around Mallipo beach. However, Nial Moores of Birds Korea, a national birding and conservation organization, warns that it is likely that currents will carry the oil south to the Geum Estuary and the Cheonsu Bay wetlands. There is no current estimate of the consequences this would have for the area’s migrating birds.

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