The Bloody Ivory Trade

The Bloody Ivory Trade

We have had a very wet winter here in the UK, but now the signs of spring are all around. With its many shades of green and the bluebells currently carpeting our woodlands, the birds are nesting, and the dawn chorus is loud and genuinely a beautiful cacophony.

I’ve been leading nightingale walks in our local woodlands and following a buzzard family nesting nearby. In a future podcast, we will bring you the whole story.

Today, 24th April is #helpanimalsday. Our friends at One Voice for Animals have hosted this day since its launch in 2022.

The aim is to encourage everyone to do something to help animals. That could be volunteering at a wildlife or companion animal rescue centre, helping a local group survey reptiles and amphibians, donating to your local hedgehog rescue or something else that allows animals.

Please have a look at the One Voice for Animals website www.helpanimals.co.uk 

What will you do for animals today?

And now it is time for this week's Nature News.—————————————————————————————-

Nature News

This week’s Nature News features the funeral for nature that took place in Bath on Saturday, 20 April.

Hundreds of protesters, including broadcasters Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin, marched in a “funeral procession” for the natural world destroyed by climate change.

Some protesters dressed in red and hundreds more wearing black walked through the streets of Bath, Somerset.

The “Mourners” in the performance art piece walked to a drum beat and carried a willow funeral bier of a Mother Earth figure created by artist Anna Gillespie. Environmentalist Chris Packham wore a black tie with an Extinction Rebellion logo as he spoke to the crowd.

The protest aimed to sound “code red for nature” and highlight “the UK’s position as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world” ahead of Earth Day last Monday.

Red Rebel Brigade members, resplendent in their red outfits and white face paint, were part of an international troupe whose members protested through performance art pieces.

Organisers said Saturday’s procession of 400 Red Rebels was the largest gathering to date and that the number was consistently increasing. Groups came from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and across the UK for the procession, which Extinction Rebellion also organised.

Anna Gillespie said: “Unlike conventional protests, the procession will be free of banners or placards. Instead, we are relying on the intense imagery of the vast assembly of Red Rebels and the impact of the figure of Mother Nature on a funeral bier carried by mourners to get the message across

“Everyone participating has a powerful desire to express their desperate feelings of loss and fear as the natural world struggles to survive in the face of our human onslaught.”

Organisers said 43% of UK bird species were in decline, 97% of wildflower meadows had disappeared since the Second World War, and the world was entering its “sixth mass extinction event.”

Bystanders were handed an “Order of Service” containing information on climate change. Other Funerals for Nature were held simultaneously in Boston, Sydney, Gothenburg, and Lisbon.

One of the organisers, Rob Delius, said: “The intention is to send a powerful SOS message for nature by creating a visual spectacle that will shock and inspire onlookers in equal measures. 

The UK has sleepwalked into this nature crisis, and the fact that we are now one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world isn’t being talked about enough.

“We want the processions to create a talking point and move the public to demand that the Government, local authorities, landowners, and businesses urgently do more to restore biodiversity.”

And that was this week’s Wildlife Matters Nature News.

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Nature News to Main feature link

This week's edition of Wildlife Matters Investigates explores the devastating impact of the illegal ivory trade. 

The trade not only leads to the brutal killing of a significant number of elephants for their tusks but also fuels a black market for wildlife body parts. The poaching gangs and black market warlords are running amock and destroying our wildlife and habitats in pursuit of the mighty dollar. 

How tragic and ridiculously short-sighted we can be as a species, and please spare a thought for the many wildlife rangers who have lost their lives while trying to protect wildlife. 

The loss of elephants, a key species, direly impacts biodiversity and devastates their ecosystems—and for what—so someone can have a trinket made from the ivory of an elephant tusk.