Category: Environment

{{Egyptian authorities have closed down several ports due to torrential rains, strong winds and low visibility that also disrupted Suez Canal operations over the past three days.}}

Egypt’s official MENA news agency says Wednesday that ports of the northern Mediterranean city of Alexandria and Dakhila were shut down starting Sunday, while Nile Delta cities suffered power outages and fishing stopped in cities like Damietta, northeast of Cairo.

It says the number of ships crossing the Suez Canal decreased by half due to poor visibility.

A Suez Canal official however says Wednesday that operations have returned to normal. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

MENA also reported ten fishermen went missing after their boat capsized near Marsa Matrouh on the western coast.

{{The lions that roam Africa’s savannahs have lost as much as 75 percent of their habitat in the last 50 years as humans overtake their land and the lion population dwindles, said a study released Tuesday.}}

Researchers at Duke University, including prominent conservationist Stuart Pimm, warn that the number of lions across the continent have dropped to as few as 32,000, with populations in West Africa under incredible pressure.

“Lion numbers have declined precipitously in the last century,” the study, published Tuesday by the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, reads.

“Given that many now live in small, isolated populations, this trend will continue.

The situation in West Africa is particularly dire, with no large population remaining and lions now absent from many of the region’s national parks.”

Fifty years ago, nearly 100,000 lions roamed across the African continent. In recent years, however, an ever-growing human population has come into the savannah lands to settle and develop.

That has both cut down the amount of land lions have to roam, as well as fragmented it, researchers said.

Using satellite imagery, the researchers determined the amount of land now available for lions that remains wild and minimally impacted by human growth.

Those lands are rapidly diminishing, and more territory will likely be lost in the next 40 years, the report said.

Five countries in Africa have likely lost their lions since a 2002 study was run, the report said.

Only nine countries contain at least 1,000 lions, while Tanzania alone has more than 40% of the continent’s lions, it said.

“An obvious caveat is that areas for which we detect little conversion of savannahs to croplands may still suffer human impacts that make them unsuitable for lions,” the report said.

“Over-hunting for trophies, poaching — of lions and of their prey species — and conflict with pastoralists may not have any visual signal to satellites.

Even where there are low human population densities and areas designated as national parks, there (may) not be lions within them.”

The report calls for more mapping and studying to be done to ensure the lions’ protection.

{Wirestory}

{{Botswana, one of Africa’s premier safari destinations, said on Thursday it will ban commercial hunting of wildlife because of a decline in animal populations.}}

The government has decided to “indefinitely suspend commercial hunting of wildlife in public or controlled hunting areas” from January 1, 2014, the environment ministry said in a statement.

The government of the diamond-rich country stated that the killing of wild game for sport was no longer seen to be “compatible with either our national commitment to conserve and preserve local fauna or the long term growth of the local tourism industry”.

Tourism contributes about 12 percent to Botswana’s gross domestic product.

Hunting concessions in the vast southern African country currently exist in the Okavango Delta and in parks in the Kalahari region, famous for its high-end tourism facilities.

The country boasts large numbers of big game like elephant, lion and buffalo, but the government has voiced concern over a sharp decline in some species.

“If left unchecked this decline poses a genuine threat to both the conservation of our natural heritage and the long term health of the local tourist industry which currently ranks second to diamonds in terms of its revenue earnings,” the ministry said.

It added that individual licences for specific game, in specific circumstances, would be assessed.

The ban was foreshadowed by President Ian Khama in his state of the nation address last month.

Earlier this year Spanish King Juan Carlos, 74, went on what was to become an infamous elephant hunting trip in Botswana’s northern Okavango region.

The trip attracted widespread criticism back home, as the country was battling an economic decline.

His expedition was cut short after he suffered a hip injury.

{{Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, has been plagued by water hyacinth plants for over two decades.

While its flowers can be beautiful its foliage can grow to cover large swaths of the waters in a dense green mat of leaves that choke the shoreline of fish.}}

Fishermen often struggle each day for a meager catch, but an entrepreneurial weaver has found that the invasive plant can be a free source of material for the area’s women who make handicrafts.

“When we make products from this hyacinth, we are empowering women economically. They become self-reliant. That means we are alleviating poverty,” said Caroline Agwanda, who heads Hyacinth Ornaments Production Enterprises in Kisumu, Kenya.

The organization, which sells products ranging from handbags to furniture, aims to give employment to disadvantaged women, youths and those with disabilities.

For years, the area’s weavers have used banana and sisal fibers to make their wares. They are now turning to hyacinth because of its abundance.

But if the weavers’ craft is flourishing, many in the local fishing community are suffering.

Water hyacinth grows into a thick bed of waxy leaves and violet flowers that cover the surface of the lake. It is native to South America but was introduced in Africa in the late 1800s. The plant species can double its mass every five days, according to scientists.

Because of its dense growth, it blocks sunlight from reaching the lake’s native aquatic plants, which affects fish and other marine life– and those who make their livelihoods catching them.

“It has really affected us because the quantity of fish that we used to get from this lake has diminished,” said fisherman Jonathan Opiyo, a fisherman.

The difficulties faced by the fishing community are evident at the local markets, where instead of fish traders and buyers loudly haggling over prices, there are only a few quiet voices.

The weavers are not even putting a dent into the sheer growth of the plant, which at the moment is particularly severe.

“It goes all the way — the furthest you can actually see,” said Philip Ochieng, a research scientist who is working with the government to mitigate the environmental problems caused by hyacinth.

“This is the biggest acreage of water hyacinth since it was first reported in Lake Victoria in 1992.”

Methods that have been tried in the past include the release of South American weevils that eat the plant, as well as machinery that shreds from the water surface. These efforts worked for a while but were not seen as a permanent solution.

Ochieng does not advocate the weavers’ use of hyacinth, because transporting it from the lake to their homes could help the plant spread.

However Agwanda says she thinks the weavers could make a real contribution to the removal of the harmful plant from the lake.

She would like to see support for the project and to have the resources for machinery that would help make thousands of meters of hyacinth rope each day.

“If we have like a factory somewhere, we’ll be consuming a lot of hyacinth,” Agwanda said.

The wares that Agwanda’s group creates are sold mainly in large towns across Kenya. The finished items are not cheap, and some she says some locals do not appreciate the innovation of utilizing a menacing weed.

“They say, ‘You normally get this hyacinth free of charge from the lake. You should sell it for 20 shilling.’ They’re not looking at the time and skill of coming up with new products and a competitive product,” she said.

CNN