SMALL GRANTS Available To Support Resilience in Wildlife Communities – Call For Proposals in COVID-19 RESPONSE

This will be helpful to a lot of communities suffering hardship due to Novel Coronavirus COVID-19!

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Is your community reliant on wildlife tourism impacted by COVID-19?

Call for proposals for resilience to covid-19 virus grants for eco-tourism projects in developing countries.

The Lion’s Share is currently considering proposals between USD $20,000 and $50,000 focused on strengthening resiliency in communities reliant on wildlife-based ecotourism. The deadline to submit your proposal is 5 pm (EST)May 15, 2020. UNDP Lion’s Share programme encourages any interested non-profit organization to submit the following proposal!

The PDF below has information about this opportunity and below that is a pdf of the application form. Good luck and God bless you all!

lions_share_small_grant_ecotourismDownload

smallgrantsapplicationformDownload

As of April 14, 2020, over 1.8 million people worldwide have contracted the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. The spread of COVID-19 is a health crisis but it is not just a health crisis. COVID-19 threatens to create devastating social, economic, and political crises that could leave…

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Adele Paxton to Perform Aid Benefit Concert , October 25th, in Glasgow University Chapel

Just a quick mention that ‘Mackie and Me’ are holding a charity concert soon! Read on for details!

Charles's Weblog

I am sending out this information for a fundraiser for St Andrew’s Clinics that my cousin Adele Paxton as part of “Mackie and Me” is going to be performing their unique contemporary folk, classical, and jazz compositions on October 25th 2019, in Glasgow University Chapel! Details as follows:

Click the image to visit the St. Andrews’ Benefits For Children ticket sales point on Eventbrite. The concert will be held in Glasgow University Chapel in aid of African kids with medical needs.

Apologies to any of you who already know about it and already have tickets. They say they are very much looking forward to seeing you all and having an evening of music together! It is rather special music, too!

If you don’t yet know Mackie and Me check out their website for some haunting songs based on the poetry of Walter de la Mare! http://mackieandme.com/

They’d love it if…

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30,000 Sea Turtles To Be Released on Guatemala’s Pacific Coast!

30,000 Sea Turtles To Be Released on Guatemala’s Pacific Coast! ARCAS is half way through their GlobalGiving drive https://www.globalgiving.org/…/rescue-30-000-sea-turtles-i…/ and still needs a couple more donations to attain the $5000 goal. Wednesday the 18th is a bonus day, so please donate then if you can, for best impact!
https://wildopeneye.wordpress.com/2019/09/16/30000-sea-turtles-to-be-released-on-guatemalas-pacific-coast/

Wild Open Eye - Natural Vision, News from Wild Open Eye

ARCAS , the non-profit Guatemalan NGO formed in 1989 to rescue, rehabilitate and release wildlife works in the cities, jungles and on the beaches. This year amongst other things, they hope to protect, raise and release 30,000 Pacific sea turtle hatchlings, and you can help them achieve this sweet goal if you want!

How ARCAS Saves Sea Turtles

ARCAS hires local guides (the majority of whom are former turtle egg poachers), conducts educational activities and purchases sea turtle nests with the goal of burying and safely incubating hatchlings for escorted release to the surf zone. Their target for 2019 is to incubate at least 30,000 Olive Ridley, Green and Leatherback sea turtle eggs in the Hawaii and El Rosario hatcheries on the Pacific coast of Guatemala!

ARCAS sea turtle hatchery on the Pacific coast of Guatemala at Biotopo Hawaii protects sea turtle eggs from poachers who would otherwise trade them…

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Sharks Attacked! Overview of Major Global Shark Traders, Catchers and Species.

Another good one from TRAFFIC. Read this for a better understanding of the extent of the reported global trade in sharks and rays.

Wild Open Eye - Natural Vision, News from Wild Open Eye

Sharks and other fish for sale at a market in Delhi, India. TRAFFIC photo and copyright.

NEW REPORT: Almost 600,000 metric tonnes of sharks, skates, rays and chimaeras (Class Chondrichthyes) are caught each year by world’s 20 heaviest catchers. New report reveals need to improve monitoring of rapidly changing trade patterns.

A TRAFFIC study released today has identified the world’s top 20 shark and ray catchers and traders, who collectively account for some 80% of global reported catch averaged by year between 2007–2017.

Commercial and artisanal
vessels from Indonesia, Spain, India, Mexico, and the United States topped the
list of catchers during the studied time period, with a combined total of
333,952 metric tonnes (mt) caught on average each year.

Shark fin consumption in East Asia, traditionally eaten as a soup during celebratory occasions, is a key driver of trade. An average of 16,177 mt per year of shark…

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Greta Thunberg – Making a Point? Or Not Making the Most of her Point?

Hugh Paxton’s Blog saw the following news article on the BBC News website and in my opinion Greta Thunberg is doing this wrong. Her actions are watched, and her words listened to, by millions. This is an incredible accomplishment and all credit to her! Crossing the Atlantic without emissions is great theatre. But it is not how people can live or, realistically, if they could, would choose to do. This is theatre, as I said, but it is also circus verging on freak show.  It will catch the media eye. Theatre does. But it could do much more.

 

My idea? Link the journey to actions people, young people, can actually take. Bring climate away from the margins of human response and place it in the mainstream and the real. Check the following link on clothing before looking at the BBC’s coverage of Greta’s journey. If she made the same journey on an ordinary plane (as most people will continue to do) and donated an amount of money to a project that would match and offset her air travel carbon footprint (tree planting being an obvious example but there are many other worthwhile and  imaginative alternatives) and raised the issue of clothing and the advantages of buying second hand and influencing the clothing industry she would demystify the entire issue in a way that people can emulate (without too much effort). Greta Green Used for the Greater Good. The spending power of the world’s teenagers is an economic force to be reckoned with. A carbon free boat trip across the pond won’t change that. Here is the link to clothing from The World Resources Institute. After that, check Greta on the BBC.

Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion

https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/07/apparel-industrys-environmental-impact-6-graphics

News article about Greta Thunberg’s Atlantic Crossing

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-49331885/greta-thunberg-s-zero-carbon-journey-i-might-feel-a-bit-seasick

Surprising New York, Horseshoe Crab Watching

Click on the image of breeding Atlantic Horsehoe Crabs to view the short video and read my article about viewing this annual wildlife spectacle that’s been ongoing for about 400 million years!

Horseshoe Crabs in New York? Yes, indeed, this article and video take a brief look at some rather wonderful sea creatures— living fossils closely related to the ancient Eurypterid Sea scorpions. These are Atlantic Horseshoe Crabs, Limulus polyphemus and they have love on their minds!

 

Limulus polyphemus males encircling an egg-laying female at New York’s Sunset Cove in Jamaica Bay area. C. Paxton image and copyright.

 

 

Sit back, relax and join me on a trip to roughly 450 million years ago. Not a dinosaur in sight! It will take another 200 million years before they get going. Crawling up a beach is a helmet shaped creature with a long spiky tail, ten eyes and it has arrived with love in mind. Yes, this is in New York!

 

  Read More on my website hughpaxton.com

Jimmy & The Djinn Gets Nice Review!

Jimmy & The Djinn cover illustration by Suzi Seha

“5.0 out of 5 stars Pure entertainment

April 14, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I loved Hugh Paxton’s first novel Homunculus, so I was looking forward to reading Jimmy and the Djinn. This is a very different book to Homunculus, but it has the same type of brilliant imagery, humor, and lively action that I’ve come to expect from this author.

I also appreciate the research that went into this book. It was refreshing to read a book about medieval knights that depicts them the way they really were, instead of romanticizing them. Even the food is a good representation of medieval food, and it was little touches like this that really set the scene for me and helped show the difference between Monkshall and the outside world. The effect is gratifyingly spooky.

If you’re looking for entertaining fantasy and you want something a bit different, Jimmy and the Djinn is an excellent choice.”

Author’s note: My teen fantasy novel Jimmy & The Djinn is great if you like DjinniCrusader stories

A diagram of destruction: Extinction stats

A short, easy to understand diagram of impending catastrophe!

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48104037

 

 

 

The Facebook Un-Dead!

Hugh Paxton’s Blog advises all readers! Read this! And don’t worry too much about it. LP Hartley wrote “the past is a different country”. He added “they do things differently there”.

They do. Did. I like Hartley!

We are unfortunately doing similar things.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/society/soon-the-dead-on-facebook-will-outnumber-the-living

Reminds me of Swiss banks! And many other things.

Cheers!

Hugh

 

Surprising climate change quiz (and getting your kids to eat their kale,foiled Nazis and carrots)

 

This is quite fun, educational and I did rather less well than I thought I would! Which is annoying!

Give it a shot!

If you have children who won’t eat their kale skip the ‘one million starving children dream of eating kale’ ploy. It doesn’t work and never has.

Instead, give them the relevant quiz result and tell em that if they don’t eat their kale they’ll be swept away by a tsunami, have their heads smashed in by freak hailstones the size of billiard balls, run out of water and be responsible for mass extinctions unparalleled since the death of the dinosaurs and the other horrors listed, for your convenience and your child’s education, at

https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions

That won’t work either. But it should give them nightmares and scar them for life.

Incidentally if your kids won’t eat their carrots don’t tell em it will help them see in the dark. This was a ploy used by the British to hide their invention of RADAR from the Luftwaffe. The Germans were wondering why the RAF kept shooting down their bombers on moonless nights, the Brits allowed them to decode secret messages exhorting The Few to eat carrots and carrots joined sauerkraut on the mandatory German aviator’s menu. I’m not saying your kid is aware of this cunning subterfuge and its role in the destruction of Nazi ambitions of conquest but in the internet age you never know. And you don’t want to risk your credibility. Stick with tsunamis/hailstones etc. and give em the quiz.

Here’s it is – the quiz!

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/04/specials/climate-change-solutions-quiz/index.html

Better luck than I had!

Cheers!

Hugh