Endangered species disappear as numbers face ‘total collapse’
Adam Sloan meets with Stanley Johnson to talk about his work protecting endangered species
More than 16,000 species worldwide are facing the threat of extinction, primarily as a result of human activity.
For 30 years, Stanley Johnson has been campaining for the protection of endangered species. As an MEP between 1979 and 84, he chaired the European Parliament’s committee on the environment and has since written more than ten books on environmental issues. Recently he has travelled on fact-finding missions out to places such as India, Malaysia and Brazil, investigating human impact on endangered species. He is also the father of Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and Conservative Higher Education Spokesman.
Johnson recently went to India, looking into the falling tiger population. When the British left India in 1947, there were around 50,000 tigers left in the wild, now the number is as low as 500: “We are seeing an almost total collapse of the tiger population in India,” Johnson said, “one of the big factors is demand for tiger bones and tiger parts from China, as this is used in certain traditional medicines.”
There is also a growing “general pressure on the tigers’ habitat.” With the population of India now exceeding a billion people, there are less and less prey species for the tigers to eat and also increasing forays into their reserves: “you are getting increasing conflict between humans and tigers. You may get a situation where a tiger will attack a cow, or even a human, and there will be calls to kill it.” The situation is increasingly getting out of hand, “there are probably more tigers in zoos in Texas then there are in the wild at the moment.”
The mountain gorrilas that inhabit areas of Rwanda and the Eastern Congo are also suffering as a result of human pressures. The war situation in this region has contributed the the drastic reduction in the gorilla population: “Gorillas are constantly getting caught in the crossfire of the militias.” Much of the gorilla’s habitat also lies on potentially lucritive supplies of coltan ore; “there have been a huge influx of miners, many will come across a gorilla and shoot it, one gorilla could keep the miners fed for days.”
There is also a growing trade in the export of illegal bush-meat out to the West, with an estimated 5 million tons of gorilla meat exported from Rwanda and Congo last year. In London, gorilla meat can be sold for up to £300 per kilogram.
Johson has become involved in the Dianne Fossey Gorrilla fund which encourages mining outside gorillas’ areas.
Most recently, Johson has been to Borneo to look into falling numbers of orang-utans that inhabit the island’s primary forests: “it is our own thirst for palm oil which is having the worst effect on the habitat of the orang-utans.” Palm oil is an ingredient in many products in the UK. In Borneo, much primary forest is cut down to make way for palm-tree plantations; “probably the crisps you eat in the bar have got palm oil in them!”
One campaign currently running in the UK is called the ‘Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil,’ “this is to force companies like Tesco and Sainsburies to ensure they source palm oil from plantations not built at the expense of primary forests.”
Over the past 100 years, Orang-utans have lost 91 percent of their population. They are the only great apes outside Africa and, despite legal protection, are still often killed for trade in their meat or body parts.
“I don’t think we in the UK do enough,” Johnson finishes by saying, “for example we should boycott companies who are not sourcing their palm oil sustainably, or who use timber taken from hard wood forests.”
With continued habitat destruction resulting from human actions, many of the species that we look upon so fondly could soon disappear.
Andy Samberg
All we can do is protect them as best we can!