Palm oil free Chokolit for Easter?

Ultimate feel good factor here - indulge in delicious chocolate this Easter knowing that you are helping wildlife and supporting an environmentally-friendly business. Louis Barnett was 12 when he started the Chokolit Company and, like many creative and entreprenneurial people, struggling with formal education due to dyslexia.

Many people achieve huge success despite dyslexia, including Richard Branson and (probably) George Washington. Many more struggle for a foothold on the educational ladder, their often intelligent and multi-layered minds working against the linear sequencing required for reading and writing. A few years ago I delved into the difficulties, delights and dilemmas of dyslexia, becoming convinced that we need to cherish dyslexia genes as they will help us survive - even thrive. Today's handicap, tomorrow's selective advantage.

So tuck into that Chokolit; I'd particularly recommend the "Biting Back' bar with the elephant on the wrapper. Premium Belgian Dark Chocolate with Chilli (and nary a smidgeon of palm oil). The chilli bit amuses me... concentrated chillis are quite successfully used as "pepper spray" to keep elephants off farmers crops in both Africa and Asia. Truncated pleasure.

Eggciting discovery in Cambridge

A gift from the grave. Rising to public attention this Easter is a perfect present from Charles Darwin. The size and shape of a Frys cream egg, this little treasure's original owner was a south American Tinamou from Maldanado - a male Tinamou in fact, as it is the males of the Nothura that incubate the eggs. Tinamou are related to cassowaries, emus, kiwis, rheas and ostriches.

This specimen has been lurking since the late 19th Century in the Zoology Museum at Cambridge University where zoology professor Alfred Newton had deposited it. Like a neglected but secure deposit in a Swiss bank, modern curators discovered the egg that was one of only a very few bought back from the Beagle's wanderings. Newton was sent the egg by Darwin, through the intermediary of his son Frank, and the professor's notebook records that "The great man put it into too small a box, and hence its unhappy state."

Cracking.

Body language bonanza

The Europe summits have provided a host of photo ops and what rich seams they provide for miners of body language.

This is my favourite, from the Independent today. The annointed, the boss and the wanabe. Anyone who has spent time studying non-human primates will have seen something similar in multi-male groups in their own habitats.

We are not so very different. Professor Filipo Aureli's research group has recently demonstrated that consolation between members of a chimpanzee group reduces stress and is not simply a technique for deflecting aggression. This is indicative of empathy, usually thought to be a uniquely human characteristic. On April 1st (naturally) a BBC report looked into calls by Aureli and others for the Great Apes to be re-classified as hominids and the suggestion that this should be exposed to public debate by the Linnean Society. Dr. Sandy Knapp, Chair of the Linnean Society Committe was asked for her opinion. "What makes us the same is more interesting than what makes us different" she said.

Is that an empathetic arm President Obama, or a confirmation of dominance, or a "thank you for the troops my friend"?

Who is with me that a mountain gorilla would be able to read its intent in a heartbeat?.





(Thanks to Aveling Artworks for permission to use this contemplative illustration).

Carbon Cha-cha-cha?

The Cha-cha-chá and a host of sensuous latin fusion dances diffused out from Latin America and created an enthusiastic following around the world. Please, Latin America, consider carbon-carbon-carbon at the regional World Economic Forum in Rio de Janeiro next week (14-16 April) and set the rest of the World dancing to your tune. The summit will address "Implications of the Global Economic Crisis for Latin America" as well as "other serious challenges, such as climate change". In the region that hosts the Amazon, this add on for climate and carbon issues is nothing like enough and leadership is needed, from the World Forum, from Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who will open the meeting and from the other heads of state also part of the summit.

The forum has set up a climate task force, with business and "thought leaders". Worthwhile, but again, not enough, and possibly a distraction. It is focused on alternatives and adaptation - the 20%+ of the problem that could be solved by stopping deforestation and degradation is almost a throwaway line in the letter this group sent to the G20 leaders this week. Meanwhile, many of the companies listed are still looking to biofuels for renewable energy and ignoring the impacts on land use and natural habitats - thereby ignoring ecosystem services of water and biodiversity in addition to the carbon calculations.

Is "low carbon propserity" feasible? Certainly prosperity is a motivator, but so is survival and that has to take precedence. If the Amazon dies it is Giselle's "dance of death" that will be percolating out from the Americas to the rest of the world rather than the life-enhancing Cha-cha-chá.

(H)air force one

Just 12 generations ago, Barack Obama's ancestor Thomas Blossom was born in the little Cambridgeshire village of Shelford, 20 minutes by car (3 by helicopter) from where Air Force One touched down in Stansted a few hours ago. The local Hair Salon called Hair Force One has been handed a marketing bonanza.

When young Thomas was a mere toddler, the Blossom family moved to the nearby village of Stapleford, thereby sparking a neighbourly feud 429 years later as each village jostles to claim this famous heritage of their Puritan resident.

Now Barack, Mr. President sir, sprinkle a little fairy dust over those G20 leaders please. Change has come back to old England.

Axolotl Anxieties

Altogether now...... "Ahhhhhhhh" for the Mexican Axolotl. As with Bambi's big baby head and saucer eyes, it is the retained larval features of the Axolotl that deliver our response.

Endangered by degraded habitat and invasive predators, it was at least a comfort to learn that the Durrell Institute of Conservation & Ecology, the Darwin Initiative and the Zoological Society of London, are amongst those who have taken up international cudgels to support Mexico to retain this appealing neotenic amphibian. Move over Bambi, the Mexican Axolotl is surely the flagship species for our times (and just as cute).

(Thanks Biomes Blog for the alert)

Death by palm oil

Elephants from the "Conservation Response Units" are called upon by farmers in the Indonesian island of Sumatra, when their crops are being raided by wild elephants from nearby forest. The captive ones patrol the forest edge and warn the raiders away. Sounds apocryphal but I've seen it working - and the balance between conserved forests and local agriculture is maintained.

Enter the commercial oil palm companies - even one that should know better, a subsidiary of the UK-registered company Anglo Eastern Plantations that is a member of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. Not only is the company clearing protected lowland rainforest illegally in an area that has not been zoned for conversion to agriculture, but it has built a road through an elephant sanctuary. This opens up general access and last Tuesday two of the elephants were shot.

Something to ponder as you eat your ice-cream, spreads and other goodies loaded with palm oil - also recently shown to be suspect in terms of saturated fats. There are some sustainable plantations and some efforts by the food industry to comply. Good, balanced, recent info is supplied by Mongabay and the Rainforest Action Network. But basically the uncontrolled expansion of plantations across the globe is destroying biodiverse forests and peatlands, ecosystem services, orang utans, elephants and more. Leaves a rather bad taste in your mouth, don't you think?