Truffles at Dawn

As dawn disolves the Transylvanian night tall, forbidding trunks of oak, beech and hornbeam emerge from the surrounding woodland. Bears and wolves live here and deep-seated fears from ancient myths lurk in the shadows. We shiver in the cab of the battered 4-wheel-drive that steers us past a local shepherd, his dogs escorting us noisily along the track. One resonant, silencing bark in response from the deep-chested hungarian vizslas in the back and we enter the woodland. The turreted landscape below is cloaked in low-lying morning mist and, as we cut the engine, the only sound is of silence as the dark forest wraps around us.


Released from the confines of the vehicle, smooth-haired "Matty" and wire-haired "Sisi" scope out the terrain, rustling through the carpet of dry leaves, noses down and tails on the level, at once alert, focused and joyful. They know their business and relish every moment. Cornell leads us along the forest track as morning light starts to percolate between the branches. No tangled undergrowth here; the canopy is high - oak driven upwards to match the skywards spread of the hornbeam, not wasting time or energy in side branches along the way. These are oaks beloved of carpenters and builders, straight and true, left to mature for a hundred years.





At their base are wraiths of movement. Matty is seven, has worked with Cornell since she was a puppy, and is a mistress of the art. He watches her closely as she quarters the gentle slopes, then pushes her quivering snout into the layers of leaf litter and pauses. Usually he is in time to mark the spot and feel amongst the leaves to collect the earthy brown truffle growing on buried roots. Sometimes she saves him the trouble and presents him with her find, collecting a tasty dog treat and a touch of Cornell's hand in recompense. Often she will dig enthusiastically to uncover deeper treasures. It has been unseasonably dry for nearly two months and Cornell is surprised that the moist vizsla noses remain so effective in the dry leaf mould. "It's easier when the snow comes" he offers "less competing smells, they find them more quickly".



Wire-haired Sisi is only two. In the forest shadows she disappears against the crackling leaves, camoflagued by a broken outline of silvery hair and constant movement. As if covered in tumbleweed and on a secret mission she goes her own way, emerging with earthy mouth that speaks of truffles known but not delivered. "I need to spend time with her on her own to train her properly" Cornell admits "but it is difficult to leave Matty home alone when we are going to the forest". Meanwhile, Matty is inadvertantly tackling the training of her canine companion herself. Digging into a promising lead at the base of a trunk, the two work together, but it is not a truffle that emerges in that soft vizsla mouth; it is, or rather it was, a velvety mole, woken abruptly to face its last day. Matty was not about to deliver that prize quite so easily, but Cornell guided her back to business. Sisi lagged behind, rolling luxuriously in the patch of late summer leaves, topping up her coat with aroma of mole.

Reluctantly leaving the forest to return to work and workshopping, we ease our way back along the bumpy track to the village, surprising a Roe deer, leaping over shrubby pasture and into cover. A forester for many years, these truffling excursions with his vizslas are Cornell's solitary lead-in to the hustle of the autumn day. We have intruded but we are grateful and carry delicious memories away - along with a couple of nodular truffles nestling at the bottom of our jacket pockets.

Cornell is part of a talented team helping local communities in rural Romania retain small-scale farming and traditional cultures by making them more profitable. Good for nature and for local economies alike, the Adept Foundation helps retain high nature value grasslands, working with a variety of partners including Fauna & Flora International.

There is no green without blue

Adding Oceans to Future Earth's labels and highlighting this great site from the Blue World Alliance on the horror of ocean plastics.

The pic (packet was not planted) was snapped on the shores of West Kalimantan a couple of years ago- ancient natural roots despoiled by flashy modern rubbish.

The frog prince... from a croak to a chorus.

As a young Cambridge graduate, HRH the Prince of Wales was mocked for talking to plants. Well 'listen up' folks... now beleagured tropical forests are talking to him and they picked the right person. Not only does he know his stuff about organic agriculture, but he has shown real leadership in tackling the rapid deforestation of the planet.

Without political inference or interference, just using his power to convene within both private and public sectors, the prince has set in place a process that provides a viable way of slowing rainforest loss while the world struggles to establish multi-lateral mechanisms and markets for the longer-term. A gathering at St. James Palace today also showcased partnerships that are testing the mechanisms of direct payment for proven results (combined with building capability for "REDD"). Presidents of rainforest nations mingled with world bank boffins, captains of industry and NGOs both global and local, and our own Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change. Some of my takeaway points:

President Bongo of Gabon talked about the "common good" represented by remaining rainforests, but suggested that some of the wealth of developed countries could be similarly regarded as "common good" and used to help the developing countries protect forests. Fair point.

All we need to stem the tide of rainforest destruction is 18-25 billion Euro over 5 years, well deployed. Less than bonus pots available to some giants of the finance sector. This would prevent 7 gt of emissions and turn the global emmisions graph from its rising trajectory back towards less damaging levels.

The window to decide to act is becoming smaller and coming closer. Explorer Pen Halow described the scary results of the Catlin Arctic Survey announced last month. Its thinner than we think and the potential loss of the world's arctic airconditioning system throws into even sharper focus the need to protect our tropical band of climate moderating rainforest.

So how do we come up with these funds? Well, Norway is ahead of us there - already supporting the Amazon Fund and a deal with the Government of Guyana to help them become a low carbon economy. We might need a few more women involved (HRH's gathering had heads of state, chiefs representing indigenous peoples & a diversity of skills on offer but no women speakers and only a few flickers of colourful clothing amongst the black crow suits....!) We might need to highlight biodiversity ... which just seems to be an underlying assumption, following seemlessly from conserved forests, but this is not entirely the case.

Most especially, we need a real deal from the leaders gathering shortly in Copenhagen. We need agreement and action. Amidst all the hurdles of targets and timetables, it could just possibly be that this "interim financing instrument" starts to look enticing and tempting as an offering to rally around. The croaking frog has sounded the alarm and orchestrated a compelling chorus of voices to that end.

Board(s should) walk

Why a photo of a snail on the edge of a precipice? It is a corporate snail, moving exceeding slow, looking out over the precipice and seeing nothing. It has just ventured out from a bed of lettuce and has no idea that life is not all about readily available greenery.

I spent Blog Action Day talking to a Corporate Board about biodiversity, the environment, climate change and why they are relevant to their business. The Group is a household name in the extractive sector. They have taken an interest in these critical issues, have a thoughtful Chief Executive, dynamic senior managers and some knowledgeable staff, so why my state of frustrated depression?

Seems to me that, given the speed of change on our planet, too many Board appointments are already behind the times, their experience increasingly irrelevant. Even if they do make attempts to diversify the skills available to them, new voices can falter amidst the pompous, patronising pontificating of increasingly antiquated corporate arrogance. Problem is that Boards nurture their own nests..... like the UN, they become less and less likely to rattle the branches that sustain them. They regenerate themselves, like with like. If they move out, it is onto another Board in the city.

Companies need to wake up to this if we are to tackle the ecological and economic challenges facing us now. If you are a shareholder, take a good look at the Board and ask questions. If you are a staff member consider what channels you have to propose new skills that Boards might not know they need. And if you are someone who might diversify a Board's perspective - make it known! Change the corporate climate and contribute to the challenge of climate change.

tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck.....

Global wake up call on climate change. So little time and so much to lose if the countries at the climate talks in Copenhagen this December miss the opportunity to take decisive action. The ticking clock (we are at 'one minute to midnight') is waking up people around the world and especially leaders who will be making decisions on a post-Kyoto framework.

Today there are at least 2,400 events taking place on 5 continents to raise awareness. They range from the diminutive nun with a yellow tambourine at Cambridge's marketplace "flash mob" (unable to get through to Gordon Brown on the phone) to the masked man on an Australian beach giving Kevin Rudd a wake-up call. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock...
(Check twitter @tcktcktck for updates).

Entangled bank - wildflowers rule, UK.

An "entangled bank" in Kent stimulted Darwin's thoughts on survival of the fittest. This Sussex bank, snapped at Glyndebourne during the UK's 2 days of summer this year, has been set aside for wildflowers within a formal cultivated garden, and what a feast of diversity is there.

With the UK's 'set aside' programme biting the dust in 2007, and farmers no longer compensated for keeping land out of production, Defra has been consulting this year on how to retain the environmental benefits gained. They are favouring a voluntary rather than legislated approach through "A Campaign for the Farmed Environment’", encouraging the farming industry to promote environmental stewardship within its own parameters for good practice.

Good practice for wildflowers is not restricted to agricultual land, however. "Landlife" focuses on urban & urban fringe areas as well - providing seeds of hope perhaps for the cities of the future. Those cities will be exerting their own pressures on diminishing agricultural land though, and as the demand for global food security forces greater production pressures on our reserves of agricultural land, what will keep farmers on the side of biodiversity?

Crickets lovely Crickets

Taste buds tired of potato crisps or carrot sticks? Try roasted crickets or deep fried spiders - possibly a more sustainable snack on our land-strapped planet. (For recipes click through from "Biting on Bugs")

From an ancient Chinese culture that has traditionally eaten anything that moves it is encouraging to see from Jonathan Watts some signs of a home-grown NGO movement emerging to challenge the decimation of endangered wildlife in the cooking pots of the country:

"The nascent NGO conservation movement is stepping in where the authorities have had limited success by monitoring markets and restaurants, reporting sales of endangered species and trying to change the consumer culture. Among the youngest of several small groups is the Asian Turtle Rehabilitation Project, established earlier this year to save the reptiles from the soup pot. The founding members say they are trying to cross the divide between the culture in which they were raised and the global conservation concerns they have been exposed to via the internet and schooling".

Hopefully not too late for tasty, tortured, troubled turtles and their ilk.

(Photo above copyright Dr. Stephen Browne, with permission).

Is the earth moving?

A tremor of concern and excitment shimmied along my spine with the prospect of an imminent erruption where my heart still lies in eastern DRC. This is not the Heart of Darkness for me - it is the land of bubbling friendship, glistening turquoise lakes and staggering sunsets. The area around and between the romantically-sounding Nyamulagira and Nyiragongo volcanoes sees a breakthrough erruption every few years. Nyiragongo is like an upturned bucket full of a particularly fluid melt - when it breaks through the bucket empties rapidly and previous erruptions have devastated the lakeside town of Goma.

Signs of pending erruption? Of course the wildlife on the flanks of the volcano picks up the early warnings and starts to move - but with this fast-flowing lava, not quite early enough to act as the miners' canary. There are chimps in the forested older lava aroud Tongo (separated from the mountain gorillas across the road in the older, dormant Virunga volcano range straddling the borders between Rwanda, DRC and Uganda). There are local stories of chimps screaming and rushing for safety before previous erruptions. And what do the humans do? Those with knowledge and limited options sensibly prepare for flight. Those competing for the Darwin award pack a tent and prepare to hike up to see the erruption at close quarters.

"My" erruption happened around my birthday and was a memorable treat. The hike up to near the venting summit was exhausting and we pitched our tents on unforgiving old lava, but when little blobs of the molten stuff started burning holes in the canvas during the night we somehow found the energy to move. We were not alone - and with other happy, foolish, volcanic voyeurs
we gathered together to search - fruitlessly - for the couple that had disappeared as aerial detritus descended on the area destroying vegetation and building up a lethal substrate. They emerged from the forest 2 days later, miles away, dehydrated and facing a search/recovery bill. The sights however were staggering and the earth certainly moved for me - the colours, the force, the uncontrollable beauty. But when my boots started to melt I turned tail for Goma and a dip in lake Kivu.

So how imminent is imminent? An image of the monitoring station outside my house on the road out of Goma comes to mind. A monitoring station posing as a decaying behive surrounded by a hopeful fence that was regularly raided by local impoverished opportunists for the wire of which it was constructed. Fairly regularly its keeper would wobble up the lava road on his Japanese-funded bicycle and change the paper on the seisomograph, carrying the precious recordings back for careful analysis in mission control. Mission control had a dusty desk, an open bottle of Fanta, a kettle in the corner with a circular net carefully placed over the open tin of condensed milk sustaining the recorder and occasional visitors. Presumably the 2009 equivalent is digital and streamlined - someone please send me an update. Meanwhile, I leave you with this (accurate!) gem:

"The eruption could be tomorrow, or the day after — or at any other time," said Dieudonne Wafula, the head of Goma's Volcanological Observatory.

So, watch and wait then.

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.

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?

Be afraid, be very afraid....

Step back Hitchcock, stand aside Bird Flu. This is the real horror of our time - scream more loudly. What do you think it is?

Out of breath

Our breathing earth.... thought provoking simulation of CO2 emissions, births and deaths by country.

Darwin's Initiative

The words Darwin and Initiative have a certain symmetrical resonance don't you think? This is a good news story - something of which the British Government can be justly proud. Something that rises above the competitive thrust of party politics. A generator of positive action on behalf of the planet that joins UK institutions in collaborative action with others around the world.

"The Darwin Initiative assists countries that are rich in biodiversity but poor in financial resources to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) through the funding of collaborative projects which draw on UK biodiversity expertise".

Set up in the aftermath of the Rio summit as a response to the dawning realisation of what we were doing to the planet's biodiversity, the Darwin Initiative has now invested £65,350,757 in 602 projects in 145 countries since 1992. And the good news is that the more you dig into those projects the more you realise what an extremely cost-effective initiative this is. While millions, billions, trillions are being thrown around to maintain a leaky global financial infrastructure, these few millions are massaging the beating heart of the biodiversity goose that delivers diverse "ecosystem service" golden global eggs.

While apologising for that laboured metaphor, I cannot apologise for this unfettered admiration for the Darwin Initiative. Actually I have a couple of criticisms. Firstly, they spent so little on administration that the fund "over programmed" and is still catching up after a couple of lean award years. Secondly, the web site is informative but glitchy and rather governmentally boring - although if you delve into the project news you will feed your soul (I mean, of course, rational brain...!) and if you can get the Google link to work you can follow Darwin around the world this 21st Century.

Finally, its not enough. Appeal to the British Government - stop pouring multi-millions into the World Bank and other failing, greedy multi-laterals. This one works. Double, treble the funding. The good projects are there and the scheme is leanly well managed. Every pound you can spare from development or environmental budgets will return a fantastic investment in our future. Where else would you put it? How about transferring to the Darwin Initiative anything you can recoup from inflated pension funds of failed bankers?

Meanwhile, join the floating classroom in Ha Long Bay...

Pines gain value on the climate exchange - a boost for boreal forest stocks!

Boreal Forests (nickname "The Taigas"?): 1. Tropical Forests: less than 1?

At last, the underdog Boreal Forests (http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/boreal.htm) are gaining ground against premiership leaders Tropical Forests in the race to save the planet. So much global publicity and funding is focused on the carbon, biodiversity and water management roles of tropical forests that the boreal forests rarely get a mention. But here's some good news for this important biome - European scientists looked at chemicals called terpenes that are released from boreal forests across northern regions such as Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. Terpenes give pine forests their distinctive smell, and the team found that they react in the air to form tiny aerosol particles that condensed water vapour and doubled the thickness of clouds above the forests, reflecting an extra 5% sunlight back into space. Over such a large area, and in such a finely balanced system, this could be an invaluable contribution.

Fortunately for tropical forests they can also do some of this - just not quite so well. O.K. pundits, off you go. I sense a vigorous debate on the way, as the Boreal Forests fight to claim their place in history. Or, rather, on Future Earth.

Living planet?

The latest Living Planet Report produced every couple of years by WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, measures the health of the planet's ecosystems and the extent of human demand on them.

In summary this 2008 "human demands on the world's natural capital measure nearly a third more than earth can sustain."

We have an increasingly start choice - do we just let competition sort it out (and would the "fittest" survive?) or do we collaborate to sort it out together, as we naked apes are supposed to be able to do? Whatever kind of society we want we don't have much time to ponder. Andy Dufrein's "get busy living or get busy dying" (Shawshank Redemption) has some resonance for humanity.

Waste not, want not

Alternative to charcoal helping protect gorilla habitat. Good to see this appropriate technology in use and all credit to the teams currently promoting it.

During a prolonged lull in the security mayhem of this central African hotspot a few years ago, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme and partners were presciently addressing this problem - setting up a buffer of trees around the Park and monitoring fuelwood use. (Building on the local networks of a health education charity, a "social marketing" campaign distributed both condoms and tree seedlings - and was irreverantly dubbed "pricks and sticks" by the team!) This living buffer of young trees was obliterated by waves of refugees and rising population levels, but perhaps reduced the severity of destruction and left some knowledge in its wake.

Going, going ......

There are 5,487 known mammal species on earth and over a quarter of them are at imminent risk of disappearing. Actually there is one more.... and 8,000 individuals of that species are gathering in Barcelona for the IUCN Congress. According to IUCN (ex "World Conservation Union") these are " the world’s leading decision makers in sustainable development: from governments, NGOs, business, the UN and academia". Can we therefore breathe easily in our sleep, rest assured that this will turn the tide? Not if we leave it to IUCN - rather we have to follow all those worthies back to their home countries and support them in their endeavours there. IUCN meanwhile will be competing with them for funds to maintain a physical estate of offices and officers around the world and - if past decades are anything to go by - failing in its unique niche of catalysing action between government and non-government sectors. We are looking at a poor track record here..... a complete inability to lead the way in "mainstreaming" environmental issues globally or to support its members to do so.

But are there glimmers of light emanating from Barcelona that have nothing to do with the sparkling sunshine conference participants are bathed in? Yes - the forum has provided a platform for some NGO-business alliances to shout their stuff. They are demonstrating that value can be generated from conserved resources, and that we can make that value work for conservation of those same habitats and species. Business meets Biodiversity - not just as a risk to be managed, but as an opportunity.

Are frogs swans or canaries?

Serenading frogs led me to slumber almost every night in Africa. But are these evocative calls swansongs for our amphibian friends? The world might have to get used to missing frogs if their decline continues and in this Year of the Frog, venerable Sir Dave is coming to their rescue. In their declining years we might just hope that frogs show the resilience and determination that Attenborough does in his. (As an aside, BBC Radio 4 listeners will note with pleasure that Attenborough is the first interviewee to reduce lookalike Humphreys from a rotweiller to a puppydog). Our concern for frog declines is not altruism - in retreat from loss of habitat and a warming world they are less able to survive attack by pathogens. The loss of frog song could be the miner's canary of the modern world - alerting us to the danger of our own demise. Hang on in there treefrogs - and 82 year old Sir Dave - we need both of you!

Are you feeling lucky?

"Are you feeling lucky?" Clint Eastwood's character asks in the film 'Dirty Harry'. Here on an increasingly dirty earth another IUCN world gathering is about to descend on Barcelona, and "Transition to Sustainability: towards a Humane and Diverse World" has been put together to this deadline.

It will need more than luck. Adams and Jeanreneaud argue that the two essentials (of a low carbon economy and a world that values nature) require a third companion to have any chance of planetary sustainability - social equity. What was that at the back? "Fat chance" did you say? Well think again... in this philosophical narrative of conservation we are reminded of the self-fulfilling politics of fear. "I had a nightmare..." might not have had quite the resonance, or stimulated quite the change, that Martin Luther King's dream managed to do. All very well and yes, we need inspiration as much as information - but both science and history indicate that we'll change the world only when the selfish genes kick in. Too late? Another soundbite pulled from the ether by these authors.. "there are no sewers on a spaceship".

If you are expending carbon to help save the world at the IUCN congress, you can offset intellecually by engaging in the "sustainability dialogues" around these issues.

And by the way is it, or is it not, the "World Conservation Union" - compare the mixed branding still on the IUCN website against comment on this post.