Aliens committing suicide

Rust fungus creating havoc:

During the nineteenth century Acacia seligna, better known as Port Jackson, was introduced to the Western Cape for soil stabilisation. It was also deemed to be beneficial as animal fodder and for fuel wood. It must have seemed a good idea at the time.

This alien tree soon started invading the delicate fynbos systems of the Cape and there was no stopping it. Both physical and chemical control failed miserably as the Port Jackson marched forth relentlessly on its road of destruction.

In 1987 a rust fungus was introduced, which infected only the Port Jackson and no other species. The fungus itself does not kill the plant, but invokes a potent infection stress. In reaction to this severe stress the Port Jackson forms galls, with which it eventually strangles itself.

The spores of the fungus are spread widely by the wind.

The life expectancy of a Port Jackson tree has dropped from fifty years to less than ten...

On a different front a specific weevil which feeds only on the seed beds of these trees has also been recently introduced.

Hopefully the fynbos will soon reclaim these barren areas.

Printed format

For those who still prefer the feel of paper and the smell of glue:

All five the novels in the Sam Jenkins Series are now also available in printed format from Amazon.

Media Frenzy

Cecil who?

I am not a hunter. I don't even like hunting. But I am not a lunatic or a zombie either.
Read a little. Look up some stuff on Google. Educate yourself a little and start thinking for yourself - don't simply swallow everything the media pushes down your throat. It is nothing but opium for the masses.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily the media can whip up a storm in a tea cup, leaving the frenzied masses foaming at the mouth with indignant fury.
All just because someone had given the lion a name. Every single day we are bombarded with hunters posing with their kills - rhino, elephant, leopard, giraffe, greater kudu, you name it. If the 'hunter' is some scantily dressed eye candy there might be a ripple, but otherwise nothing... But make it personal by giving the victim a name, and all hell breaks loose. The righteous masses, most of whom have no understanding of the concepts of 'sustainable use', 'ethical hunting' 'extinction' or CITES, jump on the band wagon with unbridled fury.

Whether this hunt had been ethical remains to be seen, but time will tell.

While everyone is still ranting and fuming, I have a message for you from my friend Arthur:

"The night after Cecil was killed, poachers crossed the border into the Tsavo National Park and slaughtered five elephants in minutes. All five died in a radius of fifty yards. The tusks were hacked out, and rangers found the carcasses and the orphan the next day.
Spare a thought for my nameless relatives."

Did you see anything about this in the media?

Neither did I.

The swear word is "poaching", people. That is where the danger of extinction lies. An elephant is poached in Africa every fifteen minutes.

Now that is something to go ballistic about.

 Do I hear your voice out there?

Killed for a four inch horn!

Some two years ago a friend of mine had all the rhinos on his farm dehorned for fear of poaching.
Removing the horn of a rhino is as painless as a haircut and has no effect on the social structure, feeding habits or fighting habits of the animal. Fighting still occurs with the same frequency and ferocity as before, but serious injuries and fatalities are reduced to zero.
Once the horn has been removed, it starts growing back at a rate of approximately 5cm per year. Just like hair, albeit a little slower.
On a visit to the farm my friend pointed out the remains of a rhino that had been poached a couple of weeks ago. The savages actually killed this rhino for the sake of two year's worth of horn growth. I made it my mission to find and assess every other rhino on the property.
Not one of them had a horn exceeding four inches (10cm)!
Over and above the monetary implications (half a million bucks down the chute for the owner), that was a prime breeding stock cow and all her potential offspring are gone forever.
Bloody savages.

As the old saying goes: if you keep on doing what you've always been doing, you will keep on getting what you always got.

Isn't it time to try a totally different approach? There are thousands of rhinos in privately owned breeding programs in this country. Lift the ban on the trade of rhino horn and the supply/demand balance will collapse. The bottom drops out of the price, and poachers will no longer be prepared to run the risk for a pittance. With rhino horn cheap and freely available, buyers will soon realise that they have been conned all along - the stuff is useless as aphrodisiac and has zero medicinal properties.
The rhinos are happy: they are no longer threatened and keep growing new horns to be harvested from time to time, like sheep being sheared for their wool. No harm in that.
The breeders are happy: at long last their considerable investment is beginning to pay off.

And who knows, maybe the rhino will eventually claw its way off the endangered species list.

I'm just saying...

Missing slideshow

The link to the slideshow in my previous posting has become dysfunctional. Please go to the Youtube link instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdgX7JUoK9I

Thank you for pointing it out, and thanks for all the views.

Who will feed them?

...and with what?

I feel I need to expound on my previous post: please download the link http://nas5.kizoa.com/kp/Q/o2jz9z06.mp4 (it takes about a minute to download, so be patient) and have a look at it. I did it this way in order to evade the myriad of ads YouTube seems to be sticking onto everything nowadays.

This topic is something that has has been worrying me since my youth (which was a long, long time ago).
Become hunter gatherers? There will be nothing left to hunt or gather.

Mankind has been transgressing the law of exponential growth for generations. Mother Nature is not the benign old lady she is made out to be. There will come a time when she will bite back.

Death of Africa - the demise of a continent.

Humanitarian Aid in Africa: Quo vadis?

This is not a conscience soother. On the contrary, it is an effort to revive the slumbering concepts of logic and reason, buried deep beneath the media-fueled brainwashing of preconceived ideas and indoctrination.

Have you ever stopped to think about where the tragic road of Benevolence, Humanitarian Aid and Goodwill will eventually terminate? And sure as God made little green apples, terminate it will - this continent is rapidly being pushed beyond the point of 'sustainable use'.

Yes, it is indeed noble to donate mildly in order to feed that hungry little child with the huge fly on his upper lip. Even after 'administrative expenses' and politicians skimming off the cream, there just might be enough left to actually feed the child. Should the child be fortunate enough to survive, what is going to happen once he reaches his uneducated puberty at age thirteen or fourteen?
Yes, spot-on: the strongest drive in all things living will take precedence over all else - the instinct to procreate.
That will in short order lead to ten more hungry little mouths to feed, with the same heart breaking pleas for donations. The begging bowl just got a lot bigger. And this vicious circle will just keep on repeating itself, growing exponentially.

Who will then feed all those children? With what? Who could ever hope to educate them?

Productive farms are being divvied up and given to hordes of to non-productive voters with no inkling to actually produce anything. Once these farms have been stripped of everything edible, the hordes move on to the next one. But a vote is a vote. That is the democracy of Africa.
This once bountiful continent is being stripped and devoured.

And the righteous world is benevolently watching it happen, with consciences soothed by their donations.

The time will come when no amount of money can buy a single bag of maize meal or a loaf of bread, simply because nobody is growing corn or wheat anymore. It is easier to beg and demand than to work and produce your own food.

Then what?