A DOZEN years have passed since, amid much fanfare, the UK鈥檚 Darwin Initiative was set up. In my opinion it is one of those grandiose-seeming plans that, despite facing gloomy predictions, has turned out to be a success. Since it was launched in 1992, the initiative has committed to spending more than 拢35 million on more than 300 projects in 100 developing countries to help them enhance and protect their biodiversity.
Many of the initiative鈥檚 projects concerned the sustainable use of natural resources, including the bush-meat issue and the prevention of poaching. Although the Department for International Development (DFID) does not work directly with indigenous people, its aid programmes fully support their rights concerning the use of natural resources, and the department鈥檚 forestry programme encourages community-based forest management in several countries.
Elliot Morley, the minister for environment and agri-environment, tells me that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has sought independent expert advice on the public-health risks of illegally imported meat, including bush meat. In particular, this includes advice on the risk of exotic human infectious diseases and retroviruses entering the UK through the food chain. Morley says the advice to the FSA is that the public health risk is very low. Yet while simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) does not regularly jump the species barrier, there is evidence that it has crossed to humans from other primates on eight occasions. However, this is most likely to be associated with the capture and butchering of animals and not with bush-meat consumption per se, and even that risk is low. Studies of people who frequently hunt and consume primates have found no evidence of SIV transmission. Recently another disease has turned up in humans, simian foamy virus. As with SIV, transmission is not likely to be associated with consumption of bush meat. Also no illness has been identified in people with antibodies to this virus, said the minister.
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I am advised that Her Majesty鈥檚 Customs and Excise are alert to illegal imports, and ministers say they will crack down hard on traders of illegal meat. The difficulty is catching them.
ONE positive consequence of the recent tsunami disaster is that it has generated considerable worldwide interest in the marine environment. Worthy of special attention are the many isolated, typically cone-shaped undersea mountains that have developed over thousands of years and now rise relatively steeply 100 metres or more from the surrounding sea floor. In the North Atlantic alone there are some 800 major seamounts; most are associated with the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge. They deserve special attention for their unique ecology and as important nurseries for many commercial species of fish.
I asked ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) what was being done to protect the Darwin Mounds, cold-water coral reefs situated 180 kilometres off the north-west coast of Scotland and now permanently scarred by trawlers. Ben Bradshaw replied that, following a request from DEFRA, the European Commission has introduced measures to protect the mounds from further damaging trawling activities. The Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency is making sure the restrictions are adhered to, and so far it has not reported any breaches. In April DEFRA will publish details of a research project to determine the condition of coral reef structures on the Darwin mounds.
I fear this information may get submerged in the hoo-ha of the general election likely to take place this year. Certainly an incoming government should be scrutinised on this matter most carefully.
