News & updates

Termites Extinct in the Wild

Let say your family has a wonderful old farm home, complete with clapboard siding and beautiful heart pine floors laid on hand cut oak timbers. A house you have lived in since your childhood. US Fish and Termite Service appears one day and releases termites into your house, because your house is the perfect habitat for this previously “extinct in the wild, nonessential-experimental” termite that was recreated by US Fish and Termite Service biologists. US Fish and Termite Service buildings are modern concrete and steel buildings and simply will not support these experimental termites. You, of course, demand the termites to be removed as US Fish and Termite Service had no legal authority to release termites into your family’s house.

Much to your dismay, you are told “NO”, because the SETC (Southern Environmental Termite Center), DOT (Defenders of Termites) and the RTC (Red Termite Coalition) may sue the US Fish and Termite Service. To make matters worse, you demand to speak to the Director of US Fish and Termite Service, however your requests are ignored as your house is being destroyed. Instead, the Director sets up a special meeting of US Fish and Termite Service, Southern Environmental Termite Center, Defenders Of Termites, and the Red Termite Coalition to discuss this nonessential, experimental termite program occurring in YOUR house.

That’s right, YOUR HOUSE – USFTS TERMITES; but the Director meets with the termite lawyers and the special interest groups who make a living off of suing US Fish and Termite Service. Now, I ask you, who is the only true stakeholder in this scenario and who was not invited to the meeting?

Related content

IWMC Feature

Conservation Influencers

Conservation Influencers is a searchable directory of the animal activist, environmental and ecological lobby. It examines the history, mission, methodology and reputation of NGOs to assess their impact on the global conservation cause.

Franz Weber Foundation

From 1990 until 2015, Franz Weber Foundation (FFW) managed the Fazao-Malfakassa National Park in Togo, which was, according to an in-depth investigation by Duke University, ‘established by forcing the local communities off their land and without taking into consideration their point of view’. That same study cited convincing evidence from reports published in 1990, confirming that competition for land use was already ‘creating conflict between the local communities and park managers’. In 2015 Togo refused to renew FFW’s contract because, the report says, ‘local communities were still excluded from the management of the natural resources of their land’ and FFW had ‘failed to fulfil its contract’. Franz Weber Foundation plays a major role within CITES because it funds and manages from Switzerland the African Elephant Coalition (AEC), which represents 32 African range states, some of which have barely any elephants and others none at all. Contrary to the wishes of the range states in Southern Africa, which manage most of the world’s wild elephant populations, the AEC at CITES’ CoPs repeatedly tables proposals to put all of the world’s elephants in appendix I. And the AEC uses its voting power to keep in place prohibitions on ivory sales and all other trade in elephant-related derivatives, including skins and hair, which Southern African nations wish to legalise.

Read more...