Charles Darwin's ecological experiment on Ascension isle

A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret.

Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice.

Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest".

What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.

By a bizarre twist, this great imperial experiment may hold the key to the future colonisation of Mars.

The tiny tropical island of Ascension is not easy to find. It is incredibly remote, located 1,600km (1,000 miles) from the coast of Africa and 2,250km (1,400 miles) from South America.

Its existence depends entirely on what geologists call the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is a chain of underwater volcanoes formed as the ocean is wrenched apart.

However, because Ascension occupies a "hot spot" on the ridge, its volcano is especially active. A million years ago, molten magma explosively burst above the waves.

A new island was born.

Back in 1836, the young Charles Darwin was coming to the end of his five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no naturalist had gone before.

Aboard HMS Beagle, he called in at Ascension. En route from another remote volcanic island, St Helena, Darwin wasn't expecting much.

"We know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder," the residents of St Helena had joked before his departure.

But arriving on Ascension put an unexpected spring in Darwin's step.

Professor David Catling of the University of Washington, Seattle, is retracing Darwin's travels for a new book. He told the BBC: "Awaiting Darwin on Ascension was a letter from his Cambridge mentor, John Henslow.

"Darwin's voyage of discovery had already caused a huge sensation in London," he explained.

"Henslow assured him that on his return, he would take his place among the great men of science."

At this fantastic news, Darwin bounded forth in ecstasy, the sound of his geological hammer ringing from hill to hill.

Everywhere, bright red volcanic cones and rugged black lava signalled the violent forces that had wrought the island.

Yet, thinks Professor Catling, amid this wild desolation, Darwin began to hatch a plot.

Out of the ashes of the volcano, he would create a green oasis - a "Little England".

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TED: John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers

In his home of Namibia, John Kasaona is working on an innovative way to protect endangered animal species: giving nearby villagers (including former poachers) responsibility for caring for the animals. And it's working.

John Kasaona
John Kasaona is a pioneer of community-based conservation -- working with the people who use and live on fragile land to enlist them in protecting it.

Illegal bushmeat 'rife in Europe'

About 270 tonnes of illegal bushmeat could be passing through one of Europe's busiest airports each year, the first study of its kind estimates.

A team of researchers says the illicit trade could pose a risk to human or animal health and increase the demand for meat from threatened species.

The figure is based on seizures from searches carried out over 17 days at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

The findings appear in the journal Conservation Letters.

A team of researchers from France, Cambodia and the UK said it was the "first systematic study of the scale and nature of this international trade".

"We estimate that about five tonnes of bushmeat per week is smuggled in personal baggage through Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport," they wrote.

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Saving Africa’s Witch Children

I hope that focusing the whole world on Africa during this years FIFA World Cup it will be to show the world some of the horrors that still take place in this very underprivileged continent.

Infuriating, sad, and heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking. These kids in villages across Nigeria are beaten, tortured, burned, starved, and murdered because some idiot religious figure deemed them witches. If they’re lucky they’re merely abandoned. National religious figures in Nigeria are getting rich selling the child witch panic by producing gruesome videos and anointing local bishops with witch-detecting power (for a fee, of course). I’ve never been moved by a documentary to immediately write a check. I wrote one last night to an organization called the Children’s Right and Rehabilitation Network, which has established a sanctuary to care for the outcast kids.

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Anti-gay laws in Africa are product of American religious exports

When he arrived at Kampala’s Hotel Triangle for a three-day conference, the Rev Kapya Kaoma knew that he would not like what he heard.

The clue was in the event’s title — “Exposing the truth behind homosexuality and the homosexual agenda” — and in the line-up of guest speakers arranged by Stephen Langa, head of the Ugandan-based Family Life Network (FLN), and an outspoken advocate for the criminalisation of homosexuality in Uganda.

Given top billing at the event hosted by the FLN was Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries, an American conservative Christian group from California, and a Holocaust revisionist whose controversial book The Pink Swastika names homosexuals as “the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.”

Weeks after the Kampala conference in March last year — which followed a meeting between the speakers and members of the Ugandan Parliament — a clause appeared in the country’s draft Anti-Homosexuality Bill recommending life imprisonment for certain homosexual “crimes” or, for “serial offenders”, the death sentence.

To Mr Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who is project director of Political Research Associates — a Massachusetts-based progressive think-tank — it was further evidence of how America’s Christian Right has stoked intolerance to homosexuality in Africa.

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