The Raxa Collective blog caught the attention of colleagues in Thailand a few years ago, and we have been exchanging visits, and ideas, with those colleagues ever since. And now we have taken it from informal mutual admiration to formal collaboration. We have just started a strategic alliance with Asian Oasis, a pioneering sustainable tourism/hospitality company in Thailand.

Raxa Collective will now collaborate with Asian Oasis on the global promotion of their properties, which Amie and I have been getting to know with site visits over the last two years. We will begin introducing those properties on this blog, and look forward to your response.

One of their lodges in Northern Thailand, Lanjia Lodge, was recognized during 2015 as the Best in Community Engagement & Development in Asia by Wild Asia.

And that was last year, the Year of the Wooden Sheep according to local astrological tradition (search on that term for some interesting discoveries). The Year of the Red Fire Monkey (again, search it: you will find results describing it as the year of strength and determination; setting goals and achieving them; and business flourishing)  begins February 8th, 2016 and ends on January 27, 2017. We look forward to earning the Monkey’s goodwill through our good works.

South America, the EU and south E-east Asia are among the places from which the UK sources its food Photograph: Andre Penner/AP

We know local food is better for many reasons. We tend not to think about the negative impacts on those places where food is sourced from as a reason to source more locally. Thanks to the Guardian for this article:

More than half of the UK’s food and feed now comes from overseas, which is burdening poorer countries with the related environmental impact, a new study says.

More than two-thirds of the land needed to produce the UK’s food and feed is based abroad, researchers said, meaning 64% of the related greenhouse gases are emitted on foreign soil.

Since 1986, the size of this land has grown by 23% to match increasing demand, with associated CO2 emissions rising by 15%, the research published in the Journal  of the Royal Society Interface states. Continue reading →

Black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes). Photo © Kimberly Fraser/USFWS

The first half of this article is a bit gruesome, due to the particulars of how this species arrived at the brink of extinction. The second half is the “bright horizon” side of the story, and thanks to The Nature Conservancy for sharing it (among all their other good works):

…Until 2013 willing landowners were hard to find. But that year the Fish and Wildlife Service implemented a “Safe Harbor” program by which the agency promises not to prosecute participants for accidental take of ferrets if they agree to protect prairie dogs and allow ferret monitoring and plague management. What’s more, in some states the Natural Resources Conservation Service pays them for hosting ferrets. Without Safe Harbor the Endangered Species Act tends not to work on private land; and without private land ferret recovery can’t happen. Continue reading →