Wednesday 19 January 2011

Virunga Volcanoes

So this post isn't strictly illustration-based but I thought I'd share something interesting that I just came across.  

Doing a little bit of research into Mountain Gorillas and their dwindling habitat due to, amongst other things, slash-and-burn agriculture, I decided to have a quick GoogleMaps search of where they're from.  There's only a few places left where Mountain Gorillas can be found, one of which is the forests surrounding the Virunga Volcanoes in Uganda.  These screenshots are taken from there (have a look for yourself on maps here).


When you zoom in to the straight lines (which I initially thought were just where the pictures had been pasted together) around the base of the volcanoes you can see the effect that this style of agriculture has had on the environment.  I'm not going to go into the ethics of this as it's not worth mine or your time, but I just wanted to share these images as they blow my mind just a little bit.  Apologies if this isn't new to you (as I'm sure it probably isn't) but, as I say, I just came across this and think that it's absolutely incredible.





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