In 2013, our attention will focus on the way we are destroying the ocean. For the past two decades, we have been arguing about global warming, yet we’ve been ignoring the fact that the planet’s essential ecosystems are in decline, one of the most important being the ocean.

We are destroying this natural resource that keeps us alive. 10 years ago we would occasionally encounter a campaign to save the dolphin or the sea turtle, but not much about the ocean itself.

But over the last few years, you can feel the ocean starting to get a voice from many directions.

Click on the image above to read why we think 2013 will be the year of the ocean, in thisWired Magazine cover story.

For more on the World in 2013, head over to Wired. For more on the OceanElders work to protect the ocean, take a look at their website.

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

De-extinction. It sounds like a made up word. You can’t bring extinct species back to life…can you?

Wildlife experts have warned that species are currently becoming extinct at the fastest rate since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

So it is great to hear Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan have started a project called Revive and Restore with the stated aim of bringing extinct species back from the dead.

Their mission is “deep ecological enrichment through extinct species revival” and they aim to help scientists advance the field of de-extinction.

Genomic technology is making the possibility of de-extinction increasingly likely and organisations including  The Nature Conservancy, National Geographic and Conservation International are all involved.

Stewart and Ryan tell me the Caribbean monk seal and passenger pigeon are early candidate for de-extinction, while even the Woolly Mammoth is being considered.

Regardless of whether any success is imminent, increasing debate about the ethics and potential for this area of science is a noble goal.

Want to help save the ocean? Join us and become TerraMar citizens.

The ocean is our life force yet we are destroying it on all levels. We are choking it with toxic waste leaving it 30% more acidic since the start of the industrial age.

While this essential ecosystem is at risk the good news is we can protect our ocean if we all come together to act now.

The TerraMar Project’s mission is to create and empower a global community of ocean citizens. I have signed up to help highlight their fantastic work trying to institute change in the high seas.

You can also make friends with a species to raise awareness about the plight. After severalincredible swims with them recently, I have befriended a whale shark. What species will you choose?

The OceanElders is working hard to protect the oceans too. Head over to the website to find out more and join the efforts to conserve the magnificent ocean and species.

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

Getting close and friendly with Peter Knights, one of the guys who runs WildAid and does so much to save species.

He slipped, honest guv!

We were on a trip swimming with whale sharks to raise awareness about the need to conserve these beautiful creatures. Head over to WildAid to find out more.

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

“This November, vote for a president who will lead on climate change.” It was great to read Michael Bloomberg’s tweet yesterday, endorsing Barack Obama’s election campaign for all the right reasons. As the devastating effects of Superstorm Sandy have shown this past week, climate change is a very real threat to our way of life. With the Mayor of New York highlighting the importance of a strategy to combat it at the very top of US politics, it has given me hope for the future.

For a long time we have campaigned on the issues surrounding climate change, I’ve never understood how readily some people are willing to push the issue to one side. Business Week’s front cover couldn’t have put it any better, it would be stupid to ignore what is staring us in the face.

The Carbon War Room has been making some real progress as of late, as we look to help strengthen global infrastructure and better prepare cities for natural disasters such as Sandy. We recently managed to convince Cargill Inc, a worldwide commodity carrier company, to stop using their most fuel-inefficient shipping vessels. This will massively reduce to reduce their carbon emissions, it is these sort of steps that will benefit everyone in the future.

As Mayor Bloomberg has pointed out, Barack Obama is the best man to tackle to job of climate change. If he were to be given a second term in office I hope that he would step up investments in clean technology,  while looking to bring an end fossil fuel subsidies.

In the short term it’s important that those small businesses and entrepreneurs who have been badly hit by Sandy are supported, aid needs to be quickly given to those in need.

Looking further ahead, it’s crucial that our cities are better prepared for these types of extreme weather conditions. Occurrences like this will only become more frequent as time passes, something which I’m sure President Obama and leaders around the world are currently giving a great deal of thought to.

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

Geoff Hoddy and I arrived in Lusaka, Zambia, mid-May and promptly flew up to the Luangwa where we joined our supported projects South Luangwa Conservation Society (SLCS) and Chipembele Wildlife Educational Trust (CWET), staying at the Zambian Carnivore Programme (ZCP) camp along the Luangwa River, assisting our partner organizations with work and discussions on future collaborations and projects.

In the beginning of the cold dry season the dogs were just beginning to den and so we enjoyed a number of good dog sightings of the packs. Among the animal highlights were tracking dogs from the Kaingo pack and the newly formed pack in the Kapamba as they hunted Puku and Impala. Geoff accompanied Eli down to the Kapamba River to track one of the Kaingo dispersing females, who has moved 35km to meet up with two new males. Despite six flat tyres, the multi-day trip was a success, culminating in the dogs making a kill of a Puku in the Kapamba River.

As the primary natural limiting factor on dogs, lions are of key importance and a number of outings were made to collect data on the local prides and coalitions as well.

Wire snare poaching is likely to be the biggest threat to Painted Dogs in the Luangwa. ZCP and SLCS have worked closely with PDC Inc. to reduce the threat of snaring through the formation of the SLCS Painted dog anti-snaring team which targets areas of high risk and importance for dogs based on ZCP data.

As the end of the month neared Geoff, Rachel McRobb from SLCS, Matt Becker from ZCP and I flew to Lusaka with loads of field gear, piling into the Isuzu truck donated by PDC Inc. last year, and drove 600km west to the city of Mongu, the jump off point to get to Liuwa Plain National Park.  Following a long boat ride up the river and another drive into camp we were finally in Liuwa.

In collaboration with African Parks and WWF-Netherlands and WWF-Zambia we were initiating a long-term wildebeest study aimed at determining the factors limiting this keystone species’ recovery in Liuwa.  As the system continues to be restored through AP management one of the critical questions is how many wildebeest can we expect there to be? At the moment there is over 40,000, but whether this will soon level off or continue to increase has big management and conservation implications for Liuwa and the greater Liuwa-Mussuma Transfrontier Conservation Area (LMTFCA) with Angola.  Thus our collaborative study is aimed at evaluating survival, reproduction and mortality of adult cow wildebeest and the influences of climate, predation, and people on them.  To do this we needed a representative sample of collared animals whose fate we could follow, and in a place like Liuwa this was no small task, requiring a helicopter and ground based operation to deploy 50 collars.  It was an ambitious task but thanks to everyone’s hard work and expertise it was able to be completed in three days.  While this took up the bulk of our time we still had a chance to experience Liuwa, including a front row seat to Lady Liuwa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG_-FU3NNgw making a wildebeest kill, a group of 5 cheetah, and plenty of hyena up close and personal. The local dogs had just begun denning less than 500m from a village so to avoid disturbing them we did not visit them, but a good reason to return! 

One of the wonders of the oceans is the reef off Southern Belize called the Gladden Spit. Literally millions of cubera snappers, mutton snappers and dogtooth snappers converge to lay their trillions and trillions of eggs.

It could forever be one of the greatest tourist attractions for Belize and it is incredibly important for these species that the Gladden Spit is protected. Very sadly the OceanElderswere told that the Government is allowing fishing boats to wade in and this miracle of nature could get wiped out, leaving Belize and the world poorer for it.

The Grand Cayman Islands are an example of the opposite kind of behaviour. Millions of groupers go there to spawn in the winter and the whole ocean is full of them. The Government have just voted in a perpetual ban on fishing them, which will not only benefit the Caymans, but the countries around them. They deserve full praise for their move.

We’re hoping to catalyze more and more commitments by Government and business in the Caribbean as Virgin Unite and The Nature Conservancy work on plans for our upcoming Summit to be held in May 2013.

Videos by Shawn Heinrichs - Blue Sphere Media

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

Delighted to share news from Australia, where the Government has announced the giant manta ray is now protected under national environment law.

The giant manta ray has been listed as a Migratory Species under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. With their population dropping by over 30% worldwide, this is a crucial step to saving these beautiful creatures.

A year ago the OceanElders sent this letter to Prime Minister Gillard of Australia, and Tony Burke MP, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. We requested that they support the establishment of a marine protected area, including the Coral Sea.

The OceanElders sent another letter in July 2012 upon the announcement of the creation of the world’s biggest marine reserves network, congratulating them on the fantastic news.

Along with Virgin Unite and WildAid, we also pressed for further protection specifically for giant manta rays, which is now being delivered. Mr Burke said the listing ensures it is now an offence to take, trade, keep, or move the species in Commonwealth waters. Fishers will now also have to report any interactions with giant manta rays, as they do for other protected species such as whale sharks.

He commented: “The giant manta ray is a highly migratory species – with some being known to travel more than 1000 kilometres – and threats often arise outside of protected areas.

“For this reason, the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species and our national environment law are an excellent way to achieve international cooperation and coordination to better protect the species.”

This fantastic news closely follows the recent banning of shark finning in Costa Rica. Head over to the OceanElders to keep up with the latest progress in our efforts to conserve our oceans and their wildlife.

Images by Shawn Heinrichs

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

The Carbon War Room has had some major breakthroughs in their battle to get the necessary gigatons worth of carbon out of the earth’s atmosphere.

Virgin Unite incubated the Carbon War Room to come up with practical and profitable ways for  industries to reduce carbon. One of their operations is with the shipping industry.

They created a website that rates about  50,000 ships on energy efficiency atwww.shippingefficiency.org to encourage businesses to use the environmentally friendly ships rather than dirty ships which also saves them money on fuel. Three of the biggest charterers in the world just announced they will drop ships that are not energy efficient: Cargill, Huntsman and UMIPEC will now only charter ships that are energy efficient. This represents $425 million in new business for cleaner ships, and will send important signals throughout the whole industry. I’d like to congratulate them all.

Meanwhile, Jose Maria Figueres who so ably runs the Carbon War Room was on the island of Aruba recently, where he and Prime Minister Eman announced a plan to take Aruba off fossil fuels by 2020 by moving to renewable energies. Yours truly dropped in via satellite. In partnership with Carbon War Room and the New America Foundation, Aruba has drawn up an workable strategy for sustainable prosperity.

If together we can achieve this then there is no excuse for all islands in the world (includingNecker!) not to come off fossil fuels.

I have made a friendly bet with PM Eman of Aruba that we will beat him to becoming the world’s first fully sustainable island. Perhaps slightly easier as Necker is only 72 acres!

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group

Delighted to share news from Australia, where the Government has announced the giant manta ray is now protected under national environment law.

The giant manta ray has been listed as a Migratory Species under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. With their population dropping by over 30% worldwide, this is a crucial step to saving these beautiful creatures.

A year ago the OceanElders sent this letter to Prime Minister Gillard of Australia, and Tony Burke MP, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. We requested that they support the establishment of a marine protected area, including the Coral Sea.

The OceanElders sent another letter in July 2012 upon the announcement of the creation of the world’s biggest marine reserves network, congratulating them on the fantastic news.

Along with Virgin Unite and WildAid, we also pressed for further protection specifically for giant manta rays, which is now being delivered. Mr Burke said the listing ensures it is now an offence to take, trade, keep, or move the species in Commonwealth waters. Fishers will now also have to report any interactions with giant manta rays, as they do for other protected species such as whale sharks.

He commented: “The giant manta ray is a highly migratory species – with some being known to travel more than 1000 kilometres – and threats often arise outside of protected areas.

“For this reason, the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species and our national environment law are an excellent way to achieve international cooperation and coordination to better protect the species.”

This fantastic news closely follows the recent banning of shark finning in Costa Rica. Head over to the OceanElders to keep up with the latest progress in our efforts to conserve our oceans and their wildlife.

Images by Shawn Heinrichs

By Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group