Category: Uncategorized

The Greenland wolf, is known from remains, to have lived in Greenland for at least 7600 years, though, given Caribou have been there for 8900 years, it is quite possible that they have been there for longer.

It is a small population of around 200 individuals, so encountering them is rare. This video to the right is an incredible encounter a photographer had, when she realized that she had been surrounded by them. As you can see, wolves do not generally consider humans as food.

We have not been as kind in the past, and between 1920 and 1932, 35 wolves were killed in the core wolf range, forcing the population to decline rapidly to extinction.

It should be noted, that there is only a small population in Greenland, and it is a huge landmass, so it is quite possible that the population is larger.

Thomas Crowther was an ecologist whose work inspired many tree planting projects, the problem is that this is a more complex idea than it first seems, and more importantly, mass plantations do not help.

Forests take up vast quantities of carbon, but the whole ecosystem must benefit, otherwise while trees may get planted, they are likely to fall foul of pests, or similar.

One of the simple requirements, is to plant trees more like a rainforest would. We cannot plant monocultures of a single tree – this is simply the equivalent of rolling out a picnic rug for the specific pests which feed on the tree in question. Instead, we need hundreds of tree species in each acre. Amazingly, without this, the trees ability to do what we want and draw down carbon dioxide is severely limited, so will fail.

Interestingly, preserving remaining forests has a far bigger impact on carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere, so this is not only beneficial to the wildlife that lives there, it is also one of our most effective tools, to avoid climate change.

Think of all the primates, great apes and many other species that would be saved, if we just started to do what is best for ourselves.

This is not a melanistic whale, instead it is a beluga whale, which is usually white. Filmed in January it is only the sixth time that this species has been sighted in Scottish waters, generally living in the icy arctic waters.

This species has around 150,000 individuals left in the wild, making them more safe than many species. However, living in the Arctic where global warming is changing things fast, we need to remain viligant, as it could be quite a different situation after not much time.

To view our page on Beluga whales, and any other mention that the species has had in the past, click here

I wrote a month ago, about Rishi Sunak and the foolish plans of the UK government to try to max out oil production from the North Sea. The governments argument was that it would help bring down costs for UK people.

Unfortunately, this argument bares no water, as the extracted fossil fuels would be sold on the open market, and there would be no discount at all in the UK. As such, this will do nothing to help the UK people save money, merely give some fossil fuel companies some money, and potentially some tax revenue for the UK government, though whether this is worth the costs that will have to be paid is the future is being questioned increasingly loudly.

What is unfortunately clear, is that the things that are going to be best for the UK public is additional insulation in houses, and renewable energy. Unfortunately these are two projects which the government is increasingly eager to turn its back on.

The green housing grants, during Covid, were aimed at improving the housing stock of the UK, and it did, but only for around 1% of the houses that need to be dealt with. Furthermore, this was really a boost for the building firms, rather than the green housing grants in particular – they charged as much as possible, and the work did not really continue after the end of the period in question.

Why politicians keep spouting information that is so easily destroyed is hard to understand. It seems hard to believe that a man with the amount of money that Rishi Sunak and his wife has, would be influenced by the performance of his investment, however, given where we are going, I would argue that investing in fossil fuel extraction is a foolish move – whether in the next decade or further ahead, the fossil fuel industry must die, and it is likely to happen fast when it truly starts. Rishi Sunak has been accused of dodging scrutiny on this subject by failing to appoint a climate change committee chair (for over 18 months since Lord Deben retired) – and now the independent watchdogs chief executive has resigned in frustration. Given this position was there to keep the government to account on climate change and changes that will limit its effect

What is Rishi Sunak afraid of? Either he is attempting to avoid scrutiny, or he is incompetent – which is it?

Mink are an invasive species, which have arrived in the UK for fur farms and then either escaped, or been released by so called ‘animal lovers’.

While I do not approve of mink farms, this is a very foolish behaviour. The American mink, not surprisingly, is not a native of the UK, and while there is a European mink, it has never been present in the UK.

So, why are they problematic? Well, like any invasive species, they tend to hunt in different ways to native species, and can rapidly eradicate species that have always lived here,

In the UK, the species that is most at risk is the water vole! Since the arrival of the mink, it has been lost from most of the UK. They are essential for healthy rivers and as such mink cause damage (they also take many water birds).

The wildlife recovery trust, set up a defensive wall of traps, around this county, and used scent from the minks own glands to tempt in the species. This has been incredibly successful, and they have been declared extinct in the county (once caught they are shot).

Conservationists are now planning to extend this method to the rest of the UK. Thankfully, a second line of defence is reappearing – the otter. Reduced to near extinction by pollutants in the waterways, they have recovered over the last 20 years, and generally push mink out, fast, when they return to a waterway.

For the first time, there is hope that we might eradicate this animal that has done so much damage to the UK waterways environment.