See Animals Wild

Boki the bear (2 years old) was found to have a condition that I also have. It is known as hydrocephalus, and is caused when the liquid that is found around the brain does not drain away properly. This is often found in infants, but can also occur after a head injury.

When this liquid does not drain, rather than protecting the brain, this liquid squeezes the brain, which apart from being very painful (it usually causes insanity before death, if left untreated in babies) but can take decades to kill naturally.

It seems quite likely, that this bear would have died relatively quickly in the wild, as even if the illness did not kill, it would likely cause different behaviour which would likely have caused more problems.

While it is true that bears have a sweet tooth, which may have contributed to this bears like for it, they are also very intelligent, and may well have been able to connect the idea of feeling better with the medicine that he was taking.

Pretty much all models that are trying to predict how much danger we are (on global warming) suggest that all current carbon syncs will continue to work, however, that does not appear to be the case.

We have emitted roughly 1500 giga tonnes of carbon dioxide since the industrial revolution, and the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 3200 giga tonnes. Before this point, there was roughly 2200 giga tonnes in the atmosphere. These numbers suggest that around 1 quarter has been absorbed by the planet (these numbers could well be wrong but are worked out from well known figures).

This suggests that at least 1 quarter of our emissions have been absorbed, which if this study is right, means 1 third more carbon being added each year, if we simply keep our emissions stable or conversely, we need to cut emissions by an extra third to meet our goals, if this holds true.

Given our difficultly cutting emissions so far, this is going to prove hard.

And yet, we need to do it very fast.

African penguins live in South African and Namibia, with a total population of around 18500 (13,200 in South Africa and the rest in Namibia). In south Africa, there are thought to be 2 colonies, with Boulders beach, near Cape town, has a population of around 3000 penguins.

In wilder places, one would think that penguins would be hunted by land mammals, and certainly these behaviours have been filmed, with me remembering footage of a brown hyena hunting penguins on the Namibian beach.

It has generally thought that penguins were relatively safe on Boulders beach, but it is becoming clear that the caracal, which is a smaller cat than a lion or leopard, are living in the area around boulders beach, and are likely the big predator of the penguins. It is true, that cape leopards live in small numbers in this area, and they have been known to take penguins, but being the apex predator, they do not live long-term in the reserve.

This is not the same with the Caracal. This documentary was done around the area of table mountain, but found throughout the cape.

One might argue that this is just natural behaviour, but the problem is that neither species is being able to live in a normal way. In 2016, 2 caracals were documented to have killed 130 penguins in just 2 months. It would not take much more than this, for the African penguin to disappear from South Africa, and indeed the world.

The Tapanuli Orangutan, was only described in 2017 and makes the eighth species of great ape. Unfortunately, it only numbers 800 in the wild, and a dam threatens its future survival.

Click on its underlined name to visit its page. Do get in touch, if you work in conservation of this species, or tourism around its habitat, we are eager to help people visit, and support its continued survival.

50% growth in a year, is the fastest pace recorded in the last 20 years. The COP28 has a target of tripling clean energy capacity by 2030, and this speed keeps this target in contention.

Worldwide renewables have now reached 510 gigawatts of energy, which is fantastic, and means that humanity stands a good chance of pushing out fossil fuels in the near future. However, it suggests that renewable power is behind target, with the expected increase being 250% by 2030, rather than 300%.

Still, it is growing, and many countries are only slowly getting round to making their own progress. Another positive, is the increasing number of houses that are putting solar panels on their own roofs – with the huge rewards for investing in solar (and other home generation) and the reducing costs, the finances are increasingly obvious. While this is initially, meaning that well off people in the developed world are doing this, there are large parts of Africa, which are skipping large joined electricity networks, and getting remote communities off grid one by one.

It seems inevitable, that wind and solar are going to supply the majority of our energy needs in the future, however, the faster this happens, the better it is for all of us.

Wild cats avoid areas with wind turbines. This is a fact, which is why it is alarming that this one was given approval, as it is on wild cat land, and is one of the few healthy populations in the country.

Hopefully, this review will be positive, but we will see.

Wild cats are extremely close to extinction in the UK (and Scotland) because of interbreeding with our domestic cats, which are descended from the Asiatic wild cat.