News – Page 21 – See Animals Wild

September 14, 2022September 16, 2022

Jair Bolsonaro is trailing in the polls and is currently looking unlikely to win re-election – but undoing his damage might be difficult

In the run-up to the Brazilian election, we will be looking at what is happening in this country. While only the people of Brazil have a say, what they decide is likely to have a big effect on the rest of the world:

who will win? Will the Amazon and therefore the planet get a reprieve?

Re-election of Bolsonaro will likely mean the end of the Amazon functioning properly or they can go with a former politician – both have issues, but Lulu appears on the cusp of taking over, and if this happens it is predicted to have a fantastic impact on deforestation (though it would be hard for any change to not be dramatic).

Given the huge impact this election could have on the rest of the world, there seems to be little coverage, maybe this will change as the time draws near.

September 14, 2022September 16, 2022

UK government changes rules for farmers: now allow killing beavers?

Beavers have returned to the UK in the last couple of decades. Becoming extinct in the 16th century, Beavers were an important part of the UK ecosystem.

Beavers are incredible engineers. They build large pools, held back by dams, as well as canals running in many directions. One of the biggest bonuses of this behaviour, is to slow the speed that water has as it runs back into rivers and eventually the sea. This means that in areas where beavers exist, there remains plenty of water even in times during the year when there is little rain. The beaver pools are also fantastic for wildlife, from fish fry, to vast quantities of insects – which can increase farmers yields by pollinating the crops.

So what is the problem? Well, in many places in the country, farmers are now farming on low grade land, and some of this will be lost.

Given that beavers have only been in the UK for about 15 years, and the population only numbers a few thousand at most (while some populations like in Devon numbering in the hundreds or even approaching one thousand), in most of the country they are incredibly rare. Lethal methods of control should very rarely be required. In the vast majority of cases, the beavers should be worked around as the benefits they bring even to the farm are usually greater than the problems they cause. In the rare occasion where the beaver needs to be removed, then it is not necessary to kill it, with the numbers of beavers still so far below the carrying capacity of the UK, it would be relatively simple to catch it and to move it to a river which does not yet have enough.

While it may be cheaper in the short term, for both the farmer and the government, shooting the beaver is unlikely to deal with the problem. In many instances, it will not be long before another beaver takes up the area, which means that the problem is likely to occur again, furthermore, apart from the benefits for the local farm, the beavers behaviour has wider positive impacts.

If the government was to fund nature trusts in each county to help in this work, the price could be kept incredibly low, and the countries environment would benefit greatly

September 13, 2022September 13, 2022

Uninvited black bear crashes party in Connecticut

American Black bears are far and away the most numerous bear in the world by some margin. It is thought that at least 800,000 American black bears still roam the continental north America – though the closely related Asiatic black bear has a far smaller population of about 50,000 spread across south-eastern Asia and is therefore far more endangered (the spectacled bear is also thought to be relatively closely related).

In America, black bears are relatively common sites where they are found.

While black bears are not found everywhere in the USA they are pretty widespread

September 12, 2022September 12, 2022

What did Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip do for conservation, and will things change under King Charles the third

The queen has died suddenly at the age of 96. This is a good age by anyone’s standards, but understandably, across the UK and the many parts of the Commonwealth where the queen remains the head of state it is still disconcerting when things change.

What impact did the queen have on wildlife? Well unfortunately ruling a country like the UK, there is relatively little wildlife left to protect. Of course, the UK monarch while retaining many powers in theory has little sway over decisions in practice. Of course, in the Commonwealth this is quite different.

September 9, 2022September 9, 2022

Thwaites or “doomsday” glacier is disintegrating faster than expected

The Thwaites glacier is an important glacier in western Antarctica. It is already thought to account for about 4% of global sea level rise. This glacier has suffered a rapid retreat from the land shelf in just 6 months – a process that can naturally take several centuries.

The bigger problem that Thwaites glacier currently brings, is the fact that this glacier seems to largely be the dam wall, holding much of the ice back. As a result, while Thwaites glacier can increase water levels by an alarming amount, a collapse is predicted to increase global sea levels by between 90cm and 300cm.

In other words, this glacier alone, with a full collapse, as much as 5% of the worlds population will have to move as their home will be under water. Unfortunately far more people may well find that their way of live is no longer possible.

Regular readers of this blog will remember me mentioning this not long ago, unfortunately the last 6 months has shown the situation to be far worse.

September 8, 2022September 5, 2022

Should Jaguars have a place in the ecosystems of the continental north America?

Wild Jaguars are a native resident of the USA. Once roaming as far north as the Grand canyon, they roamed over around 1/3 of its lands. It is not a natural migration therefore that has therefore meant that Jaguars are extremely rare in the USA.

Currently there are about 173,000 Jaguars living in the wild, meaning that taken as a whole, the Jaguar is far away the safest of the big cats (Lions who come in second, have a population of around 20,000). However, if you look at the part of the Jaguar population that lives in north America, their position becomes far more precarious.

Currently, it is thought that Mexico contains a wild jaguar population of about 4800.

A map of current considered range of Jaguars in Mexico, with records over the last 20 years.
Credit: Ceballos G et al 2021

September 7, 2022September 5, 2022

Seeing the end of the Bolsonaro administration, destruction of the Amazon seems to have ramped up

With the Brazilian election to occur during October, and Jair Bolsonaro widely seen as a failure in many ways – as well as having favoured specific groups at the detriment of the rest of the population, it is considered highly unlikely that Jair Bolsonaro will get a second term.

While no president of Brazil has managed to halt deforestation, Jair Bolsonaro has actively fought against any protection that it enjoyed

September 6, 2022September 5, 2022

What do we do when an endangered species starts killing critically endangered species? Tiger kills gharials

Gharials are a species of crocodile – only about 200 are thought to be living in the wilds of Nepal.

With a far more slender snout than other crocodiles, these animals are easily spotted.

September 5, 2022August 31, 2022

The stronghold of the west African lions

Yesterday, I wrote about the last lions of Nigeria. In Nigeria, there are just 2 populations of lions totalling 35-40. While this is good for the places that the lion has survived, this is highly unlikely to be able to survive long-term. With human assistance, and translocating lions regularly these populations might eventually recover.

As you can see, west African lions look very like other lions

There is one place where west African lions might stand a chance without human help and this is W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) protected area complex that straddles Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger and which holds 90% of West Africa’s lions. This is because all other populations are like that in Nigeria – to small to be capable of surviving longterm without human help. While the WAP complex can be lost amongst the brown on this map – if you look at the intersection of Benin Burkina Faso and Niger, you cannot miss it.

Importantly, this population is still 37% of the size of the Indian lion population. In other words, this is the last stronghold of the West African lion; the West (and central) African lion is one of the remaining relict populations of the Asiatic lion – the other one being the Indian lions of the Gir national park.

Should the Asiatic lion be renamed? It is usually referred to as the Indian lion, but with more than 1 in 4 remaining wild Asiatic lions living in Africa, this does not seem right. What is more, while over the last few decades West African lions have not done wonderfully, there is far more available habitat in West and Central Africa than there is in India, or indeed in Asia.

Perhaps more importantly, the Barbary lion, long thought extinct, appears to be the same species as the Asiatic lion and the West African lion. In other words, the Barbary lion was the genetic bridge between west Africa, and India. before its extinction, these two populations would have been permanently linked. What does this mean? Well, it is vastly simpler to move lions from one wild place to another than to train and release captive lions. If we can fortify the remaining West African lion populations, perhaps we can also allow some of these animals to be moved to other parts of the Lion range – thereby ensuring their long-term survival.

September 4, 2022August 31, 2022

A recent assessment only found as few as 34 wild lions left in Nigeria, how long can they hang on

Lions have been lost from a huge area in Africa. Already extinct in 26 countries in Africa, there are perhaps as few as 15,000 lions left. Furthermore, most of these are in a small handful of reserves.

Between the Selous, Serengeti, Ruaha, Kruger and the greater Kalarhari zambezi transfrontier park are represented perhaps as high as 14,000.

This means that other reserves that still host lion tend to have very small populations with the inherent risks of inbreeding that this brings.

You will notice that on this list of lion ecosystems, none are in west Africa. This is unfortunately not a mistake. Recent analysis of the Genetics of western African lions has proved something that has been suspected for centuries. The west African lion is not the same species as the eastern and southern lion, in fact these populations are relict populations left behind as the Asiatic lion was pushed back into its home in India. In actual fact the “Asiatic lion” or “Indian Lion” once had a huge range that took in much of Europe, north Africa and Asia.