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Sodertailje, a city in Sweden is turning to an unlikely litter picker in an attempt to tidy up after smokers who cant be bothered to dispose of their cigarette ends properly.
Wild birds do the clean up, there is a bespoke machine which dispenses a little food for every butt end that it is given. in other words they are voluntarily assisting in the cleanup for payment.
Continue reading “Swedish firm deploy crows to pick up cigarette butts”Wolf numbers in Sweden started to fall after a law in 1789 allowed commoners to hunt moose and deer, led to a lack of food for the wolf population. It is thought that there were no wolves in the South of Sweden by 1800, and they had vanished from the north by no later than 1900.
However, unlike the UK, Sweden is on mainland Europe. This means that countries bordering Sweden can have very different wolf policies – allowing wolves to naturally return. This happened in 1980s when 3 Finnish-Russian wolves crossed over the border and migrated to the south. These 3 (with occasional new migrants( has grown to 480, mostly in central Sweden.
Conservationists have argued that 300 wolves is the bare minimum for a healthy population. Those who study wolves suggest that wolves have a density of between one every 4.6 squire miles (12 square km) and one every 46 square miles (120 square km). Sweden has an are of 173,000 square miles suggesting a carrying population of between 3700-37000 wolves.
200 is therefore roughly 5% of the minimum carrying capacity of Sweden. Remember that most of Sweden remains heavily forested, and therefore perfect habitat for the wolf. These forests are also shared by 3000 bears.
What these numbers show, is that the current number of wolves in Sweden – 480 spread across roughly 40 packs, is absolutely fine.
The government minister did not give a figure as to how big she thought the population should be, but said that while Sweden must meet its EU obligation to not eradicate the wolf, she supported people “who live where wolves are, who feel social anxiety, and those who have livestock and have been affected”. Now it should be noted that these two policies are not compatible. For many farmers, the only number of wolves that they will be happy with is zero – they will always feel nervous with any wolves still staying wild.
It should be noted that the countries hunting lobby is powerful, and have argued that the wolves eat moose (which they want to be able to hunt) and kill their dogs if they get close enough.
I have experience of the wilds of Sweden. There is a Swedish bear hide listed on this site. Our visit gave us 6 bear sightings and a wolf, and when we went south to the centre of the wolf range we also saw some elk (moose) being harried by a wolf – exciting, even if the sighting was very brief. There is a great deal of money that flows into Sweden for ecotourism, and the potential of this is far higher than the money gained from hunting
Spotted hyena mothers are finding that they have to travel further to find food. The hyenas are having to travel long distances, more and more regularly as the rain changes mean that the huge migration herds arrive later.
What is fascinating is that researchers have found that they are spending no less time with their cubs.
Now it should be noted, that many of the remaining wild hyenas live in far more fragmented habitats, and in these places the issue may be more serious. Never-the-less, for the time being what is clear is that these highly adaptable animals are currently adapting to changes bought about by climate change with relative ease.
Not actually a fox or a wolf, the manned wolf exists in its own genus.
Living on open savannahs the manned wolf is unfortunately facing the loss of most of its habitat. Though we hear about the loss of the Amazon rainforest the most, all other ecosystems in South America are also under threat.
Continue reading “The manned wolf is being seen increasingly often in the Amazon rainforest”West African lions are heavily endangered with just 400 members remaining. While the west African population of the Asiatic lion is less at risk than the Gir forest population – being spread over 4 unconnected sites, it would be impossible for an epidemic to wipe out the whole population, or indeed some sort of freak flood or other dangerous weather.
If is easy to think that we should not be saving subspecies, but instead investing money in conserving other animals that are still threatened.
Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to look at it. Malaysia tigers only exist in a small strip between Malaysia and Thailand. The dense rainforest here has been standing in its current form for longer than the Amazon or the Congo.
In the 1950s there were 3000 tigers, yet in just 70 years this number has been reduced to just 200.
Subspecies are different – obviously, and their differences actually make a difference in the species survival, as well as its success. Introducing a subspecies from another area can have unexpected effects. If the subspecies is lost, then a different subspecies is likely to fill the niche better than none.
Tiger subspecies while extremely closely related, have evolved for millennia to be suited to their environment. If we take this to its extreme can you imagine reintroducing Sumatran tigers into the frozen wastelands of Siberia? The Amur tiger can measure 3m from head to end of tail, where as a Sumatran tiger only measures 2.4m
My feeling is that we should be moving from concentrating on specific species to ecosystems. it is certainly harder to generate the interest, but by looking at it on the ecosystem level we recognize that we need the apex predators for that ecosystem – whether they are a subspecies version of the tiger leopard or something else.
I have had an encounter with a wolf – perhaps 100m distant, and no reaction to my presence. I have also watched a wolf from the safety of a bear hide. I have even listened to the eery sound of a wolf howl, both within an English zoo (late at night) and more excitingly from all around when trying to see wolves on the edge of the Sierra de Culebra in Spain. Annoyingly, although our guides howl was answered from 4 different locations, on that occasion the wolf did not allow us to see them at all.
In France, with a wolf population (as of 2021) of about 580, unless you know what you are doing, or are incredibly lucky you are unlikely to encounter a wolf. Indeed even wildlife guides working in nature reserves do not normally see wolves every day. Here I will recount an encounter someone had in France.
Continue reading “Wolf encounter in France (not mine unfortunately)”
The cross River gorilla (picture above) is a critically endangered subspecies of the Western lowland gorilla species. The cross River gorilla are scattered in at least 11 groups across the lowland montane forests and rainforests of Cameroon and Nigeria, an area of 3,000 square miles, or a little smaller than Puerto Rico. There are only 200-300 that remain of this subspecies.While there are some physical traits that are different between these species, the cross River gorilla has become a Highland specialist. Although known to have interbred in the past, genetic analysis suggests this stopped more than 400 years ago. Changes in climate may well have been the catalyst to stop the interbreeding.
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In this way, the cross River gorillas and the mountain gorillas have similar habits and ecosystem niches. In this way, it could be suggested that cross River gorillas are simply 50 years behind mountain gorillas in the sense that 40 years ago, there were only around 250 mountain gorillas – this population has increased to over 1000, so clearly it isn’t too late for the cross River gorillas numbers to recover.
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Could a similar recovery take place? Perhaps following the pattern set up by Diane Fossey for tourism of the mountain gorillas, might work?
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Western lowland gorillas have a wild population in a fast healthier position, with an estimated 100,000 remaining. Unfortunately though, this is a very tough estimate as they live in some of the hardest to reach jungles so an accurate count is hard. It is however, thought that this gorilla population has seen a 60% reduction over the last 10-25 years. It is thought that if the pressures of placing and diseases were removed this population would recover in about 75 years (of course these pressures are unlikely to disappear, and with the loss of rainforest there may be nowhere for these gorillas to live if they did recover.
Western lowland gorillas are closely related to cross river gorillas, in the same way that eastern lowland gorillas are closely related to mountain gorillas. However, retaining these different subspecies is highly important as they are adapted to the different conditions where they live.
It is unfortunate that there is little positive news on either of these species at the current time, but many people are working on it.
I am intending to make this into a new set of articles that will appear on this website. Obviously, these species will not be the only ones that are covered – for those who read this website regularly, you will know that I talk about a wide range of species.
The species that I am going to look at are those which often attract visitors to see just them. With the majority of the species we will follow they are found across a surprisingly large number of countries – some however are as interesting but are found in only one country. In each instance we will look at an entire group of species that look similar. However, due to the differences in these many different countries, these species can be thriving in one country and threatened with local extinction in another. As a result it is important to give this more focus.
These articles will be marked by SW
Those species that I will initially focus on include:
If you live in the UK, there is relatively little wildlife to watch (when compared to somewhere like South Africa), which is why zoos are often such popular places.
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As people have come to have better thoughts about keeping animals in zoos, these places have greatly improved. Long gone is enclosures such as “bear pits”. Now zoos give the animal relatively large enclosures with (as much as possible) plants and other items that make the area similar to the animals wild habitat. Also a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the various conditions that are required in order to make the animals happy enough to breed.
I have, in the past, been a wildlife educator at the zoo. This has consisted of me visiting the zoo a few times each month, and spending a few hours beside specific animals. I am there to engage visitors – in some cases help them see the animal, as well as talking about its wild habitat and the threats that the animal faces to its ongoing survival. Due to covid, this has been impossible in the last few years.
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Marwell zoo has been particularly good on its big cats. Unfortunately since our last visit, they have lost their Amur leopards and their cheetah – however, as with both of these, the animals were old, and the zoo is perfectly set up for breeding of these species, therefore if new cheetah or Amur leopards arrive this can continue. One of the main ways that these zoos can work in this way, is to have two enclosures next to each other, this allows the connecting gate to be opened or closed depending on circumstances, allowing male and female to spend times apart and together – as close to mirroring how they would behave in the wild as possible.
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The Amur leopard is a stunning animal and with its wild population being so threatened (a superb decade has allowed the population to grow back above 100 (WWF estimates that there are now about 100 wild adult Amur leopards) from a population of as few as 20 adults at the turn of the century. As such breeding is essential, and I hope that in the long run, the zoo can have similar success with another pair. Cheetah, while less endangered overall (though the Saharan cheetah and the Iranian cheetah are both this endangered) is famously hard to breed, so we can only hope that in the future cheetah will once again live in this place.
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When visiting a zoo, I like to go on a very quiet day, as the animals tend to behave more naturally so I like to go outside weekends. However with children that is not currently possible due to school. Nevertheless we had a lovely day, and despite the missing wildlife saw many lovely things.
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Whether you believe that animals should ever be caged or not, it should be clear to everyone that at the current time, without zoos many species might well be lost from the world. It is also true that many zoos do essential work in the wild to conserve remaining wilderness.
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