Category: wildlife

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An American kingfisher has turned up in the uk

As a bird usually seen in the USA, a shaggy crested belted kingfisher is a rare sighting in the uk

This Kingfisher is thought to have been blown across the Atlantic during an ocean storm. Indeed there have only been a few records of this bird in the UK in the last century. Usually migrating between the USA and Caribbean/Mexico each year, they are not birds that are expected to regularly fly the Atlantic. It is the fifth occasion since 1908 that one has been seen here. Of more interest to “twitchers” this is the first time that one has hung around for any length of time, having been first spotted in October. It is also even rarer, as it is only the second sighting beyond the isles of Scilly or Cornwall, where they usually first make land (it is currently living in Lancashire).

It appears to have found an area that is good for it to live in, and due to its size it cant hide easily so continues to be spotted regularly. Given its size and lack of any knowledge about migrating across the Atlantic, it may well live out its life here. Whether it will start migrating into Europe is anyones guess.

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Sainsbury has stopped selling all or some beef from Brazil along with 5 others

In Brazil, one of the main drivers of deforestation is for pasture for beef. It is therefore completely foolish for those in developed countries to eat Brazilian beef – if we do, we are paying them to do the world (and therefore us) incalculable harm.

Importantly, these people can wait. If we have a moratorium on grazing on newly deforested land, the land owner can wait a few years or a decade then its value jumps. This move was taken after it became clear that “cattle laundering” was going on.

Cattle laundering means we can no longer tell which meat from Brazil is safe to eat
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First millipede to fully justify the name has been found

Millipede (if you want to be precise) is a name that cannot fairly be ascribed to any previous millipedes! Millipede means “thousand feet”, which means that all previous millipedes do not deserve the name. The “millipede with the most legs before this animal was a Californian millipede species with 750 legs.

The new species has been named Eumilipes Persephone had grows to about 95mm long, and has more than 1306 legs along its body. You are unlikely to stumble on this creature as it was found almost 60m under ground in Australia.

The animals scientific name means true thousand feet. As with most animals that live below the surface, the animal is colourless and without eyes. It is thought that it only eats fungi. Leg number does not appear to be a constant, with other specimens having 998, 818 and 778 legs.

This new species joins a list of more than 13,000 different species. Millipedes are an ancient lineage going back 400 million years. It is thought that millipedes were the first land living species.

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Could Bialowlieza forest be destroyed by forests on borders?

Around the world we are in a period where there are lots of people struggling where they are. Whether due to weather or war or crime, there are significant numbers of people who are on the move. Perhaps the most famous is the border wall that Donald Trump ran on. Given that almost all of the people who are illegally in the USA arrive legally and then fail to leave, cutting off the stream of people fleeing violent crime in central America will make little difference to what is going on.

As elsewhere, the wilderness either side of the USA border wall is likely to be badly damaged
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Often locals lose their forests against their will, sometimes this balance is corrected

A Papua court ruling, is a win for local governance and against national governments. All over the world, most remaining wildernesses are not devoid of human population to the contrary, most of these areas are inhabited by indigenous people.

What does indigenous people mean? Well in most contexts it means people who arrived and settled before European colonisation. What has become increasingly clear is that the explorers that we learn about are rarely the first humans to arrive in newly discovered countries. Indonesians and Norwegians are both known to have crossed large oceans and settled on newly discovered lands.

Often these native people have lived in harmony in the local ecosystem for thousands of years.

This is why indigenous rights are so important. It is however important that this is done right – indigenous lands becoming places with casinos is not the idea.

In this instance, two palm oil companies sued after their lease was invalidated. The combined area is not small, being bigger than New York city. This clears the way for Indigenous groups who used to live within this area, to reclaim their former lands.

Indonesia has a particularly hard path to walk. Made up of thousands of different islands, with vast areas of rainforests, it is hard for the central government to make good decisions.

We as consumers need to make this easier, by reducing our consumption and therefore requiring less resources

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Is the government finally going to ban hunting trophy import

Back in 2019, the conservative government passed a law banning the import of trophies from animals hunted abroad.

For most, a photo like this is disgusting. However, is there anywhere in the world where this is a necessary evil to protect the remaining wildlife? And how will the governments rules effect this?

Despite their status, various wild species are hunted in the wild and in theory this law would stop this.

Now, you might notice that it is now almost 2022, so what happened? Well it was announced in 2019 queens speech but has not been brought forwards by the conservatives who are currently in power (and suggested the law in the first place). Worryingly, they have not actually announced a timetable of when they will try to enact this law! Given it has been 3 years before they announced it, no firm timetable being in place would suggest that this is still not a certainty. Delay is particularly concerning, as many Conservative supporters are wealthy, so it is reasonable to think that wealthy donors are the reason that this law is taking so long to come into place.

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Roaming wolf who broke ground in California killed on a highway

Wolves were exterminated very effectively across much of North America. When so called native Americans arrived probably as much as 15000 years ago, they quickly learnt to live alongside wolves. Sure, occasionally one would be killed, but generally they were left alone. Not so for the European settlers; as they had done before in Europe, wolves were hunted mercilessly. So when we started to worry about conservation of these species in the last 50 or so years there were few left. Even in places like Yellowstone they were eradicated.

Wolves, as with most wild animals pay little attention to human borders. Unfortunately he did not survive, but he wont be the last
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First known albino chimpanzee was born in Africa this summer. Unfortunately it was killed

Many species can have albinism. That is: a lower amount of pigmentation or indeed a complete lack of pigmentation. From white lions and white deer, or indeed even white grizzly bears – possibly the initial way that Polar bears evolved, albinism is not rare. Humans are also capable of having this condition – evidence is clear that humans originated in Africa, suggesting that all white humans are descended from people who had this condition.

This is unfortunately an image of the infant after it was killed by its family

Indeed, I have seen an albino child in an African village – very white, despite having 2 black parents.

Never-the-less, albino chimpanzees are rare. Now it should be noted that this group that the chimpanzee was seen in has a well documented propensity for infanticide – so it is unclear if this would be the natural reaction to an albino chimpanzee birth.

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