Cheetah are about to return to India, for the first time since 1952 – 70 years ago, when the last one was killed.
8 Cheetah from Namibia (where cheetah live in big numbers) are being moved to India. A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed (MoU).
The initial introductions will be into the Kuno reserve – an area where Asiatic lion should roam, were in not for the Gujarat government claiming exclusive ownership. I still believe that eventually Asiatic lion will move to Kuno, but lion and cheetah live side by side in many reserves, and the claim that this is why Gujarat cant move lions is as hollow as the many other excuses that they have claimed over the last 10 or so years.
The amount that the oil sector has made is incredible. The problem with these huge profits, is that it allows large amounts to be given to politicians, which are still relatively small percentages of the full profit.
When the Oil companies has so much money to through at keeping the taps on, is it any surprise that greenpeace and similar organisations have not been able to halt the damage?
According to a statement at the beginning of this year, just 12 cheetah remain in the wilds of Iran. As a result, these triplets are a large percentage of the world population. Unfortunately one of them died in the first month. This is not uncommon in extremely low population numbers, because genetic weaknesses get passed down more often than in a healthy population.
Fracking is a way to access shale gas. This gas is distributed through a layer of shale rock, and the fracking splinters them in order to allow the gas to escape. A government study was supposed to be published this week but has been delayed.
So for anyone who has not read my articles or seen the ocean cleanup YouTube channel (I will include their latest video below), the ocean cleanup is a company set up by a young man called Boyan Slat in 2013.
He set it up after going diving, and finding that there was significantly more plastic on the reef than fish.
Currently the company has two methods to try to deal with this problem.
Firstly: river interceptor: this vessel is a very well designed system, which is put in one of the 1000 world wide rivers which calculations show will catch 80% of the plastic that goes down the worlds rivers – this is only about 5% of the worlds rivers. Below is a video of the clip that they made to explain how the Interceptor works. There are interceptors out in the field, but at the current time, less than 10.
Scientists, naturalists and vets are all calling for the end of badger culls, because of a recent study which shows that this has not had a significant impact on the disease.
A study that has been carried out on the diet of red foxes in the pine forests of Scotland. Bizarrely, researchers found that dog poo has a similar calorific content to foxes wild prey.
For the last few days, we have been locked out. A plugin (or several) has been devouring the resources of the site, and causing it to crash. We’re hoping that one of a large number we have deactivated was the problem but we will not know for sure, until its been running for a few days.
There have also been some nasty people trying to hack the website – if you are reading this post, all login names and passwords have been changed since you deleted the website, stop trying.
We have beefed up our security, and as well as greatly increasing the speed that the website loads. Time will tell if this is a permanent fix.
Whether, you are short of money, fearful of air travel in the time of COVID or too concerned about your carbon footprint to take this method, there are still a substantial number of destinations within a long drive of the UK, where you can see wildlife.
Cantabrian bears are watched from quite a distance,
If you live in Europe instead, you can find that you are far close, if you are not lucky enough to have wildlife living on your doorstep.
We have been building many destinations across the wilder parts of Europe, from the mountainous regions of Spain and France – the Cantabrian mountains and the Pyrenees, to the Apennine mountains of central Italy, the Alps and the Carpathians, to the wild forests of Estonia and the vast wilderness of Northern Scandinavia.
While many of these destinations can be 10 hours or more from the UK and other parts of Europe, and with the high price of fuel, these trips are not cheap, yet, compared to flying somewhere it can be very price competitive.
If you are already on holiday in much of France you could find that you are just a couple of hours drive from one of these incredible wildernesses, and it is a good use of your time. From the Pyrenees of France to the foothills of the alps, to the Cantabrian mountains of Northern Spain, to many other mountain ranges across Europe.
My feelings are, that every child that grows up in Europe, should see wild animals on our continent some time in their lives. These animals are all migrating back into places where they were pushed to local extinction, so many millions of people will have to learn to live alongside them once again. One of the advantage of trips like this, is that they can be undertaken with very little planning – choose a route, pack your car and off you go.
As such, if you are holding off booking waiting to see what happens, these trips will remain open. Do look at our list of mountain ranges, for places to head and where to stay when you get there.
African wild dog, fill a similar niche in Africa that the wolf does in much of the northern hemisphere. Hunting as a pack, and running greater prey down until exhaustion means either collapse or a greatly weakened animal allowing the kill to take place. Because they live at low densities, it is only the largest national parks and other areas where they can survive long-term. It is currently thought that just 6600 of these majestic animals survive – though other estimates put the number between 3000-5000
