Wildcats are native to the UK, but have been pushed to the brink of extinction by hybridisation with native cats – which come from the wildcats from places like Israel in the middle east. As a result of this, as well as trying to remove the feral domestic cats, and their descendants, they are trying to create pockets of Scotland, which would allow these cats to recover.
The natural behaviour of a British wildcat when meeting a feral cat, is to kill it. However, as these animals become rarer, even rare breeding events, can threaten the survival of the whole species. This behaviour also means that with careful planning, we should be able to reintroduce them into other parts of the country. There are a range of other wild predators lost over the last couple of millennia – and I hope to see the others return, but it is thrilling to know that a wildcat is once again living and breeding in its native habitat of the Scottish mountains.
These wildcats are thought to be the first born wild in Scotland for 5 years, after 19 wildcats bred in the Highland wildlife park, were released into the Cairngorms national park.
The Northern right whale was hunted to the brink of extinction – with less than 500 left when hunting ended. To put this in perspective, only 300 Southern right whales were left when hunting stopped, it is thought that there are now 3000-4000 Southern right whales.
Now, it is true that historically the Southern right whale is thought to have numbered as 55,000-70,000 individuals, suggesting that the current population is 3-5% of historic numbers.
However, the current estimate for the Northern right whale population is 386. While has the Southern right whale population grown over 1000%, and in the same time, the northern right whale population declined?
The skeleton above is the closest we can get to a real mammoth, as a result of their extinction. However, it is not the only missing large species – indeed, the elephant family alone, is thought to have around 30 extinct members. Aside from these, there are 2 known extinct species of the woolly rhino, cave lions and sabre-toothed tigers, and various species of bear, among many others.
If you go back 50,000 years, there were 57 species of megaherbivores (herbivores weighing over a ton), yet just 11 of these survive today – these include the elephant species, the rhino species the hippo and the giraffe.
This is a video of one of the clashes that I am talking about. The Grizzley bear population in 1975 ( in the lower 48 states) was just 700-800 (this excludes Alaska, where the current figure is 30,000) . The lower 48 states population has grown to around 1000 or an almost 50% increase.
There is a problem with this. Both in and out of Alaska (as well as Canada) these bears need space, and so are colonizing land that they previously roamed. Unfortunately, people rapidly forget how to live with animals like grizzly bears, so it is taking some significant work to live alongside these large animals once again.
The problem is, that when those encounters spike, generally authorities panic, and this generally leads to them looking to allow hunting once again. THIS IS DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE POPULATION IS NO-WHERE NEAR RECOVERED AT THE CURRENT TIME.
These 3 groups do not intermix, and only very seldom, interbreed. These populations are found in the Southern Pacific, Northern Pacific and the North Atlantic and Mediterranean.
This naturally means that the great white sharp is far more at risk of extinction, than if all the great white sharks in the worlds oceans could interbreed.
These areas appear to be bounded by great ocean currents, which are rarely crossed. This is a problem, as if an individual population is lost, it makes it far more likely that distinct genetic information could be lost with it – take the Mediterranean great while shark population, which has seen a dramatic population decline from historic numbers, estimated at between 52% and 96% (areas like the Maramara sea, are known to have lost 96% of their population) depending on which study you read.
This makes local conservation far more essential, and we need to be careful to not loose any individual populations. There has been a great deal of worry for the great white shark population around South Africa, as they pretty much vanished in 2017, but appear to have returned in 2024. The disappearance of the great white was attributed to 2 orca which had become expert in hunting and killing these sharks – it should be remembered, that while great whites are often at the top of the food chain, they are hunted for food by orca. Whether these orca have gone back to eating something else, hence the great white shark return, is a question that does not appear to have been answered as yet.
European Goshawks were extinct in Britain at the end of the 19th century (and remained rare for over half a century) but in the last 50 years have made an incredible comeback. In the new forest, in the south of England, there are thought to be hundreds of pairs living wild.
In Thetford forest in Norfolk, an estimated 52% of the goshawks diet was grey squirrel. While it is true that they will also take red squirrels, these are generally better at escaping. More importantly, it is thought that Goshawks could be used to stop the grey squirrels population from growing any further.
As I have written before, the pine marten is also important for the recovery of the red squirrel, as it is far more successful at hunting grey squirrels, and they generally do not cohabit in any part of the country.
This will likely not eliminate the direct need for grey squirrel population to be culled by humans, far from it, but may well help towards the idea of giving red squirrels breathing room.
Recognized as an incredibly popular species, with a great deal of conservation effort being put into its survival. The Queensland conservation council is urging the state government is calling for its remaining habitat to be protected, as logging continues.
Calls are being made to create a park to protect the species.
The Miles government promised (in June) to turn 50,000-60,000 hectares of high value ecosystems into a greater glider national park. Unfortunately, this plan gave detailed listings of where timber would be extracted, but did not include clear maps for areas to be protected. Quite understandably, conservationists are calling foul – it is not possible to deforest an area, and then call for its conservation.
The population of this species is estimated to have halved in just the last 20 years, which should officially declares it as vulnerable to extinction (it is true that this is often decided over 10 years, but still is a very bad sign). Other issues, is fragmentation of their forests – they are generally very unwilling to come down to ground level to travel to other trees. They can stay in the air for around 100m, but this means that a gap greater than this can isolate the population. They require eucalypt forests (this is almost all they eat, with plenty of large tree hollows to make home, and retreat into.
Will Australia step up, or will this species get pushed into planned extinction? Time will tell, though given Australias track record, we should not expect big things without a great deal of pressure from conservation groups, and publicity on what is happening, from around the world.
A female orangutan, who had failed to bond with either of her first two offspring (and as a result had both died), found 30 volunteer human mothers, to come in to breastfeed their babies in front of the orangutan.
The exhibit was shut, so that the mothers could breastfeed topless – allowing Mujur the 19 year old mother to be, to see what was happening. As can be seen from the image, the orangutan showed a great deal of interest in the breastfeeding – and as well, Mujur was shown videos of orangutans feeding their babies.
Historically, scientists have treated Neanderthals and humans (homo sapiens) as separate species, but this has been called into doubt. Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) and homo sapiens clearly share some links, as the majority of the human race, has around 2% of our genome from the Neanderthals.
Thought to have split around half a million years ago, the Neanderthals are thought to have arrived in Europe up to 430,000 years ago. Humans only left Africa (and arrived in Europe around 50,000 years ago.
It suggests, that Neanderthals and humans coexisted around 50,000, in a relatively harmonious way, and interbreed relatively frequently. The issue with this, is that according to strict rules, separate species are not supposed to be able to produce fertile offspring, when they interbreed (there are plenty of examples of ligers (it should be noted that generally, while the female liger (or tigon) is infertile, the male is usually fertile) or zeedonks in zoos, where closely related individuals were put in the same enclosure for company, only to find that an unexpected offspring occurred.
This suggests, that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, should not be considered as separate species, but merely separate subspecies (much like the Amur leopard of far eastern Russia, and the Cape leopard of Southern South Africa, are both leopards, so could have offspring).
It is true, however, that there are no individuals with high levels of Neanderthal DNA. However, it is quite easy to see how interbreeding could eliminate a subspecies. Should the wolves from France migrate west into Spain, in large numbers, the Iberian wolf, and its genetic traits could be lost. While in some instances this can be positive, as it can give a subspecies with low genetic variability the capability to recover, It can also have a negative impact – imagine the Amur tiger, whose wild population in the 1940s was below the lowest that the Amur tiger population dropped to just 50. Had humanity transferred 50 Bengal tigers into this range, and they had interbreed with Amur tigers, before dying of the cold, there offspring, would likely have not had long enough coats to survive the harsh winter, and the whole subspecies would have likely been lost.
All this is to say, that we need to be careful how we reintroduce species. It is one thing, if a subspecies has already been lost, as a closely related subspecies is better than a hole in the food web, but if this subspecies is introduced to help the population, it may instead drag it towards extinction.
While cheetah are now thought of as an African species, this has not always been the case. Within the lives of living people (admittedly, now quite old), the cheetah was lost from India. This occurred back in 1952. The last cheetah was seen in Israel was 1959. There are a range of countries which the cheetah was lost from in the 20th century. Further back, cheetah lived in the USA and other far flung countries.
Now, it is true, that the Asiatic cheetah is on the verge of extinction in its only home of Iran, with just 12 estimated in the wild in 2022, down from 100 in 2010.
While at times, the government of their only home have made positive noises about saving the Asiatic cheetah, they have also bothered those working to save them, including lengthy prison terms for those working in the field.
