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This website aims to make it easy for those living with wildlife, and those who would like to see it, to find each other. Where-ever the wildlife, if the local people do not benefit it will not survive.  Please note, on some computers these maps can take 10 seconds to load.

Explore the worlds wilds, through the maps above, or the species in the expandable section below. Add your destinations, by clicking on “list your wild”. Scroll down to read our latest wild news.

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    Posted on

    The Ross ice shelf, in Antarctica, has been found to move

    The Ross ice shelf is vast, covering 182,000 square miles, it is only slightly smaller than France, and yet a study has shown, that the whole ice shelf can move 40 cm in just 10 minutes. These were generally caused by slips in the Whillans Ice Sheet, which is one of just a few ice flows into and through the area.

    The whole shelf was found to move 6-8cm once or twice a day, triggered by these flows moving. This could be the cause of both icequakes, and fractures running through the ice (fractures are important, as they make it more likely that a section of the ice will break off the edge of Antarctica and head into the ocean. While this ice can, on occasion survive a long time – A23a broke of Antarctica in 1986 and has been floating free for much of the time since (except for a decade or so when it grounded); it was estimated to be 400m thick and weigh in at nearly 1 trillion tonnes.

    This is a problem for a simple reason. Unlike the north pole, there is land under the ice in Antarctica. This means that while in the north pole, the ice sheet is already in the sea, so its melting cannot increase sea level, Antarctic ice all does increase sea levels.

    The Ross ice shelf is known to have collapsed 120,000 years ago during the last interglacial period, and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 11.5m (this would also cause another 2m of sea level rise because of the glaciers which would no longer be held back).

    A Dutch startup, is trialling mitigating this in the Arctic, by pumping sea water onto the ice. This then freezes, thickening the ice. It is possible that this might work in the short term, however, what is clear, is that the only long-term solution, is to stop burning fossil fuels, so as to halt the heating of the earths climate.

    Posted on

    Great white sharks separated into 3 district populations 200,000 years ago – and have Orca stopped hunting the South African population?

    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.

    Posted on

    Surely, there is a problem when a Southport rioter gets jailed for less time than a Just Stop Oil protester?

    Rioting and protesting are both activities that many would consider annoying. Yet, they are very different. Rioting, is a totally illegal activity, and the rioter in question punched a police officer in the face – he was given 3 years in prison. The Just Stop Oil protester was involved in a zoom call to talk about blocking the M25 and was given 5 years.

    Peaceful protest is a protected right in the UK. It is true, that blocking a motorway is not covered, but there is an increasing part of the UK population which are so worried about this, and the governments low priority of this, that they could condone action like motorway blocking.

    This law was only passed in 2022, and appears to be a direct attack on the right to peaceful protest. With Labour having recently taken power, we would hope that this ridiculous expansion of powers, and destruction of long-valued British rights might get reversed, but we will have to wait and see.

    Posted on

    Plans to turn the Pantanal into a waterway, will destroy this wilderness

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    The Pantanal is an incredibly wilderness, however, the Paraguay river is planned to be turned into a water way and build ports. I have included 2 videos for you to look at (depending on how much time you have). The video above is around 4 minutes, while the below is a full documentary 50 minutes.

    Continue reading “Plans to turn the Pantanal into a waterway, will destroy this wilderness”
    Posted on

    Could the recovery of the Goshawk save the red squirrel?

    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.

    Continue reading “Could the recovery of the Goshawk save the red squirrel?”
    Posted on

    Older trees are more capable of increasing growth and carbon dioxide use than young ones

    Whether tropical or not, old growth forests absorb far more carbon than new trees, and can increase this

    Old growth trees, have the capacity to greatly increase their growing rate, when there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. This has been found, in a study by the University of Birmingham. This is important, as in many places around the world, an area of destroyed natural forest, is considered to be replaceable by a similar area of planted trees, but what is clear, is that in order to merely keep up with the absorption of the original trees, several multiples more of trees need planting. What is worse, is that this is not worrying about the huge amount of carbon that is stored in the trees that are cut down, or within its roots system and the surrounding soil.

    To put this in perspective, at the current time, it is estimated that a football pitch of primary forest is lost every 6 seconds.

    This experiment was done, by piping extra carbon dioxide into a forest area and monitoring its growth. Unfortunately, this does reinforce the conservationist point of view, that simply planting a similar area of woodland for each bit lost, is not good enough.

    Posted on

    The greater glider, looks like a cross between a koala and a possum, but it is in danger, and if Australia does not change course it may be lost

    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.

    Posted on

    As water buffalo return, they are revitalizing the kizilirmak delta – formerlly destroyed by becoming industrial wastelands

    There are many species around the world which are so important to their habitat, that even a reduction in the population can cause problems – this is one of them. After tadpoles have lost their tails, many will climb onto the hairy back of the water buffalo, getting a ride to other rich feeding areas (and the buffalo gets any irritating flies eaten). There can be as many as 20 frogs on each water buffalo.

    Water buffalo were first domesticated 3000 years ago, in Asia, but have proved to be so useful, there are now 200 million spread across 77 countries, on 5 continents. Initially considered as useful animals for plough and similar farm work, in recent times, it has been recognized for its ecosystem engineer duties.

    Thriving in wetlands, they can force their way through places that other herbivores fail. While they are not native to many of their current homes, they are capable of filling ecological niches that have long been empty after the initial large cattle like animals were killed off, or all taken into captivity. It should be noted, that in some places, like Australia, there are few to no predators, to control such a large animal, which has lead to a population of 200,000. There is a native water buffalo (Anatolian).

    A variety of characteristics help this species to easily fill the ecological niche of the European water buffalo (lost around 10,000 years ago). From transporting seeds in their fur, they fill in many of the roles that the extinct European water buffalo did in the long past. Even in places like the UK, which is one of the most nature depleted countries, the water buffalo are replacing long extinct species, and recovering ecosystems as a result.

    This sort of behaviour has to be carefully managed, as in many places, introducing a closely related species can be very costly. In the UK, the grey squirrel has decimated the population of the native red squirrel, and this is not an isolated example, with many others from around the world. However, so long as their effect is closely managed, and there is not a closer relation to the missing species, the impact is likely to be a net positive. Over the last 50 years, 1/3 of the worlds wetlands have been lost, these species, when carefully managed, are likely to be able to bring some of this back.

    Posted on

    Dublin zoo has to get breastfeeding women to educate an orangutan

    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.

    Continue reading “Dublin zoo has to get breastfeeding women to educate an orangutan”
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