Three women have handed themselves in to police in Germany over a blaze at a zoo on New Year's Eve that killed dozens of animals.
The women are being investigated for setting off flying lanterns, which are banned, and which may have been the cause of the fire at Krefeld zoo in North Rhine-Westphalia, which killed over 30 primates.
Continue reading...Sussan Ley’s estimate suggests up to 8,400 koalas may have perished in the bushfires
Australia’s environment minister has said up to 30% of koalas on the New South Wales mid-north coast may have been killed in the country’s ongoing bushfire crisis.
Nationally, more than 5m hectares have been burned in an unprecedented bushfire season that has also killed nine people. Some 3.4m hectares have been burnt in NSW alone.
Continue reading...Chimpanzees seen clapping, tapping and swaying along to piano rhythms in a music booth
Akira stands up and sways about. Pal is big on clapping. Ai is into tapping her foot, while Gon bangs and slaps the walls.
Not the latest teen band sensation, but a spectacle far more impressive: the moves of a group of chimpanzees that scientists believe shed light on the prehistoric origins of human dancing.
Continue reading...Dog undergoes two lifesaving operations in Dorset after gorging on gingerbread tree ornaments
A seven-year-old labrador has undergone two lifesaving operations after gorging on more than 30 homemade gingerbread Christmas tree decorations.
The dog’s owner, Rachael Bulmer, from Bournemouth, rushed her pet Marley to the PDSA Pet Hospital in the Dorset town after it became seriously ill. Vets performed emergency surgery on Marley to remove ribbons attached to the biscuits.
Continue reading...The big cats’ resourceful new behaviour was recorded by a WWF study on a remote island off the coast of Brazil
A thriving population of jaguars living on a small, unspoilt island off the coast of the Brazilian Amazon has learned to catch fish in the sea to survive, conservationists have found.
The Maracá-Jipioca Ecological Station island reserve, three miles off the northern state of Amapá, acts as a nursery for jaguars, according to WWF researchers who have collared three cats and set up 70 camera traps on the remote jungle island.
Continue reading...Andrew Taylor came up with the idea because of a lack of ‘good’ sticks at the local park
A New Zealand man has created a “stick library” for his local dog park as a way to recycle branches from tree pruning.
Andrew Taylor, of north Canterbury in the South Island, cut a dozen tree branches down to “stick” size for the community’s four-legged friends, and smoothed away the rough edges using tools he had around the house.
Continue reading...There are days in a Canadian winter – when the temperature drops well below freezing and the snow hasn’t yet fallen – that transform any body of freshwater into a glass-like sheet of ice.
But what can bring joy to an adventurous human can prove a nightmare for some wild animals.
Continue reading...A Houston man, Johnny Mathis, saves the day – and the dog – by leaping into action when the leash of a neighbour's pet gets caught in an elevator door. A security camera at their apartment complex captures the entire dramatic rescue. Mathis is thankful he was on hand to help: 'It could happen to anyone. A second is all it takes'
• Florida dog drives doughnuts in unmanned car before police rescue
Continue reading...Fishermen on Canada’s Vancouver Island have filmed the moment they rescued a bald eagle from the grips of an octopus’s tentacles after the bird of prey tried to attack it. The footage shows the fisherman removing the bird from the octopus's tight hold, before they release it back to safety
Continue reading...Intensively managed estates have created treeless landscapes with few animals and plants
Conservation groups have called for Scotland’s grouse moors to be closed down and replaced by woodland to protect the country from the impacts of the climate emergency.
A report for Revive, a coalition of environmental and animal rights groups, has found grouse moors cause significant ecological damage by burning heather, allowing heavy grazing by deer and sheep, and using intensive predator control.
Continue reading...Inquiry hears most koalas cannot move fast enough to get away from fires leaping from treetop to treetop
Fires burning around New South Wales have razed koala habitats so extensively “we will probably never find the bodies”, an ecologist has told a parliamentary inquiry.
On Monday the NSW upper house inquiry held an urgent hearing into the state’s koala population and habitat after this season’s “unprecedented” bushfires destroyed millions of hectares of forest.
Continue reading...Dozens of species are now at risk but a conference this week will showcase new technology that could help stop the illegal trade
The two young women who arrived at Heathrow in February 2014 en route to Düsseldorf were carrying nondescript luggage. Customs officers were suspicious nevertheless and looked inside – to find 13 iguanas stuffed into socks inside the cases. Astonishingly, 12 of the highly endangered San Salvador rock iguanas had survived their transatlantic journey.
“There only about 600 of these animals left in the wild, in the Bahamas, and these animals were being taken to a private collector somewhere in Germany. Incredibly, we were able to return 12 of them, alive, to their homeland – on San Salvador island,” said Grant Miller, who was then working for the Border Force’s endangered species team.
Continue reading...Miniature schnauzer was killed and its owner suffered a minor cut in attack in Simi Valley
A southern California woman punched a mountain lion and tried to pry its jaws open to save her dog from an attack in her backyard, but the pet was killed, officials said.
The woman suffered a minor cut after the mountain lion attacked her miniature schnauzer on Thursday in the city of Simi Valley, the police Sgt Keith Eisenhour told KNBC-TV.
Continue reading...The Christmas tree at the Tennessee aquarium is being powered by an unusual renewable energy source – an electric eel. Miguel Wattson is the resident eel and through a special system that connects his tank to a nearby tree, the natural shocks he produces when he is looking for food or when he is excited, is being channelled to power fairy lights
Continue reading...Experts fear species decline after huge number of deaths on Henderson and Cocos
More than half a million hermit crabs have been killed after becoming trapped in plastic debris on two remote island groups, prompting concern that the deaths could be part of a global species decline.
The pioneering study found that 508,000 crabs died on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands archipelago in the Indian Ocean, along with 61,000 on Henderson Island in the South Pacific. Previous studies have found high levels of plastic pollution at both sites.
Continue reading...Environmentalists fear animal filmed in Russia now lacks camouflage to properly hunt
A video showing a polar bear spray-painted with graffiti has sparked outrage among environmentalists amid fears that the creature was targeted by locals in an area where the animals increasingly forage.
Scientists were concerned that the bear filmed in Russia – daubed with the letters “T-34”, the name of a second world war-era Soviet tank – would have trouble hunting and maintaining camouflage with the black lettering clearly visible on its side.
Continue reading...Thousands of Hindus head to southern Nepal for festival honouring goddess of power
Thousands of Hindus have gathered in southern Nepal before a festival believed to be the world’s largest ritual animal slaughter, despite court orders and calls by animal activists to end the event.
The sacrifices, set to begin on Tuesday, take place every five years in the village of Bariyarpur close to the Indian border, in honour of the Hindu goddess of power.
Continue reading...Plan aims to allow tuna population to recover from overfishing, but conservationists say endangered mako shark has been overlooked
Conservationists welcomed “long overdue” catch limits set this week for bigeye tuna and other Atlantic species, but criticised weak measures to rebuild endangered mako shark populations.
The International Commission for the Conservations of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) – responsible for the management of tuna and tuna-like species and bycatch including sharks and rays – set new catch limits for bigeye tuna at a meeting in Palma, Mallorca, this week. It also agreed to reduce juvenile fish mortality by limiting certain fishing practices.
Continue reading...Shooting poachers, circling polar bears, flailing four-tonne seals, singing rhinos and the world’s worst sea … the team behind Attenborough’s latest extravaganza relive their thrills and spills
Chadden Hunter, producer, North America and South America
Continue reading...Last of the species in country, a female rhino named Iman, ‘died sooner than expected’
The Sumatran rhinoceros has become extinct in Malaysia, zoologists have announced.
The last of the species in the country succumbed to cancer in the state of Sabah on the island of Borneo, it was revealed.
Continue reading...