Video shows some of the juveniles exploring outside their den at Mallee Cliffs national park in south-western NSW
Baby numbats have been spotted at two wildlife sanctuaries in south-western New South Wales, sparking hope for one of Australia’s rarest marsupials.
Video captured by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) shows some of the juveniles exploring outside their den at Mallee Cliffs national park.
Continue reading...Before the Spanish study, some scientists had been sceptical about the mammals attacking migratory birds
Bats are generally viewed as harmless, if spooky, creatures of the night. But scientists have revealed a more savage side, after witnessing a greater noctule bat – Europe’s largest bat species – hunting, killing and devouring a robin mid-flight.
The grisly recording reveals the bat as a formidable predator, climbing to 1.2km (4,000ft) before embarking on a breakneck-speed dive in pursuit of its prey. On capture, the bat delivered a lethal bite and subsequent chewing sounds, recorded between echolocation calls, indicated that the bat consumed the bird continuously during flight for 23 minutes without losing altitude.
Continue reading...Before the Spanish study, some scientists had been sceptical about the mammals attacking migratory birds
Bats are generally viewed as harmless, if spooky, creatures of the night. But scientists have revealed a more savage side, after witnessing a greater noctule bat – Europe’s largest bat species – hunting, killing and devouring a robin mid-flight.
The grisly recording reveals the bat as a formidable predator, climbing to 1.2km (4,000ft) before embarking on a breakneck-speed dive in pursuit of its prey. On capture, the bat delivered a lethal bite and subsequent chewing sounds, recorded between echolocation calls, indicated that the bat consumed the bird continuously during flight for 23 minutes without losing altitude.
Continue reading...Ambler Road project, approved in Trump’s first term but blocked by Biden, would harm Native tribes and wildlife
Donald Trump on Monday ordered the approval of a proposed 211-mile road through an Alaska wilderness to allow mining of copper, cobalt, gold and other minerals.
The long-debated Ambler Road project was approved in the US president’s first term, but was later blocked by the Biden administration after an analysis determined the project would threaten caribou and other wildlife and harm Alaska Indigenous tribes that rely on hunting and fishing.
Continue reading...‘Australia’s bravest sausage dog’, who was lost in the wild for more than 500 days, now has an ambassadorial role, merchandise and an Australian Story episode
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World-famous dachshund Valerie, who was lost in the wild for more than 500 days, now has merchandise, an ambassadorial role, a public relations representative and a spot on Australian Story.
In November 2023 Valerie’s owners, Georgia Gardner and Josh Fishlock, were visiting Kangaroo Island in South Australia with Valerie in tow. But she escaped from her pen and bolted.
Continue reading...BirdLife WA calls consequences of Alcoa’s proposals to clear 11,000ha of jarrah forest ‘irreversible and catastrophic’ for endangered bird
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The destruction of Western Australia’s northern jarrah forests for bauxite mining will push a threatened black cockatoo “to and beyond the brink of extinction” if governments allowed it to continue, conservationists have warned.
Mark Henryon, a volunteer with Birdlife Western Australia, said there was a clear choice that would decide whether the endangered Baudin’s black cockatoo would survive. “Baudin’s or bauxite – we can’t have both,” he said.
Continue reading...Brown bear’s nearly 100,000 votes leads him to victory despite suffering for most of season with broken jaw
“The merely chubby have been winnowed away,” a naturalist intoned. “We are left with a clash of titans.”
After a record-breaking week of public voting, Katmai national park and preserve in Alaska has announced the winner of its “biggest Fat Bear Week yet”.
Continue reading...The country’s fastest bird has taken out the top prize in a scandal-free year for the annual poll
New Zealand’s fastest bird, capable of flying 200km/h in its pursuit of prey, has been crowned bird of the year – a long-running annual competition that has previously been a lightning rod for scandal and hijinks.
The threatened kārearea is New Zealand’s only falcon. It is small and tawny, with impressive talons and large dark eyes. Kārearea are powerful aerial hunters and watch other birds, lizards or small mammals – sometimes larger than themselves – from a high vantage point before diving at high speed to snatch their prey.
Continue reading...The country’s fastest bird has taken out the top prize in a scandal-free year for the annual poll
New Zealand’s fastest bird, capable of flying 200km/h in its pursuit of prey, has been crowned bird of the year – a long-running annual competition that has previously been a lightning rod for scandal and hijinks.
The threatened kārearea is New Zealand’s only falcon. It is small and tawny, with impressive talons and large dark eyes. Kārearea are powerful aerial hunters and watch other birds, lizards or small mammals – sometimes larger than themselves – from a high vantage point before diving at high speed to snatch their prey.
Continue reading...Murray Watt agrees recovery plans for greater glider, ghost bat, lungfish and sandhill dunnart were not made by successive governments
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The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, has conceded that successive governments acted unlawfully when they failed to create mandatory recovery plans for native species threatened with extinction in a major legal win for one of Australia’s largest environmental organisations.
The Wilderness Society has been successful in federal court proceedings it launched in March that sought to compel the minister to make recovery plans for species including the greater glider and the ghost bat.
Continue reading...Fattest brown bears, bulking up for hibernation, pitted against each other in online public vote – who will win?
It’s that time of year again, when audiences turn to a welcome distraction from the heavy news cycle: Katmai national park and preserve in southern Alaska is celebrating its fattest brown bears.
The park is set to kick off its annual Fat Bear Week on Tuesday, an online competition where the public votes for the park’s fattest brown bear.
Continue reading...Cupid recovers from surgery after what officials say is latest in half-dozen attacks on donkeys in semi-rural areas
A wild burro dubbed Cupid is recovering from surgery after being shot with an arrow in what officials say is the latest in a series of a half-dozen attacks since June on donkeys that roam semirural areas of inland southern California.
The two-year-old female burro was spotted last Wednesday with a blue arrow protruding from her right shoulder as she wandered with a herd in the foothills of Moreno Valley, about 65 miles (104km) east of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Banning order comes after multiple complaints from residents of apartment block about feathers and droppings
Rome’s mayor has ordered a woman to stop feeding dozens of pigeons that have overrun an apartment block, after furious residents, claiming to be drowning in feathers and guano, demanded relief from what has been described as a Hitchcockian nightmare.
For several months, on the third floor of a building at 108 Via Spartaco, a woman nicknamed “The Pigeon Lady” by the press has been feeding the flock of birds that has been plaguing the block. After countless complaints from residents, exasperated by the thick layer of guano covering the building’s interior and the public areas below – not to mention the parked cars – local authorities issued an order banning her from feeding the pigeons.
Continue reading...DNA analysis of endemic specimens in museums finds 79% of ant populations in Pacific archipelago are shrinking
Island-dwelling insects have not been spared the ravages of humanity that have pushed so many of their invertebrate kin into freefall around the world, new research on Fijian ant populations has found.
Hundreds of thousands of insect species have been lost over the past 150 years and it is believed the world is now losing between 1% and 2.5% a year of its remaining insect biomass – a decline so steep that many entomologists say we are living through an “insect apocalypse”. Yet long-term data for individual insect populations is sparse and patchy.
Continue reading...Raids by rival hives aren’t rare after a dry, hot summer, but Christine McDonald was surprised to find her store besieged
A Canadian beekeeper has described fending off thousands of “robber bees” as they raided her shop in a brazen attempt to steal honey.
Christine McDonald, who owns Rushing River Apiaries in the British Columbia city of Terrace, said she entered her shop to find it overrun by the swarm.
Continue reading...People suspected teenagers playing ding dong ditch and called police, who found animal crawling on the door panel
Inhabitants of an apartment block in Bavaria, southern Germany, who called police to investigate the relentless buzzing of their doorbells late at night were surprised to find the culprit was not a teenage prankster as they had suspected, but a slug.
The slug had been sliding up and down the bell plate, creating havoc in the building and tearing angry residents out of their beds long after midnight when they could not sleep for the noise.
Continue reading...British newlyweds feared worst when transportation of rescue cats from Greece to Paris went awry
A newlywed couple who married in Greece have said they feared the worst when three kittens they rescued from Crete went missing after being left in the hold of an aeroplane.
They first travelled to the island in September 2023 and found the mother cat, who “had a very distinctive bulging eye that needed to be removed”, Bethany Mulcahy-Stephenson, a veterinary nurse, said.
Continue reading...Conservationists hope that in 15 years species will no longer be at risk of extinction in Mexico – but challenges remain
In 2010, Gerardo Ceballos and a group of other researchers set out to answer a burning question: how many jaguars were there in Mexico? They knew there weren’t many. Hunting, loss of habitat, conflict with cattle ranchers and other issues had pushed the population to the brink of extinction.
Ceballos and his team from the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation (ANCJ) thought there were maybe 1,000 jaguars across the country. They decided to carry out the country’s first census of the animal to find out exactly how many there were. They found 4,100.
Continue reading...Environment advocates have called for important migratory shorebird habitat off Tasmania to be declared ‘no-go site’
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The Albanese government has greenlit a contentious windfarm proposed for Robbins Island off north-western Tasmania, promising to impose conditions to protect threatened bird species, including the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot.
The environment minister, Murray Watt, announced on Friday that he had approved an application by the renewable energy company Acen Australia to build up to 100 turbines, a 1.2km bridge between the nearly 10,000-hectare island and the Tasmanian mainland, a 500-metre wharf and four quarries.
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Continue reading...Activists claim Anant Ambani’s Vantara facility has no plan to return its endangered species to the wild
India’s supreme court has ordered an investigation into a vast private zoo founded by the son of Asia’s richest person over allegations of illegal wildlife imports and financial misconduct.
Home to a reported 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, Vantara in western Gujarat state describes itself as the “world’s biggest wild animal rescue centre”. It is run by Anant Ambani, a son of Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire head of the conglomerate Reliance Industries, and was one of the venues for his extravagant wedding celebrations last year, where celebrities were encouraged to wear “jungle fever” outfits.
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