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...Campaigners crowdfund £26,000 to seek judicial review of move to construct pitches in wildlife-rich area
Campaigners are mounting another legal challenge to the building of a women’s football academy by Tottenham Hotspur on wildlife-rich parkland in north London.
The Guardians of Whitewebbs group has successfully crowdfunded £26,000 to seek a judicial review of Enfield council’s granting of planning permission for the Spurs academy, which will include all-weather pitches, floodlights and a turf academy built on 53 hectares (130 acres) of Whitewebbs Park. Enfield council’s planning committee approved the proposals in February, despite local protests, on greenbelt parkland rich in bats, newts and mature trees.
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...Labor’s koala strategy doesn’t go far enough, Coalition says, but environmentalists hail park a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ decision
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The long-awaited great koala national park in the north of New South Wales, celebrated by wildlife groups, has drawn a mixed reaction from the state’s Coalition.
The opposition leader, Mark Speakman has hedged his party’s support, saying while he “supports the ambition of protecting koalas”, he was concerned about job losses and the cost of the park.
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...Localised rises in temperature caused by land clearance cause 28,330 heat-related deaths a year, researchers find
Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.
Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.
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.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Environment department document states that Burrup peninsula site near Woodside gas plant ‘under threat of injury or desecration’
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The environment minister, Murray Watt, has been advised by his department to declare a protection order over part of the Burrup peninsula in Western Australia due to its significance as an Aboriginal site, a government affidavit filed in the federal court shows.
A Murujuga traditional custodian, Raelene Cooper, applied in 2022 to protect the area’s cultural heritage from nearby industrial activities, including Woodside’s planned extension of its North West Shelf processing plant.
Continue reading...Fishing club chaired by singer threatens court action over abstraction it says is putting rare trout population at risk
The singer and environmentalist Feargal Sharkey is threatening to take the Environment Agency to court for draining a river that hosts the oldest fishing club in England and putting a rare population of brown trout at risk.
The former Undertones frontman chairs the Amwell Magna Fishery, which has used the secluded stretch of the River Lea in Hertfordshire since 1841.
Continue reading...Glencore says it is working with state and federal governments to minimise the impact of flora and fauna in the 680ha area west of Mackay
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Habitat for threatened koalas that are part of a population described by one expert as nationally significant would be bulldozed under plans to extend a Queensland coalmine.
The campaign group Lock the Gate used drones with thermal imaging cameras to find 13 koalas in one night in trees earmarked for clearing by mining company Glencore.
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Continue reading...Fish once as large as grizzly bears have become far smaller in recent years due to overfishing, dams and climate crisis
The size of megafish in the Mekong River has shrunk alarmingly in recent years owing to overfishing, a study has found. The length of the largest and most endangered freshwater giants, some as big as grizzly bears, decreased by 40% in seven years.
Some fish, like the Mekong giant catfish, have been studied for over a longer period and show a decline in weight of 55% in the past 25 years, dropping from an average of 180kg (397lb) to 80kg.
Continue reading...Prof Miles Richardson says people risk ‘extinction of experience’ in the natural world without new policies
People’s connection to nature has declined by more than 60% since 1800, almost exactly mirroring the disappearance of nature words such as river, moss and blossom from books, according to a study.
Computer modelling predicts that levels of nature connectedness will continue to decline unless there are far-reaching policy and societal changes – with introducing children to nature at a young age and radically greening urban environments the most effective interventions.
Continue reading...Release of 20 lynx over several years into Kielder Forest area would create population of about 50 animals
Releasing just 20 lynx in Northumberland would be enough to create a healthy wild population, research has found, and most people in the area would support the practice.
Northumberland Wildlife Trust has been working to see if the wild cats, which became extinct in Britain about 1,300 years ago as a result of hunting and habitat loss, could be returned to the area.
Continue reading...Lion that once roamed northern Africa has been extinct in the wild since 1960s
Four Barbary lion cubs were born recently in a Czech zoo, a vital contribution for the small surviving population of a rare lion that is extinct in the wild.
The three females and one male were seen playing in their outdoor enclosure at Dvůr Králové safari park on Wednesday under the watchful eye of their parents, Khalila and Bart.
Continue reading...Visitors to pay up to NZ$40 to access certain attractions in coming years amid overhaul of conservation laws
New Zealand plans to start charging international tourists fees to enter its famous natural sites and will make it easier for businesses to operate on conservation land as part of a controversial proposal to “unleash” growth on ecologically and culturally protected areas.
The government plans to start charging foreign visitors NZ$20-40 ($12-24) per person to access some sites. Initially, those would probably include Cathedral Cove/Te Whanganui-a-Hei, Tongariro Crossing, Milford Track and Aoraki Mount Cook. The fees are likely to be imposed from 2027.
Continue reading...Breeding event known as Cuttlefest takes place in waters off Point Lowly but this year scientists warn the effect of toxic algae could be ‘catastrophic’
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As thousands of giant cuttlefish gather in South Australia’s Spencer Gulf, scientists are investigating emergency actions amid fears the state’s toxic algal bloom could be catastrophic for the globally unique natural phenomenon.
The spectacular annual cephalopod meet-up takes place in a kaleidoscope of colour off the coast of Whyalla from late May to August, attracting thousands of tourists from Australia and overseas.
Continue reading...Government launches licensing round for 52 fossil fuel blocks, potentially undermining a flagship conservation initiative and affecting an estimated 39 million people
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is opening crucial gorilla habitats and pristine forests to bids for oil and gas drilling, with plans to carve up more than half the country into fossil fuel blocks.
The blocks opened for auction cover 124m hectares (306m acres) of land and inland waters described by experts as the “world’s worst place to prospect for oil” because they hold vast amounts of carbon and are home to some of the planet’s most precious wildlife habitats, including endangered lowland gorillas and bonobo.
Continue reading...Alga from south-east Asia is major threat to biodiversity, say experts as they warn of environmental catastrophe
Thousands of tonnes of an aggressive invasive seaweed from south-east Asia are piling up on the beaches of the strait of Gibraltar and Spain’s southern coast in what local environmentalists say is a major threat to the region’s biodiversity.
Since May, the local authority in Cádiz has removed 1,200 tonnes of the alga Rugulopteryx okamurae from La Caleta, the city’s most popular beach, including 78 tonnes in a single day.
Continue reading...Initial £15.5m will go to schemes such as launch of large regional park to improving green spaces along canals
A coalition of environmental and heritage bodies has launched a billion-pound mission to bring nature into the heart of urban areas in the UK.
The first phase of the Nature Towns and Cities initiative will involve £15.5m being invested in 40 towns and cities across the four nations.
Continue reading...Ellie Wilson’s piece titled Moth x Human assigns different sounds to the species on Parsonage Down in Salisbury
They are vital pollinators who come out at night, but now moths have emerged into the bright light of day as co-creators of a new piece of music – composed using the insects’ own flight data.
Ellie Wilson composed Moth x Human in a protected habitat on Parsonage Down in Salisbury, Wiltshire. She assigned each of the 80 resident moth species a different sound, which was triggered when it landed on her monitor.
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