Category Archives: Wildlife

Licence to trill: Molly the magpie returned to Queensland carers after special wildlife permit granted

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Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen are allowed to keep the bird, which had become Instagram famous with their staffy, Peggy, but are forbidden from monetising it

Molly the magpie has been returned to its Gold Coast carers – but they are no longer allowed to make money from its 837,000 Instagram followers.

The department of environment, science and innovation approved a special licence for Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen, who have cared for it since it fell from the nest in 2020.

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‘We found 700 different species’: astonishing array of wildlife discovered in Cambodia mangroves

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Hairy-nosed otters and cats that catch fish are among the startling diversity of creatures making their home in threatened habitats

One of the most comprehensive biodiversity surveys ever carried out in a mangrove forest has revealed that an astonishing array of wildlife makes its home in these key, threatened habitats.

Hundreds of species – from bats to birds and fish to insects – were identified during the study of the Peam Krasop sanctuary and the adjacent Koh Kapik Ramsar reserve in Cambodia. Hairy-nosed otters, smooth-coated otters, large-spotted civets, long-tailed macaques and fishing cats, as well a wide range of bat species, were among the residents recorded by the survey, which was funded by the conservation group Fauna & Flora International. The variety of wildlife has staggered biologists.

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Rope-entangled right whale spotted off coast of New England

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The marine mammals are increasingly endangered as warmer waters push them into ship traffic and fishing gear

A North Atlantic right whale has been spotted entangled in rope off New England, worsening an already devastating year for the vanishing animals, federal authorities said.

Right whales number less than 360 and are vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships. The entangled whale was seen on Wednesday about 50 miles (80km) south of Rhode Island’s Block Island, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

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Top environmental groups say some of Labor’s new laws could take conservation backwards

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Alliance says there’s not enough ambition in proposed laws to prevent extinctions, as promised by the environment minister

The Albanese government is backing away from a promise to substantially transform how nature is protected in Australia and is planning some changes that would make things worse, according to eight of the country’s top environment groups.

The conservation organisations said they were concerned the government planned to break up promised legislation for new environmental laws and defer some difficult reforms until after the next election, if it wins a second term.

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Include a “call-in” power that allowed the minister to take over a decision from a proposed environment protection agency (EPA) “at any time and for any reason”.

Allow developers to make payments to a new “restoration contributions” fund to compensate for damage their projects caused to the environment. This would remove a requirement that environmental offsets provide a “like-for-like” replacement for ecosystems or species affected by a development.

Fail to give the new EPA the “teeth” it needed to be an independent and effective environmental regulator.

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House sparrow tops Big Garden Birdwatch charts for 21st year in a row

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Blue tits, starlings, wood pigeons and blackbirds next most sighted in RSPB survey involving 600,000 participants

A friendly if slightly tuneless chirp is the most ubiquitous birdsong in British gardens with the house sparrow topping the Big Garden Birdwatch charts for the 21st consecutive year, according to the annual RSPB survey.

Blue tits, starlings, wood pigeons and blackbirds were the next most-sighted birds by more than 600,000 participants in the world’s largest wildlife garden survey.

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Tanya Plibersek rejects Toondah Harbour project over impact on globally significant wetlands

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Walker Corporation had proposed 3,000 apartments, marina and shops for the site, which is a critical habitat for the endangered eastern curlew

• Toondah Harbour: should a wetland home to endangered birds become $1.3bn worth of shops, high-rises and a marina?
• To the moon and back with the eastern curlew

The environment and water minister, Tanya Plibersek, has announced she will reject an apartment and retail development on an internationally important wetland at Queensland’s Moreton Bay.

Plibersek said on Tuesday she would refuse Walker Corporation’s Toondah Harbour project – first proposed eight years ago and opposed by a long-running community campaign backed by scientists and conservationists – because it would have an unacceptable impact on the Ramsar site.

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UN names veteran EU official Astrid Schomaker as new biodiversity chief

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German’s appointment to head Convention on Biological Diversity follows global failure to meet any targets on protecting ecosystems

The next UN biodiversity chief will be Astrid Schomaker, an EU civil servant who will be entrusted with helping the world confront the ongoing catastrophic loss of nature.

Schomaker has been a career official with the EU commission for 30 years. A surprise appointment, she will be tasked with corralling governments to make good on their commitments to protect life on Earth – something they have not done in more than 30 years since the UN biodiversity convention was created.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

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Early warning system to track Asian hornets unveiled by UK researchers

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Monitoring station detects predatory species using artificial intelligence and sends alert so nests can be traced

An early warning system designed to track and trace predatory Asian hornets using artificial intelligence has been unveiled by experts from a British university.

Researchers from the University of Exeter have invented a system that draws hornets to a monitoring station. They land on a sponge cloth impregnated with food and an overhead camera captures images.

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‘Wonderful experience’: Researcher’s close encounter with Svalbard polar bears

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Meteorologist says bears were not aggressive but they fired signal gun to scare them away

Katarzyna Kudłacz was preparing a breakfast of scrambled eggs at a research station on Svalbard when she looked up to see she had three unexpected guests.

Shocked and in awe, the meteorologist immediately alerted her colleagues to the female polar bear and her two cubs peering into the Polish research station in Hornsund, in the south of the Norwegian archipelago, their noses pressed up against the window.

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Spinning, whirling fish in south Florida prompt emergency response

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Smalltooth sawfish are behaving oddly, eliciting a first-ever plan to rescue and rehabilitate species from wild

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is launching what the agency described as an emergency response effort in south Florida after emerging reports of smalltooth sawfish spinning, whirling and displaying other abnormal behaviors.

In a statement released last Wednesday, NOAA said that in addition to the abnormal behaviors, there have been reports of fish deaths in the lower Florida Keys, including more than 28 smalltooth sawfish as of 24 March.

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Reported plan to move Rosehill racecourse to endangered bell frog habitat surprises conservationists

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Horse racing industry insiders said to be pushing for Sydney track to be relocated to former brickpit in Olympic Park – a sanctuary to an unlikely urban survivor

Conservations have expressed surprise at reported plans to move Sydney’s Rosehill racecourse to a historic brickpit at Olympic Park, which is home to a colony of endangered green and golden bell frogs.

The plan has reportedly been devised by racing bosses, alongside the deal between the Australian Turf Club and the New South Wales government to redevelop the famous track into new housing, as well as two additional metro stations.

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EU nature restoration laws face collapse as member states withdraw support

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Brussels vote cancelled after it became clear law would not pass final stage with majority vote

The EU’s nature restoration laws appear on the verge of collapse after eight member states, including Hungary and Italy, withdrew support for the legislation.

The laws, which have been two years in the making and are designed to reverse decades of damage to wildlife on land and in waterways, were supposed to be rubber-stamped in a vote on Monday.

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Orca stranded off Canada’s west coast dies despite efforts to save her

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Residents and marine officials in British Columbia hope a changing tide will save her orphaned calf

A killer whale stranded off Canada’s west coast has died despite efforts to rescue her, but residents and marine officials hope a changing tide will save her orphaned calf.

On Saturday, members of the Ehattisaht First Nation, a coastal community along the north-western reaches of Vancouver Island, spotted an orca trapped on a rocky outcropping.

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Israel must allow humanitarian relief to reach Gaza, Australia and UK say in new joint statement – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

As part of the latest Aukus developments, Australia will send A$4.6bn to the UK to clear bottlenecks at the Rolls-Royce nuclear reactor production line.

Richard Marles was asked why it costs so much, and why this component needs to be done in the UK. He told ABC News Breakfast:

We made clear a year ago that we wouldn’t be building the nuclear reactors in Australia. They will be built by Rolls Royce at its facility in Derby in the UK and once the sealed reactors are built, they will be taken here to the Osborne Naval ship yard and placed in the submarines which the rest of which will be built here at Osborne.

Building nuclear reactors is difficult to do and in order for this to play out, that facility in Derby, which is building nuclear reactors for Britain’s navy, that needs to be expanded and that is what this contribution is for.

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Scientists find skull of enormous ancient dolphin in Amazon

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Fossil of giant river dolphin found in Peru, whose closest living relation is in South Asia, gives clues to future extinction threats

Scientists have discovered the fossilised skull of a giant river dolphin, from a species thought to have fled the ocean and sought refuge in Peru’s Amazonian rivers 16m years ago. The extinct species would have measured up to 3.5 metres long, making it the largest river dolphin ever found.

The discovery of this new species, Pebanista yacuruna, highlights the looming risks to the world’s remaining river dolphins, all of which face similar extinction threats in the next 20 to 40 years, according to the lead author of new research published in Science Advances today. Aldo Benites-Palomino said it belonged to the Platanistoidea family of dolphins commonly found in oceans between 24m and 16m years ago.

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Data missing on clearing of endangered ecosystems for western Sydney housing scheme

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NSW environment department spokesperson says offset program for the area has continued despite failure to file reports for three years

The New South Wales environment department stopped monitoring and reporting on a $530m conservation program meant to compensate for swathes of land-clearing at the same time as its management of biodiversity offset schemes was under investigation, Guardian Australia can reveal.

Conservationists and the NSW Greens say the government must investigate the “startling failure” by the department to report on progress towards meeting the conservation offset requirements for new suburb developments in western Sydney.

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Dozens of dead wild animals dumped outside Hampshire shop

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Police investigate discovery of about 50 hares, an owl and a kestrel at door of Broughton community shop

A police investigation has been launched after dozens of dead animals were left outside a shop in Broughton.

The Broughton community shop in Hampshire said it was “shocked” to discover the bodies of about 50 dead hares, as well as a barn owl and a kestrel outside on Friday.

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Birdwatch: rare black-faced spoonbill turns up in Hong Kong wetland

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Soon it will head back north to the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea where it can breed undisturbed

I opened the windows to the hide and was greeted by a mass of birds. Hundreds of cormorants, gulls, herons, egrets, ducks and waders, all feeding frantically as the rising tide covered up the fertile mud. Overhead, black kites patrolled half-heartedly, occasionally provoking the other birds to take to the wing in short-lived panic, before settling back down to feed or rest.

I witnessed this spectacle at the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Mai Po nature reserve in Hong Kong, justly celebrated as one of the most important wetlands in the world. Either side of high tide, birds gather here in vast numbers against the backdrop of Shenzhen, one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, just across the border in mainland China.

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Eight children and an adult die in Zanzibar after eating sea turtle meat

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Another 78 people taken to hospital after consuming delicacy, which is known to cause food poisoning

Eight children and an adult have died after eating sea turtle meat on Pemba Island in the Zanzibar archipelago, and 78 other people have been taken to hospital, authorities said on Saturday.

Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy in Zanzibar but it periodically results in deaths from chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning.

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France’s appetite for frogs’ legs is endangering species in Asia, say campaigners

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Scientists and vets are urging the president to afford the world’s most traded species better protections

France’s hunger for frogs’ legs is “destructive to nature” and endangering amphibians in Asia and south-east Europe, a group of scientists and vets have warned.

More than 500 experts from research, veterinary and conservation groups have called on Emmanuel Macron, the French president, to “end the overexploitation of frogs” and afford the most traded species better protections.

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