Category Archives: Wildlife

Polar bears move into abandoned Arctic weather station – photo essay

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Photographer Dmitry Kokh discovered polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, while on a trip to Wrangel Island, a Unesco-recognised nature reserve that serves as a refuge to the animals

I had dreamed about photographing polar bears for a long time. Some time ago my hobby, wildlife photography, ceased to be just a hobby and turned into a large part of my life. And if you devote so much time to an activity then your goals should be ambitious. Most of all I like to take pictures of large marine animals, whether on land or under water. Not everyone knows, but zoologists classify polar bears as marine mammals since they spend most of their time on ice floes away from land. And their paws even have webbing.

There are only a few places on the planet where polar bears can be found in large numbers. One of them is Russia’s Wrangel Island, a nature reserve under Unesco protection that is often called a polar bear maternity ward. The place is very inaccessible, which may be bad for tourists but is great for the animals.

Polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation

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Illegal logging threatens Cambodia’s indigenous people, says Amnesty

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Country’s ‘corrupt’ approach to conservation leaves protected forests facing ‘oblivion’, human rights watchdog warns

Rampant illegal logging of protected forests is threatening the cultural survival and livelihoods of indigenous people in Cambodia, according to Amnesty International.

Members of the Kuy people, one of the largest of Cambodia’s 24 indigenous groups, told Amnesty how deforestation in two protected forests, along with government restrictions on access have undermined their way of life and violated their human rights.

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Orcas recorded killing and feeding on blue whales in brutal attacks

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Research is first to document coordinated female-led pods ramming world’s largest animal and eating its tongue before it dies

From snatching sea lions off beaches to stunning fish with a strike of their tails, orcas are renowned for their highly specialised hunting techniques passed down over generations. Now, for the first time, killer whales have been recorded hunting the planet’s largest animal – the blue whale – in coordinated and brutal attacks.

Female-led pods of killer whales, also known as orcas, have been recorded killing and eating blue whales in three separate attacks off the coast of Australia since 2019, according to a paper published in Marine Mammal Science.

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Coral crusaders: Costa Rica’s young divers learn to protect their seas

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In Puerto Viejo, scuba diving was once just for tourists, but a centre is training young people with few opportunities to care for the ocean on their doorstep

“I put fresh almond leaves in your underwater masks as anti-fogging – a way to avoid using chemicals. You can remove them once in the water, just before diving,” says Salim Vasquez, 14, pushing her dreadlocks away from her mask.

She distributes the equipment to her fellow divers, who are aged between 14 and 24, and Ana María Arenas, a group coordinator. It is 8am on a cloudy Sunday morning in Puerto Viejo, a Jamaican-inspired city in the south of Costa Rica. The young conservationists are preparing to dive into the Caribbean water for their weekly reef monitoring.

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Planned change to Kenya’s forest act threatens vital habitats, say activists

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Environmentalists fear a proposal to allow boundary changes to protected areas will open the door to deforestation

Environmentalists are deeply concerned by the Kenyan government’s move to allow boundary changes to protected forests, watering down the powers of conservation authorities.

The forest conservation and management (amendment) bill 2021 seeks to delete clause 34(2) from the 2016 act, which makes it mandatory for authorities to veto anyone trying to alter forest boundaries. The same clause protects forests from actions that put rare, threatened or endangered species at risk.

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Rhino that lost horns in attack back in South African wild after 30 operations

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Six years ago poachers hacked off Sehawukele’s horns; now he’s back in a game reserve

A 10-year-old white rhino whose horns were brutally hacked off has returned to the wild after 30 operations over six years to repair the gash in his face.

His rescuers named the bull Sehawukele, meaning “God have mercy on us”. Called Seha for short, he was found by police stumbling near a fence in a reserve, so disfigured that he could barely hear or eat.

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‘It’s mind-boggling’: the hidden cost of our obsession with fish oil pills

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The market in this prized commodity is worth billions – but are the supposed benefits worth the cost to global ecosystems?

• Revealed: many common omega-3 fish oil supplements are ‘rancid’

Scanning the shelves and internet for fish oil is a dizzying task. There are dozens of brands available and, although the typical consideration for the popular supplement is that quality matters most, it is not the only factor.

These prized products travel a long way before being labelled as “pure” and “fresh” – starting with the industrial-scale grinding down of a tiny fish that is crucial for healthy ocean and food systems.

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Thank you for giving generously to the Guardian and Observer charity appeal

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This weekend is the last chance to donate to our 2021 appeal supporting those on the frontline of the climate emergency

In this year’s Guardian and Observer charity appeal we have supported communities and individuals hit hardest by the climate emergency, people who have seen their lives upended and livelihoods lost by extreme weather. It’s a topical issue, and not going away – and there is still time to donate: so far we have raised over £800,000.

Our appeal is shaped by vivid stories of climate emergency: floods, drought and wildfires; from reindeer killed by unnatural arctic heat to chronic crop failure by the shores of Lake Victoria. At its heart, however, lies inequality and poverty: the stark truth is the countries least responsible for global emissions have by far suffered worst from climate-induced disasters.

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‘They saw bigger things’: Richard Leakey, Edward O Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy remembered

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Friends and colleagues pay tribute after the recent deaths of these groundbreaking naturalists, who shifted our understanding of the world and our future

Over Christmas and the new year, three of the world’s leading naturalists died. Thomas Lovejoy, a conservation biologist credited with popularising the term “biodiversity” and a passionate defender of the Amazon, died on 25 December. A day later, Edward O Wilson, known to many as the “modern-day Darwin”, died in Burlington, Massachusetts. On 2 January, Richard Leakey, a world-renowned Kenyan conservationist who helped establish Africa as the birthplace of humankind, died at his home in Nairobi.

From presidents to undergraduate students, thousands have paid tribute to the three men, whose achievements range from developing theories on forest and island ecosystems to reforming the Kenyan civil service and devising proposals to protect half the planet for nature. Alongside grand accomplishments, which were sometimes controversial, their passing has been a chance to reflect on the small and the mundane: fleeting interactions that inspired careers, kind words that propelled research projects, and generosity of spirit that has helped amplify the voices of those that practise and produce science.

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Revisited: Could bringing back its love song save one of Australia’s rarest songbirds?

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It wouldn’t be Guardian Australia ‘best of’ series without a bird episode! The regent honeyeater is an endangered native Australian songbird, with only a few hundred left in the wild. A few years ago scientists noticed something odd – they were mimicking other birds, and unable to sing their own song. Environment reporter Graham Readfearn and Dr Joy Tripovich explain how this species lost its song, and whether teaching it how to sing again could help save it from extinction

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Meet Mr Trash Wheel – and the other ingenious tools that eat river plastic

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From ‘bubble barriers’ to floating drones, a host of new projects aim to stop plastic pollution before it ever reaches the ocean

The Great Bubble Barrier is just that – a wall of bubbles. It gurgles across the water in a diagonal screen, pushing plastic to one side while allowing fish and other wildlife to pass unharmed.

The technology, created by a Dutch firm and already being used in Amsterdam, is being trialled in the Douro River in Porto, Portugal, as part of the EU-supported Maelstrom (marine litter sustainable removal and management) project.

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Hungry badger may have uncovered Roman coins in Spanish cave

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The ‘exceptional find’ was discovered only feet from a badger’s den in the northern region of Asturias

A trove of 209 Roman coins in a cave in northern Spain – hailed by researchers as an “exceptional find” – is believed to have been uncovered by a badger desperately foraging for food.

The coins, dating from between the third and fifth century AD, were spotted in a cave in the municipality of Grado in the northern region of Asturias. They were found mere feet from the den of a badger, months after Storm Filomena dumped heavy snow across swaths of the country.

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‘Ghost’ orchid that grows in the dark among new plant finds

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Hundreds of new species include pink voodoo lily and an ylang-ylang tree named after Leonardo DiCaprio

A ghost orchid that grows in complete darkness, an insect-trapping tobacco plant and an “exploding firework” flower are among the new species named by scientists in the last year. The species range from a voodoo lily from Cameroon to a rare tooth fungus unearthed near London, UK.

A new tree from the ylang-ylang family is the first to be named in 2022 and is being named after the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio. He campaigned to revoke a logging concession which threatened the African tree, which features glossy yellow flowers on its trunk.

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Rocky road: Paraguay’s new Chaco highway threatens rare forest and last of the Ayoreo people

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Forced from their homes by missionaries, the Ayoreo cling on in the Chaco. Now the Bioceanic Corridor cuts through the fastest-vanishing forest on Earth, refuge of some of the Americas’ last hunter-gatherers

In 1972, Catholic missionaries entered the Chaco forest of northern Paraguay and forced Oscar Pisoraja’s family, and their nomadic Ayoreo people, to leave with them. Many perished from thirst on the long march south. Settled near the village of Carmelo Peralta on the Paraguay River, dozens more died from illnesses. Still, the survivors kept up some traditions – hunting for armadillos; weaving satchels from the spiky caraguatá plant. “We felt part of this place,” says Pisoraja, now 51.

Today, his community – and other indigenous peoples across the Chaco, a tapestry of swamp, savanna and thorny forest across four countries that is South America’s largest ecosystem after the Amazon – are confronting a dramatic new change.

Mario Abdo Benítez, Paraguay’s president, and Reinaldo Azambuja Silva, governor of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil, at the site of a new bridge across the Paraguay River, due to be completed in 2024

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Bear caught on camera stealing kill from wolves in Yellowstone park – video

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Wildlife officials in Yellowstone national park captured the unusual sight of a cheeky grizzly bear tagging along with a pack of hunting wolves, then making off with their kill.

The enthralling video, posted to the National Parks Service Facebook page, shows the October incident in which the wolves from the Junction Butte pack in northern Yellowstone were joined by a lumbering grizzly as they hunted a herd of elk

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‘We can transition to a better country’: a trans Colombian on diversity in ecology and society

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Brigitte Baptiste has a high profile as a transgender Colombian woman and an ecologist – in a country where both are targeted

When Brigitte Baptiste walks on to the 10th floor of Bogotá’s Ean University at 9.45am in a plunging dress, knee-high cheetah-print boots and a silvery wig, the office comes to life. She examines some flowers sent by the Colombian radio station Caracol to thank her for taking part in a forum, her co-worker compliments her on her lipstick, and she settles in for a day of back-to-back meetings, followed by a private virtual conversation with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. Later that evening, she flies to Cartagena for a conference on natural gas.

The 58-year-old ecologist is one of Colombia’s foremost environmental experts, and one of its most visible transgender people, challenging scientific and social conventions alike. An ecology professor at the Jesuit-run Javeriana University for 20 years, she has written 15 books, countless newspaper columns, and won international prizes for her work. Most recently, she was appointed chancellor of Ean University, a business school, as part of its push for greater sustainability.

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Sands of time are slipping away for England’s crumbling coasts amid climate crisis

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Along the eastern shore, seaside attractions are being demolished and millions of homes are at risk as rising sea levels speed erosion

From a distance, the beach at Winterton-on-sea in Norfolk looks like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, with hundreds of grey bodies lying motionless across the sand. On closer inspection, it becomes clear they are not fallen soldiers but a huge colony of seals taken to the land for pupping season.

It’s an amazing annual sight that draws tourists and nature-lovers from across the country, but another process is taking place that is pushing people back – the growing threat of coastal erosion. Just along from where the armies of grey seals lay with their white pups, there used to stand the Dunes Cafe, a much-loved beach facility with a large and loyal clientele.

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‘We’ll get it done. Come hell, high water or Covid’: Can 2022 be a super year for nature?

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Biodiversity talks in Kunming are likely to be delayed again, but the world urgently needs a Paris-style agreement for nature

It was supposed to be a “super year for nature”: 2020 was going to be “a major opportunity to bring nature back from the brink”. But then the coronavirus pandemic set in and long-held plans to tackle the environmental crisis, kickstarted at Davos in January, where the financial elite underscored the risks of global heating and biodiversity loss to human civilisation, never happened. The biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, Cop15 in Kunming, China, where world leaders were expected to strike a deal to halt and reverse the destruction of ecosystems by reaching a Paris-style agreement for nature was postponed until 2021. The Cop26 climate summit was also postponed for a year.

As we enter 2022, there has still not been a super year for nature. Substantive negotiations for the biodiversity Cop15 meeting in China, the little sister to the climate convention, are likely to be delayed a fourth time as a result of the Omicron variant. Preparatory talks planned for January 2022 in Geneva have been pushed back – again – until March in a process that is feeling increasingly cursed, despite the best efforts of organisers.

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UK zoo helps lost Mexican fish live to see another Tequila sunrise

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Declared extinct in the wild in 2003, species has been reintroduced to its native river after being bred in Chester

A “charismatic little fish” declared extinct in the wild has been reintroduced to its native Mexico after being bred in an aquarium at Chester zoo.

The tequila fish (Zoogoneticus tequila), which grows to no bigger than 70mm long, disappeared from the wild in 2003 owing to the introduction of invasive, exotic fish species and water pollution.

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