Scientists believe 2-metre-long burrow once housed predator that ambushed passing sea creatures
The undersea lair of a giant worm that ambushed passing marine creatures 20m years ago has been uncovered by fossil hunters in Taiwan.
Researchers believe the 2-metre-long burrow found in ancient marine sediment once housed a prehistoric predator that burst out of the seabed and dragged unsuspecting animals down into its lair.
Continue reading...‘Renoducts’ will help animals who have to roam further for food due to global heating
Sweden is to build up to a dozen bridges so reindeer can safely cross railway lines and major roads in the north of the country as global heating forces them to roam further afield in search of food.
State broadcaster SVT said the transport authority aimed to start work on the first of the new bridges, named “renoducts”, a portmanteau from ren (reindeer) and viaduct, later this year near the eastern city of Umea.
Continue reading...In his final months in office, Donald Trump has ramped up construction on his promised physical border between the US and Mexico – devastating wildlife habitats and increasing the migrant death toll
At Sierra Vista Ranch in Arizona near the Mexican border, Troy McDaniel is warming up his helicopter. McDaniel, tall and slim in a tan jumpsuit, began taking flying lessons in the 80s, and has since logged 2,000 miles in the air. The helicopter, a cosy, two-seater Robinson R22 Alpha is considered a work vehicle and used to monitor the 640-acre ranch, but it’s clear he relishes any opportunity to fly. “We will have no fun at all,” he deadpans.
McDaniel and his wife, Melissa Owen, bought their ranch and the 100-year-old adobe house that came with it in 2003. Years before, Owen began volunteering at the nearby Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and fell in love with the beauty and natural diversity of the area, as well as the quiet of their tiny town. That all changed last July when construction vehicles and large machinery started “barrelling down the two-lane state road”, says Owen.
Continue reading...Islands surrounded by US military study area, including Guam and Saipan, call for activity that harms the whales to stop
In the midst of the western Pacific, flanked by the world’s deepest ocean trench, the waters off the Mariana Islands are home and habitat to whales, dolphins, and countless other marine mammals as they breed and feed.
It’s also where they encounter the might of the US military.
Continue reading...Sobering new report says world is failing to grasp the extent of threats posed by biodiversity loss and the climate crisis
The planet is facing a “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” that threaten human survival because of ignorance and inaction, according to an international group of scientists, who warn people still haven’t grasped the urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises.
The 17 experts, including Prof Paul Ehrlich from Stanford University, author of The Population Bomb, and scientists from Mexico, Australia and the US, say the planet is in a much worse state than most people – even scientists – understood.
Continue reading...Federal wildlife officials in Florida are seeking information about attack on a manatee, which is said to have had the word 'Trump' carved into its back.
The diver Hailey Warrington said she filmed the animal on Sunday during a manatee swim tour in shallow water in Homosassa Springs.
Large, gray and docile, manatees are popular attractions in Florida, though their numbers are at risk due to habitat loss and the danger of boat strikes
Continue reading...Weaker sharks are less effective hunters, which can upset the balance of the ecosystem, say authors of study into impacts of hotter oceans
Baby sharks will emerge from their egg cases earlier and weaker as water temperatures rise, according to a new study that examined the impact of warming oceans on embryos.
About 40% of all shark species lay eggs, and the researchers found that one species unique to the Great Barrier Reef spent up to 25 days less in their egg cases under temperatures expected by the end of the century.
Continue reading...Federal wildlife officials in Florida are reportedly seeking information on the perpetrators of an attack on a manatee, which apparently had the word “Trump” scraped into its back.
Related: Florida manatee deaths up 20% as Covid-19 threatens recovery
Continue reading...At 17, they were meant to be taking their A-levels this year. But Harvey Tweats and Tom Whitehurst have a big ambition: to replace the toads, frogs and lizards we have lost
The new enterprise taking shape on a strip of derelict land beside a garden centre in Leek, Staffordshire, would be extraordinary at any time. But the large pond, greenhouses, cabins and homemade enclosures that will comprise this particular startup are positively miraculous given that it is driven by two 17-year-olds, both studying for their A-levels in the middle of a pandemic.
Childhood friends Harvey Tweats and Tom Whitehurst are on a mission – to rewild Britain by restoring reptile and amphibian species that are either virtually extinct or have been extinct for centuries in this country. Their company, Celtic Reptile & Amphibian, will soon open what the pair believe will be the country’s largest outdoor breeding facility for reptiles and amphibians. They hope it will be the first step in restoring lost species so that British ponds, lakes and wetlands once more resound to the croak of pool frogs and agile frogs as well as other once-common lizards and frogs. In the long term, Tweats and Whitehurst hope that the European pond turtle (which they source from Moldova) and the Aesculapian snake, already unofficially released in a couple of UK sites, may be embraced as new native species after being absent from the country for thousands of years.
Continue reading...Farmers ‘relieved’ as chemical sanctioned for emergency use, despite EU-wide ban backed by UK
A pesticide believed to kill bees has been authorised for use in England despite an EU-wide ban two years ago and an explicit government pledge to keep the restrictions.
Following lobbying from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and British Sugar, a product containing the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam was sanctioned for emergency use on sugar beet seeds this year because of the threat posed by a virus.
Continue reading...Luke Voskresensky was rescued on the weekend by two fishermen but was re-arrested when they reached Darwin
A naked alleged fugitive found by two fishermen sitting on a tree branch in Australian crocodile-infested waters has been slapped with additional charges of breaching bail and aggravated assault.
Cam Faust said on Wednesday that he and fellow recreational fisher Kev Joiner heard Luke Voskresensky, 40, yell for help as they set crab traps from their dinghy in mangroves on the outskirts of the northern city of Darwin.
Continue reading...Up to 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats descend on Zambia’s Kasanka national park every year, dispersing millions of seeds as they go
David Mubiana will always remember the day he was shot. It happened in 2002, when his unit was ambushed by poachers with AK-47 rifles and a shotgun. He was wounded in the arm and stomach; one bullet rupturing his spleen. As a wildlife police officer in Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, his job is inherently risky.
“Even if you fall down, you have to stand up and continue fighting. If we finish our wildlife, [our children] are not going to see what we are seeing today,” he says.
Continue reading...Tourist lodges run out of cash to feed and care for the animals on their land and thousands of villagers lose their jobs
Impala run through the thorn bush, ibis fly above the lake and lightning forks over the horizon as a storm rolls in from the Drakensberg mountains.
The visitors driven across the 10,000 or more hectares of the Nambiti game reserve in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province see what they think is an unchanged, and unchanging natural landscape.
Continue reading...The primatologist and ecological activist on why population isn’t the cause of climate change, and why she’s encouraging optimism
Jane Goodall is a primatologist who is regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on chimpanzees. She has spent 60 years studying the chimps that live in the Gombe Stream national park and she is a prominent advocate, via several foundations, of protecting the great apes and their habitats. She has been presented with awards by the UN and various governments for her conservation and environmental work. She appears in the Netflix documentary The Beginning of Life 2.
You warned last June that humanity will be finished if we don’t make drastic changes in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis. Have you seen any indication of that drastic change?
The window is closing. Business as usual – using up natural resources faster and faster – can’t carry on. In some cases, we are already using resources faster than they can be replenished. And we can see the consequences. Look at climate change. It is not something that might happen in the future; we are already seeing terrible hurricanes and floods and fires. It is building up into an inferno. When you think globally like that, it is very, very depressing.
Find is chance for species’ survival say scientists as DNA results confirm turtle found in Hanoi district is a Swinhoe’s softshell
The last known male giant Swinhoe’s softshell turtle is no longer alone on the planet after the discovery of a female of his species in Vietnam.
The female 86kg (13 stone) turtle was found in Dong Mo lake, in Hanoi’s Son Tay district, and captured for genetic testing in October.
Continue reading...British Columbia resigned to a ‘long fight’ after 2020’s efforts to track and kill the invasive insects ended in frustration
The year 2020 is not one that beekeepers in Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia are likely to forget in a hurry. Since the spring, experts in both states have been gripped by fears of Vespa mandarinia, a hulking insect whose voracious appetite for honeybees and stealthy spread could pose a threat to the region’s vulnerable ecosystem.
I squeezed [the queen] on her thorax ... and this huge stinger came out. And the giant mandibles moved, trying to bite me. It was really quite beautiful
Continue reading...Photographer Rachel Mounsey has documented the year after the blazes tore through her home region
Standing in my backyard under a searing midday sun, the bricklayer’s sinewy arms are splayed out, rollie in one hand, trowel in the other. Bart the brickie reenacts the moment he thought might have been his last.
He is reliving putting out embers with his flannelette shirt and driving over flames in his old Holden Commodore. He throws the trowel down and with his finger draws a fire map in the wet cement. His fingers dash and dot to signify embers falling from the sky, and a looming fire front creeping down from the ridge.
Continue reading...Fifty years ago, a hit album proved whales “sing” – and led to one of the great environmental success stories. But soon it could all be for nothing
In June 1975, a small group of activists set off from the coast of California in an 85ft boat. They were headed for the Dalniy Vostok factory ship, which was at sea conducting business as usual: harpooning sperm whales.
The activists were members of Greenpeace, an organisation that had only recently been founded, in Vancouver in 1971, and they were setting out to meet the Russian whaling ship under the banner of what would become one of the most famous slogans of the environmental movement, Save the Whales.
Continue reading...Multibillion-dollar project is unnecessary and damaging to wildlife, say scientists
Australia is planning to build Antarctica’s biggest infrastructure project: a new airport and runway that would increase the human footprint in the world’s greatest wilderness by an estimated 40%.
The mega-scheme is likely to involve blasting petrel rookeries, disturbing penguin colonies and encasing a stretch of the wilderness in more than 115,000 tonnes of concrete.
Continue reading...At least 20 trains cancelled after swan stopped at site of another’s death near Fuldatal
Police and firefighters in Germany were forced to intervene to move an apparently “mourning” swan that was blocking a high-speed railway line, according to a statement released by the rescuers on Monday.
The swan was pictured blocking the line near Fuldatal, causing at least 20 trains to be cancelled, after a second swan was killed when it flew into the overhead line above the tracks.
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