Category Archives: Wildlife

The rice of the sea: how a tiny grain could change the way humanity eats

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Ángel León made his name serving innovative seafood. But then he discovered something in the seagrass that could transform our understanding of the sea itself – as a vast garden

Growing up in southern Spain, Ángel León paid little attention to the meadows of seagrass that fringed the turquoise waters near his home, their slender blades grazing him as he swam in the Bay of Cádiz.

It was only decades later – as he was fast becoming known as one of the country’s most innovative chefs – that he noticed something he had missed in previous encounters with Zostera marina: a clutch of tiny green grains clinging to the base of the eelgrass.

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Snared: catching poachers to save Italy’s songbirds

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With five million birds a year illegally caught in Italy, activists in Brescia are teaming up with local police to trap the hunters

After two hours of scouring the mountains of Brescia, Stefania Travaglia finally finds what she is looking for. Among the remote farmhouses of an alpine hamlet, a spring-net trap is partially hidden behind a grassy embankment and a few trees. Tangled in the wire mesh, an exhausted fieldfare thrush sits silent and unmoving.

Travaglia sets to work quickly and quietly, hiding two motion-sensor cameras next to the trap. Clear evidence of wrongdoing is needed to catch a poacher. “You have to see everything: you have to see the trap; you have to see the person; and if there is a bird in it,” she says.

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Endangered North Atlantic right whales produce most calves since 2015

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  • Scientists caution high death rate is outpacing births
  • Population of whales estimated at around 360

North Atlantic right whales gave birth over the winter in greater numbers than scientists have seen since 2015, an encouraging sign for researchers who became alarmed three years ago when the critically endangered species produced no known offspring at all.

Related: The new humpback? Calf sighting sparks hope for imperilled right whale

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Canada’s herring facing ‘biological decimation’, say First Nations and activists

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Herring off western coast will ‘teeter on edge of complete collapse’ if commercial fishing continues at current level, says report

First Nations and conservationists are warning that Pacific herring populations are “collapsing” off Canada’s western coast, and are appealing for a moratorium on commercial fishing until the critical species can rebuild.

Emmie Page, a marine campaigner with the organization Pacific Wild, said in the past, five large commercial herring fisheries opened each year on the coast.

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Seaspiracy: Netflix documentary accused of misrepresentation by participants

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NGOs and experts quoted in film say it contains ‘misleading’ claims, erroneous statistics and out-of-context interviews

A Netflix documentary about the impact of commercial fishing has attracted celebrity endorsements and plaudits from fans with its damning picture of the harm the industry does to ocean life. But NGOs, sustainability labels and experts quoted in Seaspiracy have accused the film-makers of making “misleading claims”, using out-of-context interviews and erroneous statistics.

Seaspiracy, made by the team behind the award-winning 2014 film Cowspiracy, which was backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, pours doubt on the idea of sustainable fishing, shines a spotlight on the aquaculture industry and introduces the notion of “blood shrimp”, seafood tainted with slave labour and human rights abuses.

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Trapped in gloves, tangled in masks: Covid PPE killing animals, report finds

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Mask and gloves protect people but harm animals from penguins to dogs when discarded, researchers say

The masks and gloves protecting people from coronavirus are proving a deadly threat to wildlife when thrown away, a report has found.

A fish trapped in the finger of a rubber glove in the Netherlands, a penguin in Brazil with a mask in its stomach and a fox in the UK entangled in a mask were among the victims.

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Russian conservationists hail rare sighting of Amur leopard with cubs

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Sighting in Primorye region said to show success of fight against poachers and steps to boost species population

Russian conservationists have hailed a rare sighting of an Amur leopard mother with three cubs in the far-eastern region of Primorye as proof of the efficiency of the country’s efforts to boost the population of the endangered species.

Scientists in a Russian national park in Primorye on the border with China obtained the images using a remote camera trap. The video footage shows the feline family standing on top of a hill in the Land of the Leopard national park.

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The beluga whale who became famous: Aleksander Nordahl’s best photograph

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‘He was called Hvaldimir and he would play in front of crowds at Hammerfest harbour in Norway. One woman dropped her phone and he fetched it for her’

In April 2019, a beluga whale appeared alongside fishing boats off the coast of Norway. He was wearing a harness. A fisherman called Joar Hesten freed him, and saw the harness had stamped on it “equipment of St Petersburg”. The media went crazy, with talk of a “spy whale”, and the creature was named Hvaldimir, a combination of hval, the Norwegian word for whale, and Vladimir, a nod to Russia’s President Putin.

The whale became famous. There were Instagram videos of him playing in Hammerfest harbour in front of crowds. One woman dropped her phone in the water and the whale fetched it for her. He would bring up bones from the depths to show people, almost like little gifts. It became this huge moment on social media: everyone in the country fell in love with the whale. Even the hardcore fishing villages melted for Hvaldimir.

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Open season in Sudan as trophy hunters flock to shoot rare ibex

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Conservationists fear for endangered Nubian ibex in Sudan as westerners sold permits to hunt

Sudanese conservationists have accused trophy hunters of exploiting the country’s political transition to hunt the country’s unprotected rare animals.

Photographs posted online of westerners posing with the body of a rare Nubian ibex angered Sudanese wildlife campaigners this week. They called for Facebook to remove the pages of tour groups promoting such hunts.

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From keep fit to sex: how Guardian readers have boosted their mood during the pandemic

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Everyone needs a release from the stresses of lockdown life. Readers share the ideas that work for them

We bought some solar-powered garden fairy lights and set them up on our garden shed. We can see them when we are having dinner or letting the dog into the garden. It means that, during the day, we have the fun of the flowers and, at night, twinkling lights. They remind me of the stars, another mood-lifter – stargazing puts everything in perspective. Nicholas Vince, actor and YouTuber, London

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Sperm whales in 19th century shared ship attack information

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Whalers’ logbooks show rapid drop in strike rate in north Pacific due to changes in cetacean behaviour

A remarkable new study on how whales behaved when attacked by humans in the 19th century has implications for the way they react to changes wreaked by humans in the 21st century.

The paper, published by the Royal Society on Wednesday, is authored by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, pre-eminent scientists working with cetaceans, and Tim D Smith, a data scientist, and their research addresses an age-old question: if whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn’t.

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How an endangered Australian songbird is forgetting its love songs

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New study suggests young regent honeyeaters are not getting the chance to learn mating calls

What happens to a species if the music starts to die, or when their songs become corrupted or their singers have never heard the original tunes?

A new study has found that a loss of melody and song could be a bad sign for one of Australia’s rarest songbirds – the regent honeyeater.

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Special brew: eco-friendly Peruvian coffee leaves others in the shade

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The Mayni people are harvesting shade-grown coffee from under the canopy of mature trees, with huge benefits for wildlife and the community

Deep within the Peruvian cloud forests, a six-hour drive from the town of Satipo, the remote Mayni community is busy growing organic coffee beneath the canopy of the native forest in order to preserve the rich mosaic of life there.

Most of the forest is kept intact, with just a little undergrowth cleared to plant Coffea arabica trees. Dahlia Casancho, who is leading the Mayni in their eco-friendly coffee-growing endeavours, sees shade-grown coffee farming as a positive development for the community, who traditionally believe in a forest god and river god. “Nature is our home. Nature gives us water, feeds us and also allows us to grow our coffee,” she says. “That’s why we take great care of our forest and we want it to be sustainable so that our children can also enjoy it.

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Revealed: seafood fraud happening on a vast global scale

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Guardian analysis of 44 studies finds nearly 40% of 9,000 products from restaurants, markets and fishmongers were mislabelled

A Guardian Seascape analysis of 44 recent studies of more than 9,000 seafood samples from restaurants, fishmongers and supermarkets in more than 30 countries found that 36% were mislabelled, exposing seafood fraud on a vast global scale.

Many of the studies used relatively new DNA analysis techniques. In one comparison of sales of fish labelled “snapper” by fishmongers, supermarkets and restaurants in Canada, the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, researchers found mislabelling in about 40% of fish tested. The UK and Canada had the highest rates of mislabelling in that study, at 55%, followed by the US at 38%.

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Rarest subspecies of wolf in North America sees population almost double in five years

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Environmentalists are hopeful about increase in numbers but say wolves are still in a precarious position

Once on the verge of extinction, the rarest subspecies of grey wolf in North America has seen its population nearly double over the last five years, with more gains being reported in 2020.

The results of the latest annual survey show there are at least 186 Mexican grey wolves in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona, US wildlife managers said on Friday. That marks the fifth straight year that the endangered species has increased its numbers, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Chinese hotel with polar bear enclosure opens to outrage

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Harbin hotel keeping threatened species in pen overlooked by bedrooms angers animal welfare groups

A Chinese hotel built around a central polar bear enclosure for the non-stop viewing pleasure of its guests has opened to immediate condemnation from conservationists.

At Harbin Polar Land in north-east China, the hotel bedrooms’ windows face onto the bears’ pen, with visitors told the animals are their “neighbours 24 hours a day”.

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Hemiandrus jacinda: insect named after New Zealand prime minister

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New species of wētā, a giant flightless cricket, is seen as ‘reflecting traits’ of Jacinda Ardern

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has received what may be her greatest accolade yet: a large insect named in her honour.

A new species of wētā – a giant flightless cricket that is endemic to New Zealand – has been named Hemiandrus jacinda for being Labour-party red in colour and “long-limbed”.

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‘Ecological island’: as Maasai herding lands shrink, so does space for Kenya’s elephants

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The collapse of ecotourism during the pandemic and moves to lease land to big farms threaten vital conservation corridors

Kenyan elephants risk a slow extinction in a bleak, ever-shrinking “ecological island” in one of the country’s most picturesque and photographed landscapes, according to a government report.

The animals face a grim future as habitat loss is exacerbated by the pandemic’s impact on tourism, which is pushing landowners to sell off areas for development, and a growing trend towards a sedentary lifestyle among the pastoralist Maasai people, says the new 10-year management plan.

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Rare albino turtle hatchling spotted in Australia faces battle to survive

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Monitors on Queensland’s Lady Elliot Island have only seen a handful of albino hatchlings but never an adult

Jessica Buckman is used to finding stragglers when she heads out to check recently hatched green turtle nests on Queensland’s Lady Elliot Island.

But the tiny pink creature she found in the neck of one nest on Monday was far from a usual find – a rare albino hatchling that was having a little trouble digging itself out.

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