Category Archives: Wildlife

Great Barrier Reef’s latest bleaching confirmed by marine park authority

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Severity of damage has increased, with areas spared in previous years experiencing moderate or severe bleaching

The government agency responsible for the Great Barrier Reef has confirmed the natural landmark has suffered a third mass coral bleaching episode in five years, describing the damage as “very widespread”.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said the assessment was based on information from in-water and aerial observations, and built on the best available science and technology to understand current conditions.

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Great Barrier Reef suffers third mass coral bleaching event in five years

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Renowned scientist Terry Hughes says huge swathes of reef have been affected in a ‘severe’ situation

The Great Barrier Reef has experienced a third mass coral bleaching event in five years, according to the scientist carrying out aerial surveys over hundreds of individual reefs.

With three days of a nine-day survey to go, Prof Terry Hughes told Guardian Australia: “We know this is a mass bleaching event and it’s a severe one.”

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Coronavirus poses lethal threat to great apes, experts warn

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Many of our closest living relatives are already at risk of extinction and susceptible to human disease, warn scientists

The coronavirus pandemic could wipe out populations of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, leading scientists have warned.

Our closest living relatives, which share about 98% of human DNA, are known to be susceptible to catching respiratory diseases from people.

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Great Barrier Reef watchers anxiously await evidence of coral bleaching from aerial surveys

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Planes will this week cover areas in the southern half of the reef that escaped earlier bleaching but may have undergone high levels of heat stress

The full impact of coral bleaching across the Great Barrier Reef will become clearer this week as aerial surveys of hundreds of reefs are completed in the bottom two thirds of the world’s biggest reef system.

An aerial survey carried out last week over almost 500 individual reefs between the Torres Strait and Cairns revealed some severe bleaching of corals closer to shore, but almost none on outer reefs.

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‘Nature is taking back Venice’: wildlife returns to tourist-free city

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With the cruise ships gone and the souvenir stalls closed, the coronavirus lockdown has transformed La Serenissima’s waterways

Look down into the waters of the Venice canals today and there is a surprising sight – not just a clear view of the sandy bed, but shoals of tiny fish, scuttling crabs and multicoloured plant-life.

“The water is blue and clear,” said Gloria Beggiato, who owns the celebrated Metropole Hotel a few steps from St Mark’s square and has a view over the Venice lagoon. “It is calm like a pond, because there are no more waves caused by motorised boats transporting day-tripper tourists. And of course, the giant cruise ships have disappeared.”

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Win for conservation as African black rhino numbers rise

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Slow recovery due to relocating groups and stronger protection through law enforcement

Numbers of African black rhinos in the wild have risen by several hundred, a rare boost in the conservation of a species driven to near extinction by poaching.

Black rhinos are still in grave danger but the small increase – an annual rate of 2.5% over six years, has swollen the population from 4,845 in 2012 to an estimated 5,630 in 2018, giving hope that efforts put into saving the species are paying off.

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Birth of wild tapir offers hope for Brazil’s endangered ecosystem

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Researchers believe the calf was born in January and a second may be on its way

Hopes for a recovery of Brazil’s most endangered ecosystem have been given a boost by the first birth of a wild tapir in Rio de Janeiro’s Atlantic Forest for more than a century.

Scientists said video clips of the baby tapir proved the initial success of a re-introduction strategy for the threatened mammal, which is often described as “a forest gardener” because it plays a vital role in the dispersal of seeds.

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Brexit ‘opportunity to ban supertrawlers from UK waters’

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Environmental groups fear link between huge ships and spikes in dolphin deaths

Brexit offers the perfect opportunity to ban industrial supertrawler fishing boats from UK waters, according to campaigners.

The factory-sized ships can be hundreds of feet long and have been criticised for indiscriminate fishing as they catch hundreds of thousands of fish in relatively short periods. Environmentalists fear their presence correlates with spikes in numbers of dolphins washing up dead.

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Welsh woman declares vindication after ‘guerrilla rewilding’ court case

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Sioned Jones convicted of stealing logs after 20 years of felling non-native trees in Cork

Sioned Jones used to adore the landscape and wildlife of her adopted home in Bantry, a bucolic region in west Cork on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. She planted vegetables and herbs, foraged for nuts and berries and observed birds, insects, frogs and lizards.

Then, on land above her house, the state-owned forestry company Coillte planted a forest of Sitka spruce, a non-native species that Jones considered a dark, dank threat to biodiversity.

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Anger as F1 teams get go-ahead to drive on Dutch nature reserve

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Teams allowed to take beach route to get to Netherlands’ first F1 grand prix in 35 years

The return of Formula One to the Netherlands after 35 years has become mired in controversy after two racing teams got the green light to drive across a beach nature reserve to ensure their staff avoid traffic on the way to the circuit.

The teams of Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri will be allowed to drive from their hotels along two miles of beach within the Noordvoort reserve, a popular resting spot for seals and breeding birds located between the Zandvoort racetrack and the North Sea.

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Shenzhen could be first city in China to ban eating of dogs and cats

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Officials says move reflects bond between pets and people – ‘the consensus of all human civilisation’ – rather than coronavirus fears

Shenzhen is set to become the first city in mainland China to ban the eating of dogs and cats, if a draft regulation released by the municipal government in a wider push to restrict the consumption of wild animals is approved.

On Monday, China’s National People’s Congress issued an order to ban all consumption of wild animal meat and further restrict the wildlife trade nationwide. The measures are expected to be enshrined in the country’s wildlife protection law later this year.

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Tears at bedtime: are children’s books on environment causing climate anxiety?

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Greta Thunberg-effect behind sales boom in books on everything from plastic waste to endangered wildlife

I’m reading one of a small forest’s-worth of beautiful new picture books about the environment with my eight-year-old twins. The Sea, by Miranda Krestovnikoff and Jill Calder, takes us into mangrove swamps and kelp forests and coral reefs. We learn about goblin sharks and vampire squids and a poisonous creature called a nudibranch. Then we reach the final chapter on ocean plastics. When we learn that by 2050 there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish, Esme bursts into inconsolable tears.

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Palau’s marine sanctuary backfires, leading to increased consumption of reef fish

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Pacific nation’s protected zone has led to commercial tuna fishing vessels leaving the country

Palau’s much-touted marine sanctuary has backfired, with the fishing ban leading to an increased consumption of the reef fish in the western Pacific country – such as grouper, snapper and parrotfish – that the marine sanctuary promised to protect.

Palau introduced a new 500,000 sq km (193,000 sq mile) marine sanctuary on 1 January to much fanfare.

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Uganda’s ‘locust commander’ leads the battle against a new enemy

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The army has been called in to eliminate the insects swarming across Africa, but their mission is dangerous and unending

  • Photographs by Edward Echwalu for the Guardian

Sitting at a plastic table in the garden of Timisha hotel in Soroti, eastern Uganda, Major General Samuel Kavuma takes a drag of his cigarette and looks down at his phone, which has barely stopped ringing for the past hour.

A military figure for nearly 40 years, Kavuma fought the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgent group. Now, he’s become the “locust commander”, the man leading the fight against the country’s worst locust outbreak in decades.

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Coronavirus closures reveal vast scale of China’s secretive wildlife farm industry

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Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus

Nearly 20,000 wildlife farmsraising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry.

Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.

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California street shut down after 40,000 bees swarm from hotel

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Several people hospitalized in Pasadena after Africanized bees emerge from hotel’s eaves: ‘Something set them off’

A swarm of as many as 40,000 Africanized bees sent several people to hospital and closed a street in California, after swarming from the eaves of a Howard Johnson Inn.

Related: Ursus urbinus: 'elderly' 400lb bear spotted roaming Los Angeles suburb

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Paris launches emergency bed bugs hotline

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New campaign includes advice on how to prevent and treat an infestation, and a number to call for expert help

The French government launched a campaign Thursday, complete with an emergency number, to combat an influx of unwelcome visitors that have left Parisians in despair: bedbugs that have settled in homes and hotels to feed, uninvited, on human blood.

After disappearing from France in the 1950s, the insects have made a resurgence, according to the ministry of housing, which cited international travel and growing resistance to insecticide as the main causes.

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‘Are they mean?’ Donald Trump obsessed with badgers, new book claims

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Daily Beast reporters say Reince Priebus was repeatedly asked about the rotund, hairy omnivores during briefings on healthcare and foreign policy

Of all the topics to occupy the mind of the most powerful person in the United States, one would not expect badgers to make a frequent appearance.

But the rotund, hairy omnivores were apparently an alarmingly regular topic of conversation in the White House during the early months of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to Daily Beast reporters Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng.

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Car ‘splatometer’ tests reveal huge decline in number of insects

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Research shows abundance at sites in Europe has plunged by up to 80% in two decades

Two scientific studies of the number of insects splattered by cars have revealed a huge decline in abundance at European sites in two decades.

The research adds to growing evidence of what some scientists have called an “insect apocalypse”, which is threatening a collapse in the natural world that sustains humans and all life on Earth. A third study shows plummeting numbers of aquatic insects in streams.

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Living in the climate emergency: Australia’s new fire zone

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Areas of Australia have burnt during the recent bushfire season that used to be too wet to burn. In this first episode of The Frontline, a new series that shows how everyday Australians are already experiencing the climate crisis, we go inside the new fire zone

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