A 400-year long wait

Captured on camera as they swim in a lake, drag pieces of wood to make their dens and play with one another, these are the first beavers to be born in Britain in 400 years.

The enchanting scene is a heartwarming sight for animal lovers as the species was previously extinct in Britain.

The 12 baby beaver ‘kits’ – all from the same mother – were born at the 550-acre Lower Mill Estate near Cirencester, Gloucestershire.

Jeremy Paxton, owner of the estate, brought three pairs of beavers – named Tony and Cherie, Gordon and Sarah and John and Pauline – from Bavaria in 2005.

He has spent almost £1million on the project.

He said: ‘I have always wanted to bring an extinct indigenous species back to Britain.

Source: The Daily Mail

White-handed Gibbons Now Presumed Extinct

China's fauna exhibits a unique diversity of apes. Unfortunately, the apes are more seriously endangered by extinction in China than in any other country. A research team assembled by anthropologists of Zurich University now conclude that another ape species has just become extinct in China's Yunnan province.

Science Daily reports that the 14-member scientific team recently carried out a survey in all Chinese forests. They could not locate a single Yunnan white-handed gibbon. The last time this ape was observed in China was in 1988 at the Nangunhe Nature Reserve in south-western Yunnan province. Their loud, melodious calls were last heard in 1992. This subspecies (Hylobates lar yunnanensis) is not known from any other place.

Luckily, these apes are not lost to us forever. Several zoos have included them in their programs. One is the Honolulu Zoo. On their web page, you can hear the call of the white-handed gibbon:

listen

You can also see pictures of Emma, an adorable baby white-handed gibbon, born in 2000. Here's a picture of Emma, 7 hours after birth.

Little piggies saved from the market

The world’s smallest and rarest pig, which was once feared extinct, is ready to re-enter the wild again.

Pygmy hogs were thought to have been wiped out in the 1960s until two small populations were found in northern Assam in India in 1971. After a 13-year captive breeding program led by Durrell Wildlife, the Jersey-based conservation centre founded by the author Gerald Durrell, the descendants of those surviving hogs are being reintroduced to their natural habitat at the foot of the Himalayas.

The 16 hogs due to return to the wild - taken from a captive population of only 79 - have been kept in large pre-release enclosures that replicate their natural habitat for the past five months and have become progressively shyer, their keepers say. “Up to release date, the hogs have shown naturalistic behavior and an aversion to human contact, which is a positive sign that they will fair well when released.”

Source: Times Online
(via Boing Boing)

Houston-area invaded by crazy rasberry ants

The crazy Rasberry ants are marching! Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of them are coming in a near-unstoppable zig-zagging insect army intent on making Houston homes, yards and lives a living hill.

First spotted in 2002 in Pasadena by Tom Rasberry, the exterminator for whom the rice-grain-sized insects are named, the ants now have spread through much of the greater Houston area. May through September is their peak period — a time when billions of the critters with a reluctance to sting and a habit of chewing up electrical wiring may infest a single acre. Homeowners daily sweep up dust bins of their dead and maimed.

While they are not prone to stinging humans, the ants do pose potentially serious problems. Ants indirectly can damage plants by establishing a symbiotic relationship with sap-sucking aphids. Ants feed on a sugary aphid excretion called honeydew and, therefore, protect the aphids from predators.

More significantly, crazy Rasberry ants have demonstrated a tendency to nest in and damage electric equipment.

Source: Houston Chronicle

Photo: Tom Rasberry, an exterminator, lets "crazy rasberry ants," named after him, crawl on his arm in Deer Park.
David J. Phillip: AP

They're on the list

The Interior Department on Wednesday designated the polar bear as threatened with extinction - it has been added to the endangered species list.

Polar bears are the first species to be designated as threatened with extinction because of global warming.

The designation under the Endangered Species Act requires the agency to identify critical habitat to be protected and to form a strategy to assist the bear population's recovery.

Source: LA Times

Saving the planet

Animal Planet has created a great website, The Animals Save the Planet. It has animated shorts, fun downloads, and suggestions on saving the Earth.

My favorite is the farting cow, Stanley, who teaches that livestock is responsible for 18% of total greenhouse gas emissions.


Stanley suggests saving the planet by eating less meat. Well, of course he would say that, duh!

If you like Stanley too, you can download a Farting Cow widget.

Feds sued for taking gray wolves off endangered list

Environmental and animal rights groups are suing the federal government in hopes of restoring endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies.

Wolves in 1974 almost disappeared as a species in 48 US states -- excluding Alaska and Hawaii -- except for some isolated packs in Minnesota and Michigan.

In 1995, 66 wolves were released by the government in Idaho and in the nearby Yellowstone National Park with the hope they would propagate and multiply.

The program was successful. Currently, an estimated 1,200 wolves roam Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

But now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has removed the region’s 1,500 wolves from the endangered list in March, turning over management responsibilities to state officials in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.

Defenders of Wildlife said in a statement that Wyoming and Idaho authorities had given their residents a blank check for the "senseless and indiscriminate killing of wolves."

Source: CANOE

Humanity messing with nature

A federal agency has authorized the killing of some California sea lions that prey on migrating salmon and steelhead at the base of Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

By some estimates, the sea lions at the base of the dam take up to 4 percent of the spring chinook run headed upriver to spawn.

Opponents of the kill have said sea lions are a highly visible and politically convenient target when the real problem lies elsewhere, such as the hydroelectric dams. The Humane Society of the United States and other groups also cite other hurdles facing fish, such as the deterioration of spawning grounds, bird predation of salmon smolts headed to the ocean and agricultural runoff and other pollution.

Nonlethal attempts to keep the sea lions away from the dam, such as rubber buckshot, loud noises and pyrotechnics, generally were deemed failures. Some sea lions trapped and taken to the mouth of the Columbia River 140 miles downriver returned to the dam in two or three days.

The authorization is valid until June 30, 2012, and can be extended for five years; it can be also revoked by the National Marine Fisheries Service with 72 hours notice.

Source: Los Angeles Times

via: L.A. Unleashed

Wind farms a threat to whooping cranes

Whooping cranes have waged a valiant fight against extinction, but federal officials warn of a new potential threat to the endangered birds: wind farms.

Down to about 15 in 1941, the gargantuan birds that migrate each fall from Canada to Texas now number 266, thanks to conservation efforts.

But because wind energy has gained such traction, whooping cranes could again be at risk - either from crashing into the towering wind turbines and transmission lines or because of habitat lost to the wind farms.

"Companies want to put their farms where the best wind is, and that overlaps with the migration corridor of the whooping crane," Tom Stehn, the whooping crane coordinator of the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Source: AZ Central

Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife

Earthworms Found To Contain Chemicals

Earthworms studied in agricultural fields have been found to contain organic chemicals from household products and manure, indicating that such substances are entering the food chain.

Manure and biosolids, the solid byproduct of wastewater treatment, were applied to the fields as fertilizer. Earthworms continuously ingest soils for nourishment and can accumulate the chemicals present in the soil.

The chemicals investigated are considered indicators of human and animal waste sources and include a range of active ingredients in common household products such as detergents, antibacterial soaps, fragrances, and pharmaceuticals.

Source: Science Daily

Flame Retardants Link to Tasmanian Devils Cancer

A study conducted by the Australian government's National Measurement Institute took samples of fat from 16 living and dead Tasmanian devils, some of which suffered from the fatal devil facial-tumor disease (DFTD).

DFTD forms disfiguring tumors on the animals' faces and necks that cause them to die from starvation within about six months of showing symptoms.

The scientists found "high" levels of hexabromobiphenyl ether and "reasonably high" levels of decabromobiphenyl ether—chemicals used to treat electronics, textiles, and furniture.

The find triggered local media reports suggesting that the chemicals might be linked to the mysterious cancer that has been killing the rare marsupials for more than a decade.

Source: National Geographic

Weirdest and most endangered creatures

Amphibians as a rule are not cute and cuddly which puts them way down the pecking order of species that need to be saved.

But they are a key indicator species and if they start to decline it is a clear warning that the environment is in trouble.

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has drawn up a list of some of the world's most extraordinary creatures threatened with extinction.

They found 85 per cent of the top 100 of the 'world's weirdest and most endangered creatures' are receiving little conservation attention and will disappear if no action is taken.

ZSL has identified and is starting work to protect 10 of the most unusual and threatened EDGE amphibian species this year. They include:

*Chinese giant salamander (salamander that can grow up to 1.8m in length and evolved independently from all other amphibians over 100m years before Tyrannosaurus rex)

*Sagalla caecilian (limbless amphibian with sensory tentacles on the sides of its head)

*Purple frog (purple-pigmented frog that was only discovered in 2003 because it spends most of the year buried up to 4m underground)

*Ghost frogs of South Africa (one species is found only in the traditional human burial grounds of Skeleton Gorge in Table Mountain, South Africa)

*Olm (blind salamander with transparent skin that lives underground, hunts for its prey by smell and electrosensitivity and can survive without food for 10 years)

*Lungless salamanders of Mexico (highly endangered salamanders that do not have lungs but instead breathe through their skin and mouth lining)

*Malagasy rainbow frog (highly-decorated frog that inflates itself when under threat and can climb vertical rock surfaces)

*Chile Darwin's frog (a frog where fathers protect the young in their mouths, this species has not been officially seen since around 1980 and may now be extinct)

*Betic midwife toad (toads that evolved from all others over 150m years ago - the males carry the fertilised eggs wrapped around their hind legs)

*Gardiner's Seychelles frog (perhaps the world's smallest frog, with adults growing up to just 11mm in length - the size of a drawing pin)

Source: Telegraph

8-Foot Giant Catfish Caught in Cambodia

Captured just before midnight on November 13 by fishers in Cambodia, this Mekong giant catfish is 8 feet long (2.4 meters long) ands weighs 450 pounds (204 kilograms).

Giant catfish were once plentiful throughout Southeast Asia's Mekong River watershed, including the Tonle Sap River—home of the fish in these exclusive pictures taken near Phnom Penh.

In the last century the Mekong giant catfish population has declined by 95 to 99 percent, scientists say. Only a few hundred adult giant catfish may remain.

After collecting data on the fish, it was released unharmed.

The 5 Worst Invasive Species in the World

Environmental Graffiti follows up on a previous article on non-native species in the UK, with a list of the 5 worst non-native animal species worldwide.

So, who's number one?

Bad winter expected for tits in UK

If you're expecting to see the usual crowds of blue tits in your garden this winter, you could be in for a disappointment.

Wildlife experts say millions of the young birds starved or drowned during the storms and floods of May, June and July.

Numbers of great tits, whitethroats and reed warblers are also dramatically down after their worst breeding season in a generation, it is claimed.

Colony Collapse Jeopardizing Beekeepers

In a good year, David Hackenberg can make a $100,000 profit from beekeeping, but this past year has been a financial disaster. And it all began one afternoon last November when he checked on some of his hives in Florida.

"When I pulled into a bee yard in Florida, there was 400 hives of bees that three weeks before that looked great. And all of a sudden, here we got roughly 400 beehives that are totally empty," he recalls.

The bees were gone, and Hackenberg says he doesn’t know where they went. "I mean, I literally got down and crawled around. I mean, seriously, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled around. And there's no dead bees. There are no dead bees anywhere. I mean, you can't find any bees. They flew off someplace," he recalls.

The bees, Hackenberg says, never came back. It's something he says he'd never seen before . . .

Rare leatherback sea turtles hatch in Walton, FL

Walton County’s fi rst-ever documented leatherback sea turtle nest has hatched, and 23 babies have made their way safely to the Gulf of Mexico.

After 79 days of close watch by the South Walton Turtle Watch Group, Walton County’s sea turtle nest No. 12, located in Seagrove just west of Seagrove Villas, came to life Oct. 6 following the day’s heavy rain.

At 9:15 p.m., Turtle Watch Volunteer Joe Burton checked on the nest and found a tiny flipper coming out of the sand. After making several phone calls, Burton, fellow volunteer Sharon Maxwell, and 23 other spectators crowded around the nest as the baby sea turtles slowly emerged and crawled into the water.

“A truly awesome sight,” Maxwell said.

“Fauna of Doom” - 7 Deadliest Animals

We in the modern world have long since left behind the worries of our caveman ancestors. No longer must we fear being crushed by a mammoth or gored by a saber-toothed tiger, but there are still many formidable fauna the modern person must face.

Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) was established in 1936 to preserve the 438,000 acre Okefenokee Swamp. Presently, the refuge encompasses approximately 402,000 acres. In 1974, to further ensure the protection of this unique ecosystem, the interior 353,981 acres of the refuge were designated a National Wilderness Area.

The swamp remains one of the oldest and most well preserved freshwater areas in America and extends 38 miles north to south and 25 miles east to west.

Okefenokee is a vast bog inside a huge, saucer-shaped depression that was once part of the ocean floor. The swamp now lies 103 to 128 feet above mean sea level. Native Americans named the area "Okefenokee" meaning "Land of the Trembling Earth". Peat deposits, up to 15 feet thick, cover much of the swamp floor. These deposits are so unstable in spots that trees and surrounding bushes tremble by stomping the surface.

Japan's Iriomote Cat Closer to Extinction

This month Japan's Ministry of the Environment reclassified the Iriomote cat as "critically endangered" on the government's Red List of threatened species.



The wildcat is found only on Iriomote Jima, a tiny, tropical, mountainous island on the southern end of the Ryukyu archipelago, which stretches from Japan to Taiwan.

The Iriomote cat has been considered at-risk since it was discovered in 1967, and surveys in 1985 and 1994 estimated that only about a hundred animals remain.

Now a three-year survey, still in progress, is providing evidence that the cat's already small population is shrinking, researchers say, most likely due to habitat loss and road-kill deaths.