WildWorld break
November 19th, 2009 by NickWildWorld is taking a break to concentrate on the Iberianature and Britainnature sections.
Back soonish
Nick
Cyprus and its climate
October 25th, 2009 by lucy
Cyprus is a Mediterranean island - the third largest, after Sicily and Sardinia. It belongs to the European Union but geographically it’s part of the Middle East: the nearest neighbour is Turkey, 75 km away and clearly visible from Cyprus’ north coast, currently under Turkish dominion. Syria and Lebanon lie just over 100 km to the east.
The weather of Cyprus can be summarised in one word - sunny. It has a typical Mediterranean climate, with long hot summers and mild wet winters. Nevertheless, thanks to its topography and position, it has some interesting climatic idiosyncrasies. Read the rest of this entry »
Baby mammoth
October 20th, 2009 by NickTo celebrate World Animal Day Boston.com has published this remarkable set of photos of animals from around the world. This was one of my favourites. An international team of scientists perform an autopsy and DNA analysis on Lyuba, a baby woolly mammoth. Sucked to her death in a muddy river bed, Lyuba spent 40,000 years frozen in the Siberian permafrost where her body was so perfectly preserved traces of her mother’s milk remained in her belly. (RIA NOVOSTI/AFP/Getty Images)
New BBC series: Life
October 16th, 2009 by NickThe BBC’s new flagship natural history series Life has just begun in Britain. Narrated by the the wise old man of nature David Attenborough, it portrays stunning scenes of various forms of animal behaviour, and looks are how animals have adapted and evolved to flourish in their own unique environments. Some clips are now available online including this one of an unsinkable Pygmy gecko. These geckos have hydrophobic skin which repels water just like a waterproof jacket.
Each week, incredible clips from the programme will be available online. The 10-part series of Life is currently showing on BBC One “Life” and will include studies of Reptiles/Amphibians, Mammals, Fish, Birds, Insects, Creatures of the Deep, Plants and Primates. It will then gradually become available around the rest of the world. The clips are avaiable as a way of promoting the BBC Wild Live Finder <http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/> Launched in 2009, this BBC site features short video and audio clips from the past thirty years of wildlife film making. The material can be searched by species or by habitat, adaptation (behaviour, communication, and so on), or ecozone.
Names for the Milky Way
October 5th, 2009 by Nick
I thought this list of terms in other languages for the Milky Way was interesting. Complete list here from Wikipedia.
- Irish: Bealach na Bó Finne, “The Fair Cow’s Way”, or Slabhbra Luigh, “Lugh’s Chain”
- Welsh: Caer Wydion “The Fort of Gwydion” (Gwydion).
- Swedish: Vintergatan “Winter Street”, because it is more visible during the winter in Scandinavia and looks like a snowy street. This is similar in Norwegian and Faroese.
- Armenian: hard goghi chanaparh “Straw Thief’s Way”, from a myth.
- Latvian: The Birds’ Path. This is similar in Finnish and Estonian
- Slovene: Rimska cesta “The Roman Road”, because pilgrims followed it when traveling to Rome.
- Ukrainian: “Way of Chumak“
- Indonesian: Bima Sakti “Magical Bima”, a character in Sanskrit epic Mahabharata
- Cherokee: Gili Ulisvsdanvyi “The Way the Dog Ran Away”, from a myth.
- Chinese: “Silver River”. Similar in Vietnamese.
- Georgian: irmis naxtomi “The Deer Jump”
- Japanese: amanogawa “River of Heaven”
- Thai: The way of the white elephant”.
- Turkish: Samanyolu “Road of Straw”
World Press nature photos
October 1st, 2009 by Nick
World Press Photo have just released on the Net its remarkable archive gallery some 10,000 images. The above photo of a snow leopard was taken by Steve Winter, whose report here on snow leopards in Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas won the nature category in 2008. “A snow leopard walks a high mountain trail, photographed using a remotely operated camera trap. The camera recorded just a single image in five months.”
More nature reports from World Press Photo
Not all bad news from Congo
September 30th, 2009 by Nick
Not all bad news from Congo. The WWF reports here on the successs of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership in saving the world’s second biggest rainforest. Some of its accomplishments:
- 34 protected areas, 61 community based natural resource management areas, and 34 extractive resource zones have been zoned for conservation management, covering 126 million acres (51 million hectares) or more than a third of the Congo Basin forests.
- More than 11.5 million acres of forest have been certified as sustainably harvested by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
- Over 5,000 local men and women have been trained in conservation, land use planning and related conservation capacities.
- Although logging and forest degradation remain serious problems, the overall rate of deforestation in the Congo Basin is estimated to be a relatively low 0.17% — a third of that of Brazil and a 10th of that of Indonesia.
- Indicators for the survival of some endangered species are also improving. Despite years of conflict and poaching, the population of mountain gorillas in Virunga, between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, is up 17% over a previous census taken 20 years ago.
- Studies of landscapes and wildlife have improved conservation planning, exemplified by the discovery of 125,000 previously unknown western lowland gorillas in Northern Congo.
Tree climbing lions
September 24th, 2009 by Nick
A lioness taking a kip in a tree in Queen Elizabeth National Park (Southwestern Uganda). Ishasha lions are famed for tree climbing, a trait only shared with other lions in the Lake Manyara region in Uganda and Southern Tanzania. They often spend the hottest parts of the day in the ficus trees found throughout the area, probably to escape the bites of tsetse flies. It is appears to be a learnt behaviour, and so can therefore be seen as a culture trait of these lions, but it is still unclear why this behavior is rare in other lions groups. Photo by Stefan Gara (Creative Commons, Flickr).
Video of tree climbing lions
- Some exciting Ugandan holidays here
Hope for Asian primates
September 24th, 2009 by Nick
The establishment of new reserves in China and Vietnam could save two of the world’s rarest primates, the cao vit gibbon and the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey. Just 110 cao vit gibbons and about 200 Tonkin snub nosed monkeys are thought to survive in the wild. The new sanctuary for the gibbons, the 6,500-hectare Bangliang Nature Reserve in China’s Guangxi Province, runs adjacent to Vietnam’s Cao Vit Gibbon Conservation Area, and more than quadruples the amount of protected forest for the gibbon. The cao vit gibbon currently lives mainly on the Vietnamese side of the border but it now can expand into China.
Video of cao vit gibbons:
The other protected area, in Khau Ca forest in northern Vietnam, is home to 90 Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys. The new 2,000-hectare reserve also supports a relatively pristine sub-tropical forest with a wide range of other wildlife. The wildlife charity Fauna and Flora International ( above photo), which works for wildlife protection in developing countries, was instrumental in establishing the new reserves.
Cheetah reintroduction plan in India
September 21st, 2009 by Nick
A Mughal painting showing cheetahs hunting leopards
An international meeting in India of cheetah experts and conservationists has agreed that the case for the reintroduction of the cheetah is strong.
The plan, backed by the Indian government, is to bring the cheetah back to India and make it, as many wildlife experts say, the “flagship species” of the country’s grasslands, which today lack a prominent species on which to base conservation.
Seven sites in the four states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh have been shortlisted as potential homes for the cheetah. They will now be surveyed to ascertain the state of the habitat, the number of prey and prospects of man-animal conflicts. India would then import the animals from Africa, as the numbers of the Asiatic cheetah still surviving in Iran have fallen to less than 100. Genetic studies suggest that the similarities between the Iranian and African cheetah is “very close”.
Conservationists are split on the plan. Some say are concerned that if the the cheetah is brough back too quickly, they will end up being housed in semi-captive conditions in huge, secured open air zoos, but not free in the wild. They say without restoring habitat and prey base and the chances of a man-animal conflict, viable cheetah populations cannot be established. MK Ranjitsinh, chairman of the Wildlife Trust of India, says the plan is to release the cheetahs in the wild in designated open areas, after studying them thoroughly.
Reintroducing cheetahs in India has symbolic value. The first cheetahs to be bred in captivity were in India during Mughal rule. See also history of Cheetahs in India.
With breathtaking views of the Himalayas, you can soar alongside Egyptian Vultures and Black Kites who will approach to take food out of your hand. They are specially trained rescue birds who can’t be returned to the wild. Among them is Kevin the young Egyptian Vulture, famous for his scrapes with Steppe Eagles. The ultimate aim of the venture is to draw attention to the serious decline of Asian vultures, being poisoned to extinction by vet-prescribed drug Diclofenac. Visit 
This year breeding conditions have been exceptionally good for budgerigars in Queensland, Australia. Heavy rain and river flooding revived the land, providing plenty of grass seeds for the birds to feast on. When all the available trees with the best nesting sites had been taken, budgerigars were laying their eggs on the ground. And now local people are marvelling at the unprecedented size of the flocks, turning the sky green. 
Customs officials first suspected the 22-year old Norwegian, who’d just stepped off a ferry from Denmark, when they spotted a tarantula scuttling inside his bag. They then noticed “his whole body was in constant motion”. The wriggling movement was due to the 14 baby royal pythons tucked away in socks strapped to the man’s torso. That wasn’t all: when the officials made him drop his trousers they found 10 cans taped to his legs, each containing an albino leopard gecko. As Norway bans the import of reptiles, including unendangered species like these, he has been fined 12,500 Norwegian crowns (£1,800). 
