Fogbow

Anglers despair as trapped seal eats Essex lake’s stocks like it’s ‘in Waitrose’
Animal has been evading capture from Rochford fishing lake since mid-December

Alexandra Topping
Wed 11 Jan 2023 12.00 GMT

A seal trapped in a fishing lake has “found himself in a branch of Waitrose” and has no incentive to escape, according to an expert.

The animal has evaded multiple attempts at capture since first being spotted at Rochford Reservoir, in Essex, almost a month ago, the BBC reported.

Simon Dennis, a marine medic and member of British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), said the seal needed to be caught for its own welfare but was happily eating the fish in the lake. He said it was likely that it had swum up an inlet and become stuck in the reservoir.

“But now it probably has no incentive to leave as it’s found itself in a branch of Waitrose and it’s munching its way through the fish.”

The seal appears to be unaware of the fishing ban, in place since its arrival, with local experts saying it has been enjoying the contents of the reservoir since about 12 December.

The reservoir is owned by Rochford district council but has been licensed to Nick North, of Marks Hall Fisheries, for 11 years. North told the BBC his staff were working with the council, BDMLR, the Environment Agency and Essex constabulary’s wildlife team to rescue the seal, but attempts last week had failed as it had slipped under a net.

North said the lake was “one of the best park angling lakes for all types of anglers”, and the seal was having a detrimental effect. “To see all this lost due to a seal getting into a lake where it doesn’t belong is ridiculous,” he said. “When I asked about the damage the seal was causing to my stock of fish, I was told that didn’t come into consideration as the seals were a protected species and the fish weren’t. This seal needs to be removed as soon as possible. Seals live in the sea, not freshwater lakes.”



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... kes-stocks

SAN DIEGO ZOO SAFARI PARK
Christmas Miracle: Critically Endangered Horse Foal Born at San Diego Zoo Safari Park
The December baby is a Przewalski's horse, which is extinct in the wild.

The San Diego Zoo Safari Park recently welcomed a new addition, a Przewalski's horse foal that was the first of the critically endangered animals to be born at the park since 2014, it was announced Friday.

The Przewalski's horse was categorized as extinct in the wild until 1996. The unnamed foal, which is female and was born on Christmas Day, is one of just four newborns in North America over the past year.

"Every birth is a tremendous moment, so we are elated by this new foal," said Kristi Burtis, wildlife care director at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. "We've had more than 157 Przewalski's horses born at the zoo and the safari park.

"They are an important wild horse species, and this new foal, along with each individual that was born at our parks, bolsters their fragile population -- and represents our deep commitment to conserving them for future generations."

The December foal was born as part of a breeding recommendation through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Przewalski's horse Species Survival Plan.

According to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the species has survived for the past 40 years almost entirely in zoos around the world, and nearly all of the surviving horses are related to 12 Przewalski's horses born in native habitats. Ongoing reintroductions of the horses into their native habitats have established several herds in grasslands in China and Mongolia to maintain genetic variation, however, scientists believe more work needs to be done to ensure the species' future survival.

Selfie mania in wild beauty spots is definitely a thing – but this camera hog had no real idea what she was doing.

When a curious bear stumbled upon a wildlife motion-activated camera near Boulder, Colorado, she ended up triggering hundreds of “selfies”, officials have said.

Coyotes, beavers, mountain lions, black bears, all kinds of birds and many other creatures inhabit the landscape outside town, and Boulder’s open space and mountain parks department – which states its function as preserving and protecting the natural environment and land resources – set out to monitor them.

But they were amazed when they checked one camera out of many they have placed across thousands of acres and found that out of 580 images on it about 400 were of one bear, NBC News reported.

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 12:13 am

‘Incredibly intelligent, highly elusive’: US faces new threat from Canadian ‘super pig’
Northern states on alert for invasion of cross-bred pig that threatens flora and fauna – and is difficult to stop

Adam Gabbatt
Mon 20 Feb 2023 08.00 GMT

For decades, wild pigs have been antagonizing flora and fauna in the US: gobbling up crops, spreading disease and even killing deer and elk.

Now, as fears over the potential of the pig impact in the US grow, North America is also facing a new swine-related threat, as a Canadian “super pig”, a giant, “incredibly intelligent, highly elusive” beast capable of surviving cold climates by tunneling under snow, is poised to infiltrate the north of the country.

The emergence of the so-called super pig, a result of cross-breeding domestic pigs with wild boars, only adds to the problems the US faces from the swine invasion.

Pigs are not native to the US, but have wrought havoc in recent decades: the government estimates the country’s approximately 6 million wild, or feral, pigs cause $1.5bn of damage each year.

In parts of the country, the pigs’ prevalence has sparked a whole hog hunting industry, where people pay thousands of dollars to mow down boar and sow with machine guns. But overall, the impact of the pigs, first introduced to the US in the 16th century, has very much been a negative, as the undiscerning swine has chomped its way across the country.




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... r-pig-boar

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 7:37 am Neh - Biden will take the train to Toronto

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 7:38 am

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 7:37 am Neh - Biden will take the train to Toronto

Ottawa

Duke Farms Eagle Cam 05.03.2023 09:20

S&M Türkatar
5 Mar 2023

https://www.dukefarms.org/footer/blog

Live Eagle Cam on Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ. For those unfamiliar with YouTube Live - You can rewind the live feed! So if you miss some action in the nest, use the scroll to go back and check it out! No audio, sorry.

It is important to remember that although we have access to witness their behaviors, the eagles are still wild animals. If you find the nesting behaviors of the eagle chicks bothersome or disturbing, do not watch the Eagle Cam.

Egg 1: January 20, 2023, 4:08 pm
Egg 2: January 23, 2023, 3:05 pm
Egg 1 hatched: February 27, 2023, ~2:15 pm
Egg 2 hatched: February 28, 2023, ~2:20 pm

*Please navigate to our Eagle Cam webpage for the most recent updates pertaining to the nest:
https://www.dukefarms.org/research/anat ... agle-nest/

Arizona family discovers bobcat has taken over their dog’s bed
Owner finds unruly visitor in place of chihuahua-dachshund, Squeakers, who narrowly survived encounter with wildcat

Maanvi Singh
Sat 11 Mar 2023 06.00 GMT

At first, Nikola Zovko thought the creature curled up in his dog Squeakers’s deluxe, heated dog bed was just one of his cats. “I said, ‘Fuzzerhead, what’re you doing in Squeakers’s bed?’” he said. And that’s when it registered. “Oh that’s not Fuzzerhead. That’s a real life bobcat.”

In the week since, Zovko and his family lost and found their beloved pup Squeakers, a 10-year-old chihuahua-dachshund mix. After discovering that he had been mauled by the bobcat who stole his throne, they raised enough money for surgeries to restore him to health. The local game and fish department has used their story as an example of what to do when wildlife wander in to your home.

“Don’t handle entrapped/hurt wildlife yourself,” the Arizona game and fish department Tuscon tweeted.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... is-dog-bed

Native Americans used horses far earlier than historians had believed

BY SAUL ELBEIN -
03/31/23 6:00 AM ET

Native American communities rode, cared for and lived alongside horses nearly a century earlier than European records suggest, a new study has found.

The study, published in the journal Science, shatters the conventional narrative of how — and when — horses came into the Indigenous communities of the American West.

The study draws on a new fusion of tribal oral histories with academic archeology, and suggests that rather than being passed on by European colonists, knowledge of the horse has its own deep roots among native peoples themselves.

It also suggests that horses were distributed across Indigenous communities from Wyoming to Kansas generations — at least — before European accounts suggested that horses had reached them.

“This wasn’t people taming wild horses,” William Taylor, co-author and anthropologist at the University of Colorado, told The Hill.

“We identified horses in mid-Kansas, clearly corn fed to get through a tough winter,” he said — something revealed by the radioactive isotopes left in the horses’ bones.

The research team did genetic and radiocarbon testing on dozens of previously untested horse skeletons in museums and held by tribal nations.

They found dozens of examples of horses in these communities that had been ridden, fed by humans and even received veterinary care long before European accounts allow for them having horses at all.

That fills in a “contradiction” in the conventional narrative, Taylor said: the Indigenous horse culture is an internationally recognized symbol of the American West.

But conventional academic histories of that culture’s nature and origins overwhelmingly rely on accounts by Europeans, and largely those written long after those cultures had been colonized.

That narrative has long ignored claims by Plains peoples that the Native American relationship with the horse goes back long before contact with Europeans.

That claim now has more support, Oglala Lakota researcher and co-author Yvette Running Horse Collin told The Hill.





https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... -believed/