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The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Rampaging raccoons: how the American mammals took over a German city – and are heading across Europe
In Kassel, everyone has a story about raccoons. Some struggle with a family of them that moved into their roof and simply will not leave. Others recount how a picnic in the park turned into an ambush as gangs of the black and white animals, known in Germany as Waschbären, raided the food. Almost everyone seems to have a neighbour who feeds them, to the annoyance of the entire street. 'We are the raccoon city. They are everywhere,' says Lars, a Kassel resident, as he tends his allotment by Karlsaue park in the fading light. 'When it's a bit darker, they will come out. I sit here in my garden at night and the raccoons come. If your bag is here, they will steal your banana or something,' he says. 'They have no predators, so they are the chiefs. They can do what they want. We love them but we also hate them.' While no one knows the exact number, there are thousands of raccoons in this central German city, a hotspot for the estimated 1.5 million that live across the country. The omnivorous mammal, native to North America, was brought to Nazi Germany in the 1930s for fur farming, but escaping animals and intentional introductions helped establish a large wild population in the years afterwards. Today, they are increasingly spotted across Europe, with sightings in France, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Austria and elsewhere. 'It is clear that the raccoon is spreading very rapidly across western Europe,' says Daniel Willcox, a co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) small carnivore specialist group. 'It's going to be very difficult to control – but it doesn't mean you shouldn't try.' Many in Kassel have embraced the raccoons: several sports teams have named themselves after the animals; residential bins are locked to stop opportunistic raiders, and people are careful to check under their cars for the animals. But since 2016, the raccoon has been classified as an invasive species in the EU because of the threat it poses to native wildlife. 'The impacts of raccoons are widespread,' says Marten Winter, an invasive species expert at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). 'They can climb, which is a totally new ecological niche for a species like this in Europe. Ground-nesting birds, bats in caves, birds in boxes, amphibians – they are able to eat almost everything.' One study in Brandenburg indicates that raccoons routinely predate on ground-nesting birds, which have already suffered significant population declines across the continent. Other research, from western Poland, shows they are eating 'extreme' quantities of endangered mussels. Raccoons have become so widespread in parts of Europe that they are now probably part of ecosystems for good, Winter says. Their spread across Europe is likely to accelerate and ecologists are divided about what to do next. Willcox says: 'There are certain native species that are going to be really sensitive to predation by raccoons. There have to be control programmes. There is no ecological equivalent to raccoons in Europe and it's not something that should be tolerated.' He proposes stricter programmes across the EU to limit their spread, akin to those in Australia and New Zealand that have invested large sums to eliminate non-native biodiversity. But others urge caution. Winter says further research is needed about the raccoons' impacts on European biodiversity and says they are not the only pressure on species they are accused of consuming. 'We need better data to really have an idea of the actual impact of the raccoon on its prey populations. With potentially 1.6 million individuals in Germany, they have an impact. But we still have the mink, which is also a very effective predator for ground-nesting animals. And what about cats? Cats are very likely to be causing more severe declines in bird populations, at least in semi-urban areas,' he says. Despite the animal's popularity among many Germans, 200,000 raccoons were culled last year alone. Hunting associations report that they are being found in growing numbers and across larger ranges. To help with population control, at least one butcher has even started making sausages and meatballs from their meat. 'I've never had anyone say it is disgusting or that you can't eat it. Honestly, everyone likes it,' he told CNN in 2024. At sunset in Kassel, the stream of early summer cyclists begins to slow. Swallows and swifts feast on flying insects in the fading light. From the trees, raccoons begin to emerge, ready to scour the city in the short hours of darkness. Lars, resting on his spade, says Kassel's residents will continue to embrace the animals – but there are limits. 'When I was a child, they were here but not so many,' he says. 'They are a symbol for us here, a badge of honour. Sometimes, we are proud of them. But they destroy a lot.' Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
Spectator
4 hours ago
- Spectator
The real reason birth rates are falling
Last week the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its State of World Population report. According to the Guardian: 'Millions of people are prevented from having the number of children they want by a toxic mix of economic barriers and sexism, a new UN report has warned.' Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of UNFPA, said: 'The answer lies in responding to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care and supportive partners.' Nonsense, of course. Does Africa (4.1 births per woman) have better family leave and fertility care and more supportive partners than Sweden (1.4)? The reason for UNFPA's counter-intuitive findings is simple. They have not 'found' (the word almost every report uses) the reasons people don't have babies. They've found the reasons people say they're not having babies. People say all kinds of things. Against a background of concern at low fertility, and asked why they're not contributing more to maintaining population numbers, most people are unlikely to reply: 'Because babies are hard work, and restrict my freedom to live the life of my choice.' Of course they won't! 'I don't want children' sounds selfish. They'll instead say that they'd like to have more children, but for one reason or another beyond their control are prevented from having a bigger family. Even taking that into account, I note from the figures for respondents' answers to the survey's core questions that only one in five said they expected to have fewer children than they'd like. 'What they'd like' is key. Face it. Modern couples are making a lifestyle choice in curbing procreation. Babies are thoroughly inconvenient. Pets (say reports) are substituting for children as they're less trouble. Dog ownership is increasing. I doubt that the science of polling could provide the honest answers we need, but I'll take an intuitive stab at 'explaining' why the 21st-century world is having fewer children. Birth rates are falling not (pace UNFPA) because people feel less free to have bigger families, but because they feel more free not to. And it's women I'm mostly talking about. The reason for falling birth rates is the emancipation of women. Those thousands of years when hearth, home and motherhood were the limits of what a young woman could aspire to are gone. The cultural blocks on careers for women are being lifted, and that's a good thing. But it has consequences. Even after making every effort to harmonise career with reproduction, even after nudging men into sharing domestic duties, after extending maternity and paternity leave (480 days in Sweden) and penalising employers for discriminating against mothers who interrupt work to care for babies, after state help with nurseries and daycare centres and the financial incentives some countries are now offering for having more children, even after all that, modern women want a life beyond the front door. This is especially so for younger women starting out on a career. Later, with more seniority in the workplace, can come more flexibility and power to dictate terms. This is surely one reason professionally successful modern women now choose motherhood towards the end of the female reproductive lifespan. My mother was in her early twenties when her firstborn (me) came along. This allowed time for another five children, regularly puncturing the possibilities of career. This is backed up by a stubborn failure to reverse fertility trends through governmental attempts to incentivise childbirth. South Korea, Hungary and France have offered families a shedload of goodies – tax breaks and bounties of every kind – to grow. The effects have been negligible. The doubling of available talent for the modern economy must be vastly beneficial both to productivity and the sum of human happiness, but it doesn't encourage procreation. Why, though, do UNFPA and a host of other official voices call falling birth rates a crisis? It's only about ten minutes since world overpopulation, not underpopulation, was the popular cause for anxiety. Economists may answer that low birth rates mean either a contracting young workforce to support expanding numbers of an ageing population, or the continuous importation of young immigrant workers to fill the gap. True enough. But more babies mean – in the end – more oldies; and so do more immigrants, after a time lag. We can't indefinitely keep shovelling more births and more immigrants into the economy to feed a (consequentially) swelling care sector. If, then, we cannot fuel economic growth through babies and migrants, why assume we should be trying to grow the size of the economy in the first place? Let the country face a deficit of workers until employers pay more to bring more of the native population into gainful employment; let the increase in longevity level off, as it is doing. With later retirement, we could stabilise the proportions of contributors and beneficiaries and distribute the spoils of increased productivity among fewer people than if we carry on sucking in immigrants or succeed in cranking out more babies. Of course, if world birth rates stayed below 2.1, humankind would eventually become extinct. But that's for generations hence to ponder. For our own, there is no shortage of people – quite the reverse. And the fewer of us there are, the greater for each will be our share; and the more easily we could halt the despoilation of the planet. The world might become a nicer place to bring children into. My thinking here is not new, and has been argued more capably by others for decades, but the current panic about depopulation, the suspect underlying premise that more people means more for each of them, and the political mantra that everything must depend upon 'growth', prompt me to pose again some very big questions.
Times
5 hours ago
- Times
Braised lamb by Sotto in Edinburgh recipe
T his is a recipe we've been doing to showcase some brilliant late springtime Scottish produce made using classic Italian techniques. This is a great dish for a dinner party as you can prepare it in advance, and sauté the veg fresh at the end to give the dish a nice lift. • Sotto, Edinburgh restaurant review Serves 4 • 800g lamb shoulder • 90ml extra-virgin olive oil • 2 small white onions • 2 carrots• 3 stalks of celery• 2 cloves of garlic• 3 generous glasses of red wine• 250ml beef stock • 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary • 4 sprigs of fresh thyme• 100g broad beans• 100g peas• 2 artichokes • 1 small red chilli, deseeded • Handful of fresh mint, chopped 1. Generously season the lamb with salt and black pepper. Heat a deep saucepan over a high heat then brown the lamb all over for 10 min. Remove the lamb and set aside. 2. Add 2 tbsp olive oil to the same pan and sauté the onions until soft but not brown. Next, add the carrots, celery, one garlic clove and lightly brown. Return the lamb to the pan. Pour over the wine and beef stock and bring to the boil. 3. Season with salt, pepper, the rosemary and thyme. Turn down to simmer, then cook over lowest heat for about 1½ to 2 hours or until the lamb is tender. 4. Blanch the broad beans and peas in boiling water for 30 seconds. Prepare the artichokes by removing all the hard leaves and with a small spoon remove the choke (the fuzzy, inedible centre). Discard these and slice the rest. 5. In a pan, heat the remaining oil. Add the other garlic clove and fresh chilli. Add the sliced artichokes, broad beans and peas and let them cook for 4-5 min, adding the chopped mint right at the end. Serve alongside the lamb and its jus. Francesco Ascrizzi is the head chef at Sotto Enoteca & Trattoria in Stockbridge,
