Latest news with #Propp
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Multiple structures catch fire in Bosque Farms as residents evacuate
Apr. 17—Residents of Bosque Farms were being evacuated Thursday due to a fire that sparked in the bosque and set ablaze multiple structures. Valencia County Fire Chief Matt Propp confirmed Thursday evening the blaze had burned five to 10 buildings, including some houses. The fire had torched 150 acres and was 0% contained as of 7:45 p.m. No injuries have been reported, and the cause is under investigation, according to the state Forestry Division. Propp said multiple fire departments, including Valencia County, Bernalillo County and Bosque Farms, were working to fight the blaze. He also said an emergency operations center was activated in Bosque Farms. The county encouraged residents west of W Bosque Loop from Lillie to Cottonwood Drive and from Lillie North to Truchas Lane to evacuate, and advised residents between Cottonwood Drive and Sutton Lane to be ready to evacuate Thursday evening. An evacuation center was set up at Daniel Fernandez Park, at 1103 NM-314 in Los Lunas. Initially discovered at 3:53 p.m., the fire moved from the west side of the Rio Grande to the east side and into the Bosque Farms area, under fast-moving winds and Red Flag conditions, according to the state Forestry Division. The fire was already setting structures ablaze when response crews arrived on the scene. This story will be updated.
BBC News
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
March of the Penguin Madness: Which penguin will win in 2025?
If you're a fan of unusual animal competitions (we're looking at you Fat Bear Week!) then look no of the Penguin Madness (MOTPM) is taking place this month, and is an international celebration of our feathered friends organised by animal charity Penguins year as part of the celebrations a competition called The Peng-Win Championships takes place, where penguins from zoos and wildlife parks around the world compete to be crowned the world's best year 48 penguins from 12 different species have been nominated by their keepers, where they'll battle it out online in a public vote, before the winner is announced on 18 April. Aside from the glory of winning, the victorious penguin will be immortalised in the Iceberg Hall of Heroes, earning the esteemed title of Global Penguin Ambassador, and may receive a crown and a fishy feast worthy of a global a penguin is knocked out of the Peng-Win Championships they can still compete in the charity's other competition, the Species Spirit Awards, which aims to celebrate and recognise one of the world's 18 species of Propp, the Chief Operations Officer at Penguins International, said: "We want to highlight penguins in zoos and aquariums that serve as ambassadors to their species."Wild penguins continue to face numerous threats, as demonstrated by the uplisting of African Penguins from 'Endangered' to 'Critically Endangered' last October." Meet the nominees Of the 48 contestants, six are from the include:Brian - a Gentoo Penguin from The Deep in - a Humboldt Penguin from Birdworld, in - a Humboldt Penguin from ZSL London - a Northern Rockhopper Penguin from Edinburgh Zoo, in - a King Penguin from Birdland, in - an African penguin from Birdworld in the UK penguins will face tough competition from superstar Pesto, the King Penguin from SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium, in Australia, who went viral last year for his large fluffy competitors include Meatloaf the Little Penguin, from Birch Aquarium, in San Diego in the US, and Floppy the Gentoo Penguin from Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium, in Pennsylvania in the US.
The Guardian
13-03-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Decades after peregrines came back from the brink, a new threat emerges
For the past six years, Gordon Propp, who builds sets for British Columbia's film industry, has kept a close watch over 13 peregrine falcon nests in and around Vancouver, including 10 on the city's bridges. A self-described wildlife enthusiast and citizen scientist, Propp has had a lifelong fascination with these raptors. 'To see a creature that high up the food chain adapting to an urban environment, to me, that's quite remarkable,' says Propp. Watching peregrines (Falco peregrinus) flit about and hunt with their trademark speed, swooping in pursuit of prey at speeds of up to a staggering 250mph (400km/h), is 'etched in my mind', says Propp. But for the past couple of years, most of Propp's winged wards have been nowhere to be found. Construction and egg predation by clever ravens can probably explain the disappearance at two locations, but he cannot explain why the other nests are empty. Propp's observations are hardly isolated. Scientists around the world have been recording plummeting peregrine populations in at least 11 countries. Name any place in the world and peregrine falcons are likely to have soared across its skies. They breed throughout the eastern US and northern Canada, as well as in Greenland, Russia and Scandinavia. They are widespread year-round along North America's west coast, in South and Central America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, across Asia and in Australia. In North America, Skip Ambrose, a peregrine expert formerly with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, has been monitoring the falcons along Alaska's Yukon River since 1973. He, too, has seen a sharp decline in numbers. In the summer of 2023, Ambrose reported that 20 of 60 peregrine nesting sites were empty, with nearly a dozen more missing a parent. That is particularly notable because peregrines are generally loyal to both their nesting site and their partner. Ambrose's dire observations kicked Bud Anderson into action. In May 2024, Anderson, a retired peregrine monitor who ran the now-disbanded Falcon Research Group in Washington state, helped launch a forum focusing on the mysterious declines. Since then, more than 100 researchers have joined to discuss hypotheses and share their own observations of dwindling peregrine populations in Denmark, south-west France, Germany, Malaysia, the Netherlands, central Norway, northern Russia, southern Sweden and Switzerland. While none of the scientists can definitively say what is going on, Ambrose says nothing has ever killed adult peregrines so quickly – not even DDT, the heavily used pesticide that nearly drove the birds to extinction by the 1970s. Curiously, the peregrine's plight in North America seems most pronounced along the coasts. In New Jersey, for example, 22 of the 44 known nesting peregrines went missing during the last breeding season. In Virginia, local scientists recently noted that a dozen out of roughly 70 birds had vanished. Peregrine nests in inland Washington state, near the Cascade mountains, seem stable, Anderson says, while those on the nearby San Juan Islands are struggling. 'It is interesting that coastal populations are showing impact while those in the middle of the continent, so far, do not,' says Patrick Redig, a veterinarian and president of the Midwest Peregrine Society, who helps track 200 nesting pairs across seven states. Though scientists lack an official answer as to what is driving such sudden and far-reaching disappearances, many – including David Bird, who formerly led the Avian Science and Conservation Centre at Canada's Montreal's McGill University in Quebec – think highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) may be largely to blame. Since 2022, the variant of the virus known as A(H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b has been spreading around the world, infecting birds but also leaping across species to cattle, foxes, seals and even people. Bird suspects peregrine falcons could be picking up HPAI after preying on shorebirds, seabirds and waterfowl – transitory populations that may have been infected on poultry farms. That HPAI is to blame fits with the observations of Eve Bélisle, who has been monitoring peregrine falcons in Montreal, Canada, since 2008. Montreal's roughly 30 or so peregrines prey on a mix of pigeons, starlings and other urban birds, but will also go after the occasional waterfowl and shorebird. Necropsies confirmed that at least two falcons in the city died of HPAI last year, while others disappeared, laid infertile eggs or lost chicks during the breeding season. Jérôme Lemaître, an avian biologist with the Quebec government, has been tracking the nesting success of peregrine falcons in the province. He says that while peregrines have not been missing from their nests, as is the case elsewhere, in 2022 the bird's reproductive success in southern Quebec did fall from 50% to 30%, though reproduction rates rebounded in 2023. Lemaître says it is unclear what role avian influenza may have played in the decline. Without a large-scale surveillance effort across North America, determining whether avian influenza is driving the declines in peregrine falcons along the coast – and in some places even farther inland – is difficult. But Kathy Clark, who leads New Jersey's endangered and non-game species programme, says that to get a better view of the situation, New Jersey and Virginia state officials may begin collecting and testing the blood of dead peregrines for HPAI starting from this breeding season. In the longer term, Guy Fitzgérald, a veterinarian who launched Quebec's raptor rehabilitation programme, says the province's peregrine population has plateaued and remains susceptible to further declines until the bird flu outbreak ends. If HPAI is ultimately driving the declines, Bryan Watts, an ecologist who leads the Center for Conservation Biology at William & Mary university in Williamsburg, Virginia, says North America's peregrine falcons have a difficult journey ahead. 'This disease is just going to have to work its way through, and they're going to have to develop an immunity.' This story was originally published in bioGraphic, an independent magazine about nature and regeneration from the California Academy of Sciences
