Latest news with #wildlifeconservation
New York Times
10 minutes ago
- General
- New York Times
Grizzlies Were Raiding Montana Farms. Then Came Some Formidable Dogs.
The grizzly bears feasted on piles of spilled wheat and barley. They broke into grain bins. They helped themselves to apples from family orchards. Sometimes they massacred chickens or picked off calves. Once nearly eradicated from the lower 48 United States, grizzlies are growing in population and spreading onto Montana's plains, where they had not roamed in perhaps a century. In their travels, they've acquired a fondness for the good eating to be found in farmyards. This is a grave problem for both humans and bears. The safety of farmers and their families is at stake, and so is the survival of the bears, which could get themselves killed by threatening people's lives and livelihoods. Enter the bear dogs. This one's name is Patton, and he's a Turkish Boz shepherd. Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
BBC News
19 hours ago
- General
- BBC News
St Albans Cathedral peregrine falcon chicks leave the nest
Three peregrine falcon chicks have successfully fledged after their parents' first set of eggs was male peregrines were born in June at St Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire, which has been home to a mating pair of falcons since looked as though no offspring would survive this year when someone crushed the first clutch in April, but a second set of eggs hatched cathedral, which has a webcam trained on the nest, said: "Thank you to everyone who tuned in and supported Alban, Boudica and the chicks. We can't wait to do it all again next year!" St Albans Cathedral also thanked the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, which has partnered with the church to support the birds of Ellis, engagement manager at the trust, said: "We're delighted to see the wonderful comeback these birds have made, demonstrating just how resilient they are." The nesting platform at St Albans has been livestreamed by cameras on the cathedral's April, viewers watched as an unknown person stood on eggs that had been recently this month, Hertfordshire Police said an investigation into the destroyed eggs was ongoing. Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Otters spotted in Kashmir waters, and residents are both thrilled and wary
Hugam, Indian-administered Kashmir – Nasir Amin Bhat, 17, was barely ankle-deep in the water when his school friend and neighbour Adil Ahmad shouted from the riverbank on a breezy summer evening in May. 'Turn back! There's something in the water.' Across the Lidder, a tributary of the Jhelum River, in Hugam village of Indian-administered Kashmir's Anantnag district, a Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) plunged into the glacial waters and started paddling furiously against the current with all four limbs. 'I had no idea what it was,' Bhat, a high school student, told Al Jazeera, 'but I grabbed my smartphone and turned on the camera.' The grainy, nine-second video shows the creature with a fur coat – classified as 'near threatened' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List – gliding out of the water and jumping onto the riverbank. After a few clumsy steps, the semiaquatic animal, which can reach elevations of 3,660 metres (12,000 feet) in the Himalayas during the summer, disappears behind a thick grove of bushes, bringing the video to an uneventful end. Long believed to have gone extinct, Eurasian otters seem to be showing signs of resurgence in Kashmir, with three individuals spotted by Indian wildlife officers in two places since 2023. The chance sightings have excited environmentalists and wildlife conservationists while raising hopes of a better future for the Himalayan region's fragile freshwater ecosystems, which have been battered by climate change in recent years. 'Habitat has improved' Indian wildlife biologist Nisarg Prakash believes the sighting of otters in Kashmir was an indicator of high-quality aquatic habitats. 'The reappearance of otters might mean that poaching has come down or the habitat has improved, and maybe both in some cases,' Prakash, whose work focuses on otters in southern parts of India, told Al Jazeera. Protected under India's Wildlife Protection Act, otters were once widely distributed across north India, including the Himalayan foothills, the Gangetic plains and parts of the northeast. A peer-reviewed study by IUCN in November last year noted that the Eurasian otter, known among Kashmiri locals as 'voddur', was found in water bodies of Lidder and Jehlum valleys, including Wular Lake, one of Asia's largest freshwater lakes. However, over the years, their population became 'patchy and fragmented due to habitat loss, pollution and human disturbances', says Khursheed Ahmad, a senior wildlife scientist at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST-K). Ahmad said that, due to habitat alterations from human activities and the encroachment of their ideal habitats along riverbanks and other water bodies, Eurasian otters retreated and became confined to areas that were least accessible to humans. 'Although they were not extinct, sightings and occurrences had become extremely rare and they were never documented,' said Ahmad, who heads the Division of Wildlife Sciences at SKUAST-K. Less than two years ago, a research team led by Ahmad accidentally stumbled on otters during a study on musk deer in Gurez, a valley of lush meadows and towering peaks split into two by the Kishanganga River along the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the Himalayas. Past midnight on August 6, 2023, two individual otters were captured in a riverine habitat at an altitude of 2,600 metres (8,530 feet) in the valley near the 330MW Kishanganga Hydro Electric Project built by India following a prolonged legal battle with Pakistan at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. After that sighting, the research team focused on documenting the presence of otters on the Indian side of Kashmir. 'Unfortunately, due to heavy disturbance from fishing and other local and paramilitary activities, no further presence was documented,' the IUCN study notes. Ahmed said Bhat's video is only the second photographic evidence of otters in Kashmir.'Too terrified to go there' But in the large farming village of Hugam, comprising some 300 families, residents are both excited and worried. At the crack of dawn, Muneera Bano, a homemaker, wakes to the flutter of crows cawing furiously on the willow trees lining the tributary's banks outside her home in Hugam, located some 58km (36 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar. Bano has stopped washing clothes and utensils on the riverbank after the otter was discovered, something she had done for years. 'There are underwater caves [in the tributary], and it is hiding in one of them. When it comes out in the morning, crows see it and they start screaming. I am too terrified to go there,' she said. Bhat, the teenager who filmed the video, said he often used to bathe in the tributary's glacial waters and sometimes also caught fish. 'Now I can't even think about going there,' he said. The grainy video led to rumours about the presence of crocodiles in the tributary, prompting Indian wildlife officials to set up a camera trap, which confirmed that it was a Eurasian otter – also seen in Bhat's video – and not a crocodile. Some wildlife officials even bathed in the river in the presence of village elders to demonstrate that the water was completely safe. Although otters do not pose any threat to humans, they can turn unpredictable, especially when close to humans. But scientists say these animals can grow accustomed to the presence of humans. Wildlife biologist Prakash said rather than being scared or fearful, curiosity about otters can make them a sight to be enjoyed while watching them fish or swim. 'Otters are largely active around dawn, dusk and after dark, though they can sometimes be seen during daytime as well. Eurasian otters largely prey on fish, eels, and sometimes, waterfowl,' he said. Kashmiri farmer Wasim Ahmad remembers a summer day in the early 1990s when he was on the way back from school situated along the banks of Doodhganga, a major tributary of the Jhelum River. As Ahmad, now in his 40s, turned the corner, he saw a large procession of people walking jubilantly. One man was holding a dead otter while another was walking a dog on a leash. Bagh-e-Mehtab in Srinagar is home to a community of poachers who, in the past, made a living by selling skins of animals such as cats, otters, and other animals. With stricter animal welfare laws in force in India now, the community has given up the old profession. 'Our elders warned us that otters skinned the children and ate them raw,' said Ahmad, who was in ninth grade then. 'But as I grew up, I didn't come across even one person who was harmed by otters. It was basically a tactic to keep the children away from the river.' Ahmad, the wildlife scientist, said the reappearance of otters in Kashmir was a positive sign. 'Now we should see to it that the new habitat is protected from uncontrolled pollution, garbage accumulation, increased carbon emissions and habitat degradation. Addressing these challenges is crucial for their conservation and wellbeing,' he told Al Jazeera. Solve the daily Crossword
Al Jazeera
21 hours ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
Otters spotted in Kashmir waters, and residents are both thrilled and wary
Hugam, Indian-administered Kashmir – Nasir Amin Bhat, 17, was barely ankle-deep in the water when his school friend and neighbour Adil Ahmad shouted from the riverbank on a breezy summer evening in May. 'Turn back! There's something in the water.' Across the Lidder, a tributary of the Jhelum River, in Hugam village of Indian-administered Kashmir's Anantnag district, a Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) plunged into the glacial waters and started paddling furiously against the current with all four limbs. 'I had no idea what it was,' Bhat, a high school student, told Al Jazeera, 'but I grabbed my smartphone and turned on the camera.' The grainy, nine-second video shows the creature with a fur coat – classified as 'near threatened' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List – gliding out of the water and jumping onto the riverbank. After a few clumsy steps, the semiaquatic animal, which can reach elevations of 3,660 metres (12,000 feet) in the Himalayas during the summer, disappears behind a thick grove of bushes, bringing the video to an uneventful end. Long believed to have gone extinct, Eurasian otters seem to be showing signs of resurgence in Kashmir, with three individuals spotted by Indian wildlife officers in two places since 2023. The chance sightings have excited environmentalists and wildlife conservationists while raising hopes of a better future for the Himalayan region's fragile freshwater ecosystems, which have been battered by climate change in recent years. 'Habitat has improved' Indian wildlife biologist Nisarg Prakash believes the sighting of otters in Kashmir was an indicator of high-quality aquatic habitats. 'The reappearance of otters might mean that poaching has come down or the habitat has improved, and maybe both in some cases,' Prakash, whose work focuses on otters in southern parts of India, told Al Jazeera. Protected under India's Wildlife Protection Act, otters were once widely distributed across north India, including the Himalayan foothills, the Gangetic plains and parts of the northeast. A peer-reviewed study by IUCN in November last year noted that the Eurasian otter, known among Kashmiri locals as 'voddur', was found in water bodies of Lidder and Jehlum valleys, including Wular Lake, one of Asia's largest freshwater lakes. However, over the years, their population became 'patchy and fragmented due to habitat loss, pollution and human disturbances', says Khursheed Ahmad, a senior wildlife scientist at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST-K). Ahmad said that, due to habitat alterations from human activities and the encroachment of their ideal habitats along riverbanks and other water bodies, Eurasian otters retreated and became confined to areas that were least accessible to humans. 'Although they were not extinct, sightings and occurrences had become extremely rare and they were never documented,' said Ahmad, who heads the Division of Wildlife Sciences at SKUAST-K. Less than two years ago, a research team led by Ahmad accidentally stumbled on otters during a study on musk deer in Gurez, a valley of lush meadows and towering peaks split into two by the Kishanganga River along the Line of Control, the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the Himalayas. Past midnight on August 6, 2023, two individual otters were captured in a riverine habitat at an altitude of 2,600 metres (8,530 feet) in the valley near the 330MW Kishanganga Hydro Electric Project built by India following a prolonged legal battle with Pakistan at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. After that sighting, the research team focused on documenting the presence of otters on the Indian side of Kashmir. 'Unfortunately, due to heavy disturbance from fishing and other local and paramilitary activities, no further presence was documented,' the IUCN study notes. Ahmed said Bhat's video is only the second photographic evidence of otters in Kashmir. 'Too terrified to go there' But in the large farming village of Hugam, comprising some 300 families, residents are both excited and worried. At the crack of dawn, Muneera Bano, a homemaker, wakes to the flutter of crows cawing furiously on the willow trees lining the tributary's banks outside her home in Hugam, located some 58km (36 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar. Bano has stopped washing clothes and utensils on the riverbank after the otter was discovered, something she had done for years. 'There are underwater caves [in the tributary], and it is hiding in one of them. When it comes out in the morning, crows see it and they start screaming. I am too terrified to go there,' she said. Bhat, the teenager who filmed the video, said he often used to bathe in the tributary's glacial waters and sometimes also caught fish. 'Now I can't even think about going there,' he said. The grainy video led to rumours about the presence of crocodiles in the tributary, prompting Indian wildlife officials to set up a camera trap, which confirmed that it was a Eurasian otter – also seen in Bhat's video – and not a crocodile. Some wildlife officials even bathed in the river in the presence of village elders to demonstrate that the water was completely safe. Although otters do not pose any threat to humans, they can turn unpredictable, especially when close to humans. But scientists say these animals can grow accustomed to the presence of humans. Wildlife biologist Prakash said rather than being scared or fearful, curiosity about otters can make them a sight to be enjoyed while watching them fish or swim. 'Otters are largely active around dawn, dusk and after dark, though they can sometimes be seen during daytime as well. Eurasian otters largely prey on fish, eels, and sometimes, waterfowl,' he said. Kashmiri farmer Wasim Ahmad remembers a summer day in the early 1990s when he was on the way back from school situated along the banks of Doodhganga, a major tributary of the Jhelum River. As Ahmad, now in his 40s, turned the corner, he saw a large procession of people walking jubilantly. One man was holding a dead otter while another was walking a dog on a leash. Bagh-e-Mehtab in Srinagar is home to a community of poachers who, in the past, made a living by selling skins of animals such as cats, otters, and other animals. With stricter animal welfare laws in force in India now, the community has given up the old profession. 'Our elders warned us that otters skinned the children and ate them raw,' said Ahmad, who was in ninth grade then. 'But as I grew up, I didn't come across even one person who was harmed by otters. It was basically a tactic to keep the children away from the river.' Ahmad, the wildlife scientist, said the reappearance of otters in Kashmir was a positive sign. 'Now we should see to it that the new habitat is protected from uncontrolled pollution, garbage accumulation, increased carbon emissions and habitat degradation. Addressing these challenges is crucial for their conservation and wellbeing,' he told Al Jazeera.
France 24
a day ago
- Science
- France 24
The eye-opening science of close encounters with polar bears
First you have to find it and then shoot it with a sedative dart from a helicopter before a vet dares approach on foot to put a GPS collar around its neck. Then the blood has to be taken and a delicate incision made into a layer of fat before it wakes. All this with a wind chill of up to minus 30C. For the last four decades experts from the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) have been keeping tabs on the health and movement of polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between Norway and the North Pole. Like the rest of the Arctic, global warming has been happening there three to four times faster than elsewhere. But this year the eight scientists working from the Norwegian icebreaker Kronprins Haakon are experimenting with new methods to monitor the world's largest land carnivore, including for the first time tracking the PFAS "forever chemicals" from the other ends of the Earth that finish up in their bodies. An AFP photographer joined them on this year's eye-opening expedition. Delicate surgery on the ice With one foot on the helicopter's landing skid, vet Rolf Arne Olberg put his rifle to his shoulder as a polar bear ran as the aircraft approached. Hit by the dart, the animal slumped gently on its side into a snowdrift, with Olberg checking with his binoculars to make sure he had hit a muscle. If not, the bear could wake prematurely. "We fly in quickly," Oldberg said, and "try to minimise the time we come in close to the bear... so we chase it as little as possible." After a five- to 10-minute wait to make sure it is asleep, the team of scientists land and work quickly and precisely. They place a GPS collar around the bear's neck and replace the battery if the animal already has one. Only females are tracked with the collars because male polar bears -- who can grow to 2.6 metres (8.5 feet) -- have necks thicker than their heads, and would shake the collar straight off. Olberg then made a precise cut in the bear's skin to insert a heart monitor between a layer of fat and the flesh. "It allows us to record the bear's body temperature and heart rate all year," NPI researcher Marie-Anne Blanchet told AFP, "to see the energy the female bears (wearing the GPS) need to use up as their environment changes." The first five were fitted last year, which means that for the first time experts can cross-reference their data to find out when and how far the bears have to walk and swim to reach their hunting grounds and how long they rest in their lairs. The vet also takes a biopsy of a sliver of fat that allows researchers to test how the animal might stand up to stress and "forever chemicals", the main pollutants found in their bodies. "The idea is to best represent what bears experience in the wild but in a laboratory," said Belgian toxicologist Laura Pirard, who is testing the biopsy method on the mammals. Eating seaweed It has already shown that the diet of Svalbard's 300 or so bears is changing as the polar ice retreats. The first is that they are eating less seals and more food from the land, said Jon Aars, the lead scientist of the NPI's polar bear programme. "They still hunt seals, but they also take eggs and reindeer -- they even eat (sea)grass and things like that, even though it provides them with no energy." But seals remain their essential food source, he said. "Even if they only have three months to hunt, they can obtain about 70 percent of what they need for the entire year during that period. That's probably why we see they are doing okay and are in good condition" despite the huge melting of the ice. But if warming reduces their seal hunting further, "perhaps they will struggle", he warned. "There are notable changes in their behaviour... but they are doing better than we feared. However, there is a limit, and the future may not be as bright." "The bears have another advantage," said Blanchet, "they live for a long time, learning from experience all their life. That gives a certain capacity to adapt." Success of anti-pollution laws Another encouraging discovery has been the tentative sign of a fall in pollution levels. With some "bears that we have recaptured sometimes six or eight times over the years, we have observed a decrease in pollutant levels," said Finnish ecotoxicologist Heli Routti, who has been working on the programme for 15 years. "This reflects the success of regulations over the past decades." NPI's experts contribute to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) whose conclusions play a role in framing regulations or bans on pollutants. "The concentration of many pollutants that have been regulated decreased over the past 40 years in Arctic waters," Routti said. "But the variety of pollutants has increased. We are now observing more types of chemical substances" in the bears' blood and fatty tissues. These nearly indestructible PFAS or "forever chemicals" used in countless products like cosmetics and nonstick pans accumulate in the air, soil, water and food. Experts warn that they ultimately end up in the human body, particularly in the blood and tissues of the kidney or liver, raising concerns over toxic effects and links to cancer. © 2025 AFP
