Image caption,Avian flu is spread by close contact with an infected bird, whether it is dead or alive
Bird flu has been confirmed at a nature reserve where 600 birds have been found dead in recent weeks.
Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, Dorset, has been closed since 16 June while tests were carried out.
The results from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed it was avian flu.
Dorset Wildlife Trust said it would “potentially have a serious impact on future populations” as most of the birds found dead were chicks.
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The charity said the outbreak happened at the height of the breeding season at the reserve “when hundreds of Sandwich terns, common terns and black headed gulls come to Poole Harbour and nest on the islands in the Brownsea lagoon”.
Image caption,Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour has been closed since…
ANTRIM COUNTY, Mich. (FOX 2)-Two men believed to have tampered with animal traps in northern Michigan are sought by police.
State police released two images of the men, who were spotted in Jordan Valley. According to troopers from the Michigan State Police Gaylord Post, the men had previously stolen other traps that had been set there.
Americans’ approval of legal hunting has dropped for the first time in years.
A new survey of Americans’ attitudes toward hunting, fishing, trapping, and recreational shooting shows support for all those activities dropped over the past three years, even as the Covid-19 pandemic pushed more people into America’s woods, waters, and shooting ranges.
The drop in public support for legal field sports comes after nearly 30 years of increasingly favorable attitudes, and may reflect a wider and growing discomfort with activities that are considered the domains of mainly white, rural, older males.
The “Americans’ Attitudes Toward Legal, Regulated Fishing, Target/Sport Shooting, Hunting, and Trapping”survey, conducted byResponsive Management, was released last month by theOutdoor Stewards of Conservation Foundation, a think tank devoted to communicating trends in outdoor activities.
The sun shines across sea ice along the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. | David Goldman/AP Photo
The White Housequietly released a reportwith a striking conclusion during the news dead zone right before the July Fourth weekend: It’s not a horrible idea to research ways to block the sun’s rays from further heating the planet.
But that doesn’t mean President Joe Biden’s team is ready to push it as a solution to climate change.
Congress had mandated the report — a fact the White House made sure to emphasize in the title, text and accompanying statement. Still, by offering cautious support to geoengineering research, the report could bring efforts once confined to the realm of science fiction into mainstream debate,writes Corbin Hiar.
Limiting how much sunlight hits the Earth is a potentially effective way to combat…
Manunauna, nicknamed Manu, trailing yellow crab pot buoys and a green satellite tag buoy. (Photo courtesy of NOAA Fisheries/Suzie Teerlink)
NOAA biologists are asking people to watch for two humpback whales that were seen entangled in fishing gear in the Juneau area on Monday.
One of the whales, named Manunauna or Manu for short, was reported tangled in a crab pot line in Fritz Cove on Monday morning. NOAA biologist Sadie Wright said the agency is tracking that whale.
“From the Coast Guard vessel, we were able to attach a satellite tag buoy,” she said. “If he slows down or appears to be showing any signs of distress, we can launch another response.”
Wright said the entanglement is life-threatening.
“It passes through the mouth and inhibits its ability to forage,” she said.
Manu the whale was trailing two yellow buoys with a green buoy behind him. He was last tracked near Warm Springs Bay on Baranof Island, but Wright expects he will come back to the Juneau area. She said NOAA would like any photos or information people may have on Manu.
The second unidentified whale was reported entangled in gillnet gear in Taku Inlet just before noon on Monday. Wright said NOAA is seeking any information on this whale if people see it.
“Stay at least 100 yards away from the whale for the whale’s safety and for their own,” she said. “Boat propellers can get snagged up in the entangling materials that whales are dragging behind them. And that just makes a bad situation worse.”
To reduce the chance of entanglements, Wright recommends that people avoid using floating line.
NOAA Fisheries asks that people report sightings to the marine mammal hotline at (877) 925-7773, or to the U.S. Coast Guard on VHF Channel 16. NOAA asks that anyone who spots one of the whales not take any hands-on response actions.
A gray whale calf appears at the Redondo Beach Pier, in California afternoon,Brad Graverson/MediaNews Group/Torrance Daily Breeze via Getty Images
Gray whales in Mexico are approaching tourist boats to get help from humans, The Dodo reported.
A video shows a whale-watching captain picking parasites off a whale’s head as it spins around.
The whale has repeatedly come to the captain to get its head picked, he told The Dodo.
A remarkable video shows the moment a gray whale sought help from a whale-watching captain in Mexico to have parasites picked off its head.
The footage, posted to Facebook in March, was taken by a passenger on a whale-watching boat operating in the Ojo de Liebre, a lagoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.
It shows a gray whale approaching the small tourist boat as the captain, identified as Paco Jimenez Franco, starts picking whale lice off its head.
The whale remains for a while, spinning around long enough for Franco to give her a thorough cleaning as onlookers laugh.
Franco, who has been working as a whale-watching captain for 20 years, told The Dodo that it took the whales some time to get comfortable around him before he was able to start picking lice off them.
Speaking about his first one-on-one encounter with the whale, Franco said: “Once I removed the first one, she approached again so that I could continue to do so.”
“I have done it repeatedly, with the same whale and others. It is very exciting for me,” Franco added.
Whale lice are external parasites that are commonly found in skin lesions, nostrils, and eyes of whales. They can be beneficial for the whales because they eat algae on their bodies and feed on flaking skin.
Mark Carwardine, a British zoologist with experience in the region, told The Guardian that gray whales have a “love-hate relationship with their whale lice.”
“They have very sensitive skin, and thousands of these little creatures holding on tight, or moving about, with their exceedingly sharp, recurved claws, must drive them nuts,” Carwardine said. “It can actually hurt when a whale louse grabs hold of your finger – it feels like tiny pinpricks.”
Gray whales, which can grow up to 50 feet in length, earned the nickname “devil fish” because of their ability to fight back when harpooned by whale hunters in the 20th century.
They are frequently seen in Baja California as their migration route spans along the North American coastline.
Franco’s interview comes amid reports of orcas ramming boats off Spanish and Portuguese coasts.
In one incident in the Strait of Gibraltar last month, a pod of orcas threw a yacht around “like a rag doll” and ripped off both rudders, Insider’s Joshua Zitser previously reported.
Residents in a rural north-east Victorian community say a tragedy will happen if illegal deer hunting continues in the area.
About 100 residents from the King Valley area attended a public forum at Whitfield on Monday night, as concerns rise over the number of illegal hunters in their community.
King Valley residents have told authorities that illegal hunters — many who travel to the region from across the state — were flouting hunting laws nightly, and were putting livestock and human lives at risk, while leaving behind a trail of bloody, headless carcasses near roads and homes.
Chris pleaded guilty and was recently charged with.. Using threatening/abusive/insulting words/behaviour with intent to cause fear of/provoke unlawful violence.
He now has a criminal record 😀 has to do 200 hours of community service 😀 pay our runner compensation 😀 and pay court costs! 😀
He’s also lost his firearms license which could have an effect on his culling of innocents! 👍
We are pleased with the outcome, particularly because his defence tried every trick in the book to get him a lenient sentence but the judge was having none of it!
Woodward has now left the Wynnstay and we are told that the Heythrop Hunt have…
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