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Boo!! Just when you thought it was safe..... (1 Viewer)

El Annie

Phew..............
Just got to keep you folks up to date with what's going on!!!

In conser@tion today:

Bird species die at high rates............
Of the 485 animal species that have become extinct since 1600, 116 of them, nearly a quarter, are birds. Of the 9,500 or so listed as threatened by the World Conservation Union's Red List in 2000, more than 2,100, more than a fifth, are birds. The dodo and passenger pigeon are among the most famous examples. Others, such as the Guam flycatcher and Carolina parakeet, are relatively obscure. Some are having near-death experiences with varying degrees of recovery success. The California condor, bald eagle and whooping crane come to mind. Aside from some plants, bird species are showing the worst survival record in the natural world.
More information - Washington Times

Birds may spread ebola virus, research suggests.......
Birds may be able to carry and spread the Ebola virus, a deadly African germ that has mystified doctors, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. They said Ebola, which has killed several hundred
people in Congo Republic, the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon since it was first identified in 1976, resembled some bird viruses. David Sanders and colleagues at Indiana's Purdue University found that the outer protein shell of Ebola is similar to those of several viruses carried by birds. "We knew these viruses were inwardly similar, and now we see their outer similarity as well," Sanders, a biologist, said in a statement. "While bird transmission of Ebola is by no means certain, the resemblance among all these viruses should encourage health officials to be on guard for it."
More information - Reuters

Prestige: one month on..........
Tomorrow it will be a month since the Prestige sank. Oil is still washing onto the beaches of northwest Spain, and the wrecked tanker continues to leak. "It's one of the worst spills ever," says Simon Cripps of the Worldwide Fund for Nature's endangered seas programme. This is down to the quantity of heavy fuel oil released, its toxicity and the environmental importance of the damaged coastline, he says. The most obvious victims are Europe's seabirds. They are among the first animals affected by oil, and the easiest to spot. About 3,000 dead or oil-covered birds have been found so far. Conservationists began releasing cleaned birds at sea south of Lisbon late last week.
More information - Nature ScienceUpdate

and finally a terrible dichotomy:
Death sentence on Uist hedgehogs................
Hedgehogs in the Outer Hebrides are to be systematically captured and killed by lethal injection in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the destruction of internationally important populations of wading birds in the islands. Scottish Natural Heritage last night defended its decision to reduce numbers by 5000 to just a few hundred, saying it had no alternative. However, animal welfare campaigners immediately announced that a rescue operation would be mounted, branding the cull as "mass slaughter". Animals on Uist and Benbecula will be captured in mink traps baited with fish, possibly searched out by pointer dogs, or caught at night by the use of powerful lamps.
More information -
Herald
Guardian
Independent
Scotsman
Times

El Annie
 
Pardon my ignorance, but what threat do hedgehogs bring on wading birds? very confused of Camberley, or is there an EEC hedgehog mountain imminent?

Paul
 
Paul,
As I understand it, the threat is to the nesting birds, hedgepigs being partial to eggs, and of course most waders are ground-nesters. I would, however, have thought it possible to remove the offending mammals to other islands, or even the mainland, rather than killing them off. There is also the problem that predator species expand to fill any gaps (vide Foxes), so leaving 'a few hundred' means more problems further down the line - being cynical, I wonder if the relict population will be left to appease those who totally oppose extermination, then once their numbers have risen to near the current population, the entire population will again be at risk 'since it didn't work last time'.
I would also like to know whether some kind of artificial barrier (a fence or a moat, possibly) could be used to isolate the breeding waders.

Tony
 
I have to say that I don't know anymore about this than what I've posted - the links might help with more info' alternatively I guess the folks to contact would be the Scottish Natural Heritage.......

More news in todays conserv@tion:

International rescue mission to evacuate doomed hedgehogs....
An international rescue operation has been launched to save thousands of hedgehogs who are facing death by lethal injection as part of a scheme to protect seabird breeding grounds in the Western Isles of Scotland. An estimated 5,000 of the mammals are set to be trapped and killed by Scottish Natural Heritage unless a coalition of animal welfare agencies are able to organise a mass evacuation from the islands in time. Specially trained SNH staff will begin collecting the animals for extermination next April on the islands of North Uist, South Uist and Benbecula as soon as the hedgehogs emerge from hibernation.
More information -
Independent
Herald

Annie
 
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