Recent post – my breakfast buddy:

England: My Breakfast Buddy – and More !.

More pictures of Buddy waiting for breakfast this morning – 14/10/22. Photos – Mark (WAV).

Regards Mark

The badger Cull

Over 176,000 badgers have been killed since the current badger cull began in England in 2013. Badgers are killed in their thousands from Cornwall to Cumbria under misguided and fundamentally flawed attempts to control bovine Tuberculosis (bTB), an infectious respiratory disease which affects cattle.

Badgers are not the problem – Politicians Are !

Bovine TB is always present in the environment and can affect or be carried harmlessly by many species – livestock and wildlife alike. Yet the government has focused on badgers, even though 94% of cattle infections are from cow to cow. Many in the farming community wrongly believe that badgers are a significant vector in the spread of the disease. For many years, independent scientists, vets, researchers, as well as Badger Trust, have rightly challenged this claim. 

Continue reading and watch several videos at the Badger Trust:

Can the Cull – stop badger culling | Badger Trust

Some interesting information – The Badger Cull – Wikipedia:

Badger culling in the United Kingdom – Wikipedia

Setts, Drugs and Rock n Roll:

England: Setts, Drugs and Rock n Roll. Dr Brian May Speaks In Defence of Badgers at Oxford University. – World Animals Voice

Regards Mark – fight the cull !

My wonderful badgers below who visit my own garden:

Polar bears lose up to 2kg per day as climate crisis bites (msn.com)

We’ve all seen the pictures of starving polar bears, struggling to survive climate change. But as global temperatures continue to rise, experts say bears today are spending up to a month longer than their parents waiting for the ice to return after summer.

Every year, starting in late June when the bay ice disappears, polar bears in the northern Canadian province of Manitoba move onto shore to begin a period of forced fasting.

Without the sea ice they are unable to hunt for seals, their main source of food.

“While these bears sit on shore, they’re losing a kilo or two every day. That can go on for about 180 days before they really start to have a problem,” says Geoff York, senior director of conservation at Polar Bears International (PBI).

Polar bears could starve to extinction due to global warming

Once on solid ground, the bears “typically have very few options for food,” explains York.

York spends several weeks each year in Churchill, a small town on the edge of the Arctic in Manitoba. There he follows the fortunes of the endangered polar bears.

Climate warming is affecting the Arctic three times as fast as other parts of the world – even four times, according to some recent studies. So sea ice, the habitat of the polar bear, is gradually disappearing.

End of the road for ice truckers? Safe ice roads could decline by 90% by end of century

“The fate of the polar bear should alarm everyone” because the Arctic is a good “barometer” of the planet’s health, says Flavio Lehner, a climate scientist at Cornell University who was part of the expedition.

Since the 1980s, the ice pack in Hudson bay has decreased by nearly 50 per cent in summer, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

If a bear is lucky enough to find a beluga whale carcass or if a seal dares to swim too close to shore, the large carnivore may be able to eat during the summer. But for most of those months they are fasting, or eating very small snacks of any fish they’re able to catch.

A report published two years ago in the journal Nature Climate Change suggested that this trend could lead to the near-extinction of these majestic animals: 1,200 of them were counted on the western shores of Hudson Bay in the 1980s. Today the best estimate is 800.

Kenya is ‘praying for rain’ as worst drought in decades kills endangered wildlife

British Columbia at the epicentre of climate change-fuelled weather extremes

What happens when a polar bear is starving?

The polar bear, technically known as the Ursus maritimus, is a meticulous carnivore that feeds principally on the white fat that envelops and insulates a seal’s body.

But these days this superpredator of the Arctic sometimes has to feed on seaweed, as a mother and her baby were seen doing not far from the port of Churchill, the self-declared ‘Polar Bear Capital’.

If female bears go more than 117 days without adequate food, they struggle to nurse their young, says Steve Amstrup, PBI’s lead scientist.

As a result, births have declined, and it has become much rarer for a female to give birth to three cubs, once a common occurrence.

As a polar bear’s physical condition declines, York says, their tolerance for risk rises, and “that might bring them into interaction with people, which can lead to conflict instead of co-existence.”

Biodiversity loss is as big of a threat as climate change – but 90% of Brits don’t see it

Rising temperatures are reducing the number of male sea turtles born in the US

Hunger draws polar bears into dangerous proximity of towns

In desperation, bears began frequenting the local dump in Churchill, Manitoba – a source of easy, but potentially harmful, food for them. They could be seen ripping open rubbish bags, eating plastic or getting their snouts trapped in food tins amid piles of burning waste.

Since then, the town has taken precautions: The dump is now guarded by cameras, fences and patrols.

A conservation officer, Ian Van Nest, patrols the town’s limits to keep its 800 inhabitants safe. Every morning he checks the areas around schools to ensure the children will be safe upon arrival.

All across the town, people leave cars and houses unlocked in case someone needs to find urgent shelter during an unpleasant encounter with this large land-based carnivore.

Posted on walls around town are the emergency phone numbers to reach Van Nest or his colleagues.

When they get an urgent call, they hop in their pickup truck armed with a rifle and a spray can of repellent, wearing protective flak jackets. He emphasises that they do not shoot at the bears, but fire warning shots to scare them off.

Sometimes the animals have to be sedated, then winched up by a helicopter to be transported to the north, or kept in a cage until winter, when they can again feed on the bay.

Churchill’s only ‘prison’ is inhabited entirely by bears, a hangar whose 28 cells can fill up in the autumn as the creatures maraud in mass around town while waiting for the ice to re-form in November.

Regards Mark

I call him every morning when I go out to feed all the other birds. He arrives immediately, knowing that I have a little special starter of the day for him – ground up biscuits; a mass of different little birds seeds, Museli, bread and some little crushed other style biscuits.

We are mates and he usually comes to within about 20cm from me. He knows I will never hurt him; quite the opposite, and he can rely on me to get his belly filled up for a busy day. When I went out to put down some badger food tonight, he was having a final wash and scrub up in one of the trays we have filled with water.

No doubt I will see him again tomorrow and I hope to get more photos in the coming days, which I will publish.

This is NOT my video; but you can see little Robin here.

Here in the UK we are approaching Winter; and his bright red breast is a sure sign of this.

Here is the photo I took today – 3/10/22.

Video – everything you need to know about the Robin.

We get some great wildlife in the garden – but we do encourage them always with plenty of food.

Here is a badger which I photographed in the Summer, smiling as he knew I was takig his photo !

Foxes (Vulpines) are one of my best subjects – I love photographing them.

Fight the badger cull;

England: Setts, Drugs and Rock n Roll. Dr Brian May Speaks In Defence of Badgers at Oxford University.

The ‘other’ side of Dr (of Astrophysics) Brian.

Regards and enjoy – Mark