Category Archives: Worldwide Interest

Nature-related news from around the world

2013 ‘National Wildlife’ Photo Contest Winners Slideshow

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WHEN NATIONAL WILDLIFE INAUGURATED ITS ANNUAL PHOTO CONTEST 43 YEARS AGO, contestants submitted just a few hundred images, all of them documenting the harmful impact of pollution on wildlife. That year’s Grand Prize winner portrayed a dead, oil-soaked cormorant. This year the editors received more than 32,000 entries in seven categories ranging from Backyard Habitats to Baby Animals. Yet despite their greater diversity, many entries still mirror NWF’s conservation priorities. This year’s Grand Prize winner, for instance, features a polar bear, a species severely threatened by climate change. On the day this bear was photographed, the temperature on northern Canada’s Hudson Bay soared above 90 degrees F during a record-breaking heat wave.

View a slideshow of the winning images here and the stories behind each image are available here.

Crocodiles are able to climb trees, study reveals (including the southern USA)

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As far as discoveries go, this is a somewhat terrifying one, assuming one has a healthy respect for crocodiles on the ground: They can climb and perch in trees.

And they can really climb, with researchers spotting them more than a dozen feet from the ground. While anecdotal reports have placed the reptiles in trees in Mississippi, Colombia, and [in Egypt] along the Nile, only three references to such behavior appear in scientific literature….

Full article, from Fox News.

Natural Curiosities and top ten animals

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The emperor penguin and the wood frog (that’s the American species,  Lithobates sylvaticus), are uncovered in a new television series as vertebrates  that can survive extreme cold: Useful in these days of extreme climates. Then,  rhinos and hedgehogs are typically classified as “armoured animals.”

This is the David  Attenborough trademark, as in “Life on Earth” right through the decades to “Life  in the Undergrowth” (invertebrates).

Sir David has another guaranteed winner on his hands with “Natural  Curiosities”. It’s a series, just about to start, on those rare and unusual  species that intrigue, as well as the relatively common creatures that people  see in the countryside….

Read the full article here, from Earth Times.

More Disease Problems for Bees in the US and Worldwide

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An article published today in Britain, by the BBC, under the heading of ‘Bumblebees infected with honeybee diseases’, might not seem to be cause for alarm among nature lovers in America, but there can be no doubt that it is.

Honey Bee on Birds-foot-trefoil. Copyright 2013, Eddie Wren

Honey Bee on Birds-foot-trefoil. Copyright 2013, Eddie Wren

Given that bees are a massive factor in the viability not only of the wild flowers that we all enjoy but also of many important food crops, the rise of Deformed Wing Virus [DWV] and of the microsporidian ‘Nosema ceranae‘ should be of concern to anyone who has an interest in the health of our environment, and not least to bee keepers, whose livelihoods are once again being threatened.

When I read the above article, I did a search for these two problems in the USA, and sure enough I found this this report from the American Society for Microbiology, about DWV here in the States.

As for the ‘Nosema ceranae‘, Wikipedia has plenty to tell us about the spread of this pathogen, not only in the Americas but worldwide.

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Fox News in the USA has now run a version of this story, here.

Links to Wildlife-related Organisations and Websites in Other Countries

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Back to the main LINKS page

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allAfrica – wildlife news

BBC Nature – Home Page (global topics)

BBC Nature News (global topics)

BBC Nature – Video Collections        (Explore a vast array of wildlife video clips through the eyes of BBC presenters and film makers, and learn about different aspect of wildlife film-making.)

BBC In Pictures: Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners

Birdlife International – Programmes

BTO: The British Trust for Ornithology

Butterfly Corner – butterflies of the world (with a section for each continent)

Earth Times – worldwide environmental issues

Earthwatch Institute

National Wildflower Centre (UK)

Re-Wilding Europe

RSPB – The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (Britain’s equivalent of the U.S. Audubon Society)

World Wildlife Fund

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Please feel free to suggest futher links in the comments, below.  (Relevant ones will then be moved into this main list.)

Would You Like to Make a Living Photographing or Filming Insects?

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Through the URL below, you can view a video collection featuring bugs and insects in amazing close up, selected by insect expert and TV presenter George McGavin, with Goliath spiders, killer centipedes, ants and moths. By no means everyone’s favourite animals bugs — encompassing true bugs and other creepy crawlies — hold a special place in George’s heart and led him to an academic career at Oxford University. Having worked as scientific advisor on Attenborough’s “Life in the Undergrowth,” George became a presenter in his own right. He is now loved and admired for his passionate engagement with invertebrates, whether in the jungles of Bhutan or the back gardens of One Show viewers in England.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/collections/p00bf3fy