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Wild lynx set to be reintroduced to UK to cut soaring deer population

Wild lynx may soon be reintroduced to the UK's fields and woods in a bid to cut the soaring number of deer which are damaging young trees and crops and causing crashes.

The plans have been put forward by the Lynx Trust UK who say although sheep may be targeted by the feline predators, compensation would be available for farmers. 

It is now estimated there are two million wild deer in the UK - the bigger number for a thousand years, helped by the extinction of their natural predators like wolves.

By feeding on the undergrowth and stripping the lower branches of trees bare, the deer damage potential nesting spots for birds.

Many increasingly rare species of butterflies are also deprived of cover, food and egg-nesting sites by the 'plague' of deer.

The Lynx UK Trust is lobbying for permission to reintroduce the big cat, which was hunted to extinction in the UK more than 1,300 years ago.

If successful, the lynx would become the country's largest current-day 'natural' predator, bigger than foxes and badgers.

Wild lynx are solitary and secretive creatures.

Online consultations are to be held next month, proposing  the issuing of a Government licence to set a controlled number of lynx free in Kielder Forest in Northumberland, where there is a large population of wild deer.

Michael Gove rejected a similar application in 2018, but the Lynx UK Trust, which is behind the scheme, says the picture has changed now, not least because of the population boom in deer numbers.

Trust director Dr Paul O'Donoghue said: 'What was seen as wildly ambitious in 2018, is now seen as essential and urgent.

'The whole environmental agenda in the UK has changed - reintroducing lynx is now a mainstream concept and the protection and restoration of our broken ecosystem is very high up on both the public and political agenda.

'Our team has been working extensively on the application, and we have spent the last two years carefully addressing the feedback provided by Natural England after our first licence application.

'We are now very confident that this application will be approved. Major changes are that a Habitat Risk Assessment is now in place, and we have halved the number of lynx we want to bring in from six to three.'

In November, the head of Natural England, Tony Juniper, suggested that lynx were the most likely candidate to be reintroduced as a measure to tackle rising deer numbers. 

Head of the National Sheep Association, Phil Stocker, said the organisation opposed the proposal last year because there were 1,000 sheep farmers within 30 miles of Kielder Forest, and they feared for their flock's welfare. 

If the pilot scheme in Kielder is a success, it will be repeated in other areas across Britain.

The trust says that if deer numbers are kept down, it will improve farmers' crop yields and help wildlife and forestry.

They said there would be 'minimal' damage to farming, as lynx prefer to hunt deer rather than sheep or even domestic pets.

The trust said: 'Reintroducing lynx here does mean that some sheep will become prey, but the vast majority of European evidence suggests it will be a very small number simply because lynx and sheep tend to have very different habitats.

'And we will have a compensation scheme that really does what it's supposed to for the times when they come together.

'How much risk, it's impossible to say - the really important thing is what we plan to do about it.

'Even if it's just one sheep, British farmers have a pretty hard time of things already, and a sheep lost is money lost. There must be generous compensation, above the market value.

'Some fears have been raised that farmers will simply wake up to missing sheep with no evidence left to claim compensation on.

'But throughout the trial, every lynx will be radio collared...the type of collar that regularly transmits GPS position to a satellite.

'If a flock or herd is visited by a lynx, the footprints will be very clear in that data.

'We want to make sure the compensation works for farmers because we want a successful reintroduction - the two go together. 

'Lynx are drivers of large scale habitat restoration, and as specialist deer hunters they can begin to impact both numbers and behaviour of the deer population in the UK.'

Oren Taylor, a philanthropist funding the project said: 'They are widely considered to be perfect reintroduction candidates because they are no risk to humans, pose very little threat to livestock and are charismatic and beautiful animals, which are drivers of ecotourism in rural communities which can generate millions of pounds each year.'

Lynx have been the subject of numerous successful reintroduction programmes across Europe, including Germany, France and Switzerland. 

The trust said there could be an economic benefit too, with tourists booking trips in the hope of spotting lynx in the wild.

John Hallowell, a Northumberland resident and Director of Wild Wolf Experiences, already runs successful lynx eco-tourism projects in Spain.

He said 'We are incredibly excited about working with the Lynx UK Trust to create a thriving eco-tourism business in Kielder.

'I have seen first hand the hugely positive impacts that lynx have brought to struggling rural communities in Spain and I have no doubt that we can emulate this success in Kielder.'

The trust has spent 18 months talking to residents and organisations in the Kielder area to drum up support.

They said 'Now, to follow up on that work, and as a final step before submitting the application, the trust is hosting two online consultation events to be streamed over Facebook. 

Once completed, findings from the consultations will be included in the application that is submitted to Natural England.

If approved, the lynx will be brought over from Sweden, acclimatised in pre-release enclosures and then set free in the forest wearing state-of-the-art GPS collars.  

Reference: daily mail: Katie Feehan For Mailonline  1 day ago

Stunning caterpillar is armed with poisonous spikes

Footage shows a beautiful caterpillar with spikes struggling to turn back onto its front. Jorge Castellanos said he found the strange creature stuck and lying on its back in his garden in Cayo, Belize.

The insect enthusiast said that he helped the creature roll over before he left it among the bushes. He said: ''I used a stick to push it, I’m not sure if they are poisonous, but I hope it lives a long life.''

The little insect in the video is a Spiny Oak Slug caterpillar, which is armed with stiff, stinging spines. 

Reference: Newsflare 

Quarter of known bee species have not been recorded since 1990

The number of wild bee species recorded by an international database of life on Earth has declined by a quarter since 1990, according to a global analysis of bee declines.

Researchers analysed bee records from museums, universities and citizen scientists collated by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, (GBIF) a global, government-funded network providing open-access data on biodiversity.

They found a steep decline in bee species being recorded since 1990, with approximately 25% fewer species reported between 2006 and 2015 than before the 1990s.

Although this does not mean these species are extinct, it may indicate that some have become so scarce that they are no longer regularly observed in the wild.

“With citizen science and the ability to share data, records are going up exponentially, but the number of species reported in these records is going down,” said Eduardo Zattara, the lead author and a biologist from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue and Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet). “It’s not a bee cataclysm yet, but what we can say is that wild bees are not exactly thriving.”

A separate series of scientific studies into global insect declines this month warned that the abundance of insects was falling by 10-20% each decade, an “absolutely frightening” loss that threatened to “tear apart the tapestry of life”.

In the US, a study in 2020 found that a lack of bees in agricultural areas was limiting the supply of some food crops. In Britain, the government this month allowed farmers to use neonicotinoids on sugar beet crops despite the bee-killing pesticides having been banned across the EU in 2018 with the UK’s backing.

The new study, which is published in the journal One Earth, analysed records from three centuries of collections that include more than 20,000 known bee species around the world.

It found that declines were not evenly distributed across bee families. While records of Halictid bees, the second most common family, have declined by 17% since the 1990s, those for Melittidae – a much rarer family – have plummeted by more than 41%.

Scientists have warned that a lack of scientific data on insect declines in tropical countries is hampering their understanding of global bee declines, with most GBIF records covering North America and Europe.

The study’s authors acknowledged that the declines in species might in part reflect changes in GBIF’s collection of data over time or the heterogeneous character of its datasets.

Zattara said while their study did not establish the status of individual bee species, it showed a clear global trend with a diminishing diversity of species likely to indicate global declines in bees and other pollinators.

“It’s about confirming what’s been shown to happen locally is going on globally,” he said. “And also, about the fact that much better certainty will be achieved as more data are shared with public databases.”

He warned that waiting for further data to more precisely confirm the type of bee and other pollinator declines could leave it too late to save them.

“Something is happening to the bees, and something needs to be done. We cannot wait until we have absolute certainty because we rarely get there in natural sciences,” he said. “The next step is prodding policymakers into action while we still have time. The bees cannot wait.”

Dead whale in the Mediterranean probably 'one of the largest' ever found

The carcass of an enormous finback whale (Balaenoptera physalus) was discovered near the Italian port of Sorrento earlier this week, the Italian Coast Guard said in a Facebook post.

Officials discovered the carcass on Sunday (Jan. 17), before towing it to the nearby port at Naples. The whale measured about 65 feet (20 meters) long and likely weighed more than 77 tons (70 metric tons) — likely making the corpse "one of the largest" ever found in the Mediterranean Sea, according to the agency.

Coast Guard divers first discovered the whale after a young calf swam into the Sorrento harbor in a state of distress, according to news reports. The calf reportedly rammed its head into the harbor walls several times before retreating back underwater; when divers followed it, they discovered the fin whale's corpse.

The calf is presumed to be the dead whale's offspring, and the Coast Guard is monitoring for signs of the young whale's return. Meanwhile, marine biologists in Naples are working to ascertain what killed the whale.

Finback whales (also known as fin whales) are the second-largest animals on Earth, after the iconic blue whale. Finbacks can grow to be 85 feet (25 m) long and weigh up to 80 tons (72 metric tons), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They are considered endangered after commercial whaling decimated the global finback population over the last century.

Today, commercial whaling is illegal throughout most of the world, and boat strikes pose the biggest threat to finbacks, according to NOAA.