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Hot dogs: what soaring puppy thefts tell us about Britain today

Annie was – or, we can only hope, is – an uncommonly good dog. The three-year-old cocker spaniel is so calm, says her owner Darren Neal, that she is certified as a therapy dog. For hours, she would revel in the company of toddlers at the two nurseries Neal and his wife, Melissa Murfet, run near their home in Cambridgeshire.

Annie had formed an especially close bond with Neal’s youngest daughter, Beau, who is also three. They had become inseparable during the long weeks of lockdown. Beau enjoyed reading books to Annie. “She’s probably the most laid-back dog I’ve ever met,” Neal says. “She would just let you cradle her in your arms for as long as you needed.”

On the morning of 9 July, Murfet dropped Annie – as well as Betsy, the family’s cockapoo, and Storm, a golden retriever – at nearby kennels before the family headed to Norfolk for a few days by the sea. The animals had already enjoyed several holidays there.

Neal’s phone rang that evening. It was the owner of the kennels. Only hours after Murfet had left the dogs, thieves had crept in via a back road and fields, breaking padlocks and breaching fences. They stole 17 dogs, including Annie and Betsy. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Neal says now. “I just tried not to show too much emotion in front of the kids.”

Annie and Betsy – and the other dogs stolen that day, 13 of which were puppies – had become the latest victims of surging demand for canine pets. Just as little Beau had found comfort and distraction in her best friend while stuck at home, so thousands of us have sought the company of dogs.

From the start of lockdown in late March to the end of June, the Kennel Club, which runs a register of dogs, recorded a near tripling of searches for dogs via its “find a puppy” tool, compared with the same period last year. Classified sites and pet marketplaces such as Pets4Homes – the biggest in Britain – have noted a record increase in ads and sales. Breeders, as well as rehoming and rescue centres, are struggling to meet the demand.

Puppy prices have leapt higher than an excited collie. As I type, there are dozens of puppies on Pets4Homes priced at £5,000 or higher, including a £7,500 French bulldog. “They’re a good £2,000 over what they’d normally be,” says Wayne May, who runs Artisan Rare Breeds and Animal Rescue in Dartford, Kent. He has seen £600 dogs selling for more than £2,500.

The money in dogs, particularly voguish breeds such as French bulldogs, pugs and cockapoos, has given new lift to a crime wave that was already sweeping the country.

May also gives his time to DogLost, a lost-and-found website run by volunteers. Many of the pets it lists have run off and are eventually found. But others are stolen. “We used to get an alert about one dog theft a day and now it’s nine or 10 in England alone,” he says. “Just last weekend we had 30 or 40 dogs stolen.”

Data on dog thefts is scant, inconsistent and hard to come by. For a paper he published last year, Daniel Allen, a geography lecturer at Keele University and an expert on dog theft, requested dog theft data from police forces in England and Wales. Thefts went from just over 1,500 in 2015 to almost 1,900 – five a day – in 2017. May suspects the true level of theft is far higher. He says many owners, assuming police won’t treat thefts as a priority, don’t report the crime, preferring posters and Facebook appeals.

Jason Francis did call the police – not long before he called Neal. He and his wife had run Fiveways, the raided kennels in Suffolk, for 18 years without any threat to its security. Now it is shut indefinitely and Francis’s daughter is afraid to be alone in the garden. He believes would-be dog owners are less patient than they used to be. “I had my first dog 30 years ago and we had to wait two years to find the right match,” he says. “Now people look at it like buying a washing machine.”

Yet the reasons for the new demand are clear to anyone whose dog has given them vital emotional support during lockdown. Jo Stocks, 52, has lived alone since getting divorced six years ago. For the past two years, she has shared her home in Guildford, Surrey, with Maya, a black labrador. “I’ve cuddled up to her much more, as I went without any physical contact with another human for over three months,” she says. “A hug from Maya beats anything.”

Reference: The Guardian: Simon Usborne 1 day ago: 30th July 2020 

Killer of Rafiki, Uganda's rare silverback mountain gorilla, jailed

The killer of one of Uganda's best known mountain gorillas, Rafiki, has been jailed for 11 years.

Felix Byamukama pleaded guilty to illegally entering a protected area and killing a gorilla.

Byamukama had previously said the gorilla attacked him and he had to kill Rafiki in self defence, according to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA).

Mountain gorillas are endangered with just over 1,000 in existence and the UWA said "Rafiki has received justice".

Africa Live: Updates on this and other stories
'Conservation successes' bring hope for mountain gorilla
What other animals are at risk?

Byamukama also pleaded guilty to killing a small antelope, known as a duiker, and a bush pig, as well as being in possession of bush pig and duiker meat.

He admitted to the UWA previously that he, and three others, had gone to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park with the intention of hunting smaller animals and that he killed Rafiki in self-defence when he was attacked.

Investigations showed Rafiki was killed by a sharp object that penetrated his internal organs.

The gorilla went missing on 1 June and his body was discovered by a search party the following day.

A UWA team tracked Byamukama to a nearby village, where he was found with hunting equipment.

Three others denied the charges and have been remanded in jail, awaiting trial.

Byamukama will serve several sentences concurrently, leading to 11 years in jail which falls far shorter of the life sentence it was predicted he could have been given.

This was because he was not tried in a special wildlife court, a UWA spokesperson told the BBC.

Image caption There are just over 1,000 mountain gorillas left in existence

The silverback, believed to be around 25-years-old when he died, was the leader of a group of 17 mountain gorillas.

This group of gorillas was described as habituated, meaning that its members were used to human contact.

Conservationists were worried that the group would be taken over by a wild silverback who would not want to come into contact with humans, which could have affected tourism.

But UWA has since confirmed that the group is now led by a black-back from within the family and is stable.

The mountain gorillas are a popular draw for visitors to the country and the UWA relies on the tourists for revenue.

Rafiki himself was very popular with people who had come to the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

But parks have been closed during the coronavirus pandemic and the UWA said there had been an increase in poaching. It has counted more than 300 incidents during the months of the lockdown, reports the BBC's Patience Atuhaire.

The mountain gorilla species is restricted to protected areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

They can be found in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and a network of parks in the Virunga Massif range of mountains which straddle the borders of the three countries.

In 2018, the mountain gorilla was removed from the list of critically endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, after intensive conservation efforts, including anti-poaching patrols, paid off.

The IUCN now classifies the species as endangered.

Reference BBC News: 30th July 2020

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Gorilla relationships limited in large groups, study suggests

Mandatory credit: Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Mountain gorillas that live in large groups may have to limit the number of strong social relationships they form.

According to a new study from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour the perfect size group of gorillas is 20, and anything larger or smaller will see them left lacking socially.

The numbers of some groups can reach up to 65, moving and feeding together and nesting together at night.

Reference: PA Media: & Hrs ago: 28th July 2020

Nearly three billion animals killed or displaced by Australian bushfires, WWF says

Nearly three billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced during the country's worst bushfires in decades, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

The vast majority of those affected were reptiles, almost 2.5 billion of which were harmed, along with 180 million birds, 143 million mammals and 51 million frogs by the fires that raged from September 2019 to March 2020.

Conservation charity WWF's final figure is around three times higher than its original estimate of 1.25 billion, made before the fires were fully extinguished.

The total number included animals that were displaced because of destroyed habitats, meaning they subsequently faced a lack of food and shelter, or the prospect of moving to a habitat that was already occupied.

The main reason the estimated number of animal casualties has shot up is that researchers have now assessed the entire affected region of Australia, rather than focusing on the most badly impacted states, the WWF said.

Thirty-four people were also killed and 3,000 homes destroyed as an area covering 37 million acres, or about half the size of the UK, was destroyed across the southeast of Australia.

Dermot O'Gorman, chief executive officer of WWF-Australia, said in a statement: "This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history."

Project leader Lily van Eeden, of the University of Sydney, said it was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires.

She urged other nations to "build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".

Years of drought had left the bush unusually dry, leading to some of the worst bushfires in Australia's history.

Eventually heavy rain did come to the aid of firefighters, allowing them to contain the flames in New South Wales - the most populous state in Australia - for the first time in nearly six months back in February.

Reference: SKy News:1 day ago28th July 2020