Nature & Wildlife - Page 4

Learning to manage the habitats and biodiversity within our oceans and coasts is one of the greatest challenges of this century.

Not only do we kill animals at far higher rates than other predators, we hunt in ways that are particularly destructive.

New research has assessed the ecological impact of returning Tasmanian devils to the mainland and the results show that doing so would improve Australia’s biodiversity.

‘Free’ pollination by bees and other insects is worth over £400m** to UK agriculture each year but their numbers are in severe decline. This innovative project will engage 260 schools to help transform their grounds into pollinator-friendly habitats.

Using fossil records and extinction counts, the researchers compared a highly conservative estimate of current extinctions with a background rate twice as high as those widely used in previous analyses. This way, they brought the two estimates as close to each other as possible.

Recognition of the valuable role it played here, mainly as a predator of deer, has led to calls for the lynx to be reintroduced to the UK.

Even though the last reliable evidence of the presence of the cat on the island was from a 1910 diary entry, biologists suspected that the notoriously elusive animal had avoided extinction for many years.

Habitat fragmentation and loss have played their part, but the main threat the giraffes currently face is poaching.

A large proportion of trees in Madagascar’s rainforest have fruits that are eaten by lemurs and for some species, lemurs are the primary or only animal that can distribute their seeds