“What happens when a new species of gecko is discovered? Two Germans grab their suitcases and get on a plane,” says Sandra Altherr, telling an in-house joke. Altherr is a co-founder of Pro Wildlife, a conservation NGO in Germany. In the joke, the anonymous men with suitcases are reptile traders. Their objective is to get […]
Tag: turtles
Researchers take up the cause of the mysterious and maligned Chaco eagle
Fénix, a female Chaco eagle, lived at San Rafael Zoo in Mendoza province, Argentina, until the zoo shut down in 2016. She was later transferred to the Buenos Aires Ecopark, an old zoo that had been converted into a research center, hospital and shelter for animals without a destination. There, she began a difficult training […]
European tuna boats dump fishing debris in Seychelles waters ‘with impunity’
In 2019, when Jeremy Raguain turned up for a cleanup campaign on Aldabra Atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, he bagged a marine monstrosity like no other: a beached fish aggregating device, or FAD. It was a massive tangle of buoys, netting and fishing ropes weighing hundreds of kilograms. The fishing aid, like most FADs, […]
Sharks ‘critical’ to restoring damaged ecosystems, finds study
Sharks are critical in helping ecosystems recover from extreme climatic events, according to a new study. The conclusions came after scientists were able to determine the importance of the apex predator to a unique ecosystem following an extreme marine heatwave in 2011, which wiped out a quarter of one of the world’s largest and most […]
Could a million freshwater turtles help clean up some of Australia’s polluted rivers? A team of scientists believes, they could!
For well over a century, freshwater fish from Europe – the carp (originally from China), have been released, either deliberately or accidentally from fish farms, into Australian waterways. The fish, now widely regarded as pests, are thriving. Their habitat includes rivers flowing through the Murray-Darling Basin of New South Wales. Those vast waterways support, through […]
World Turtle Day
Today is the day we celebrate Our shelled friends who belong In the sea, Not on display or Served on dinner plates!!!