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Sylvia Valdez, , Київська обл, Kyiv (2024)

15/05/2024

Fox cub stuck in sink plughole is rescued

A fox whose head became stuck in a sink plughole has been freed by a rescuer from a wildlife hospital.

The cub, who had spent several hours struggling to free itself, cut its paws in the process.

A spokesperson at the South Essex Wildlife Hospital, based in Orsett, said a staff member managed to free the creature "with a little wiggling and patience".

The fox was taken to the hospital and given a course of medication for swelling and treatment for its paws.

The charity said it hoped the cub would make a full recovery, following the incident last week.

20/04/2024

Oxfordshire county flower 'obliterated' by severe weather

Rain, flooding and high winds have "obliterated" Oxfordshire's county flower, a wildlife trust have said.

Just over 6,000 snake's head fritillaries were counted by Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) this year.

That is down from 43,000 last year - and the lowest figure since 1993.

The count is held annually at Iffley Meadows nature reserve on the River Thames in Oxford.

The trust said the flower had been "decimated" by wild weather conditions and browsing by deer.

BBOWT senior ecologist Colin Williams, who was in charge of the count, said: "The low numbers are disappointing, but not unexpected."

He said "prolonged and extensive flooding" of the site, along with recent heavy rainfall meant many of the plants were "really struggling".

"It was simply a dreadful year for snake's head fritillaries at Iffley," he added.

The site is a floodplain meadow and one of fewer than 30 places in the country where the flowers bloom in the wild.

Floodplain meadows are one of the rarest habitats in the UK and are vitally important for wildlife and climate change mitigation - with BBOWT managing 10% of the remaining ones left in the UK.

The "disappointing" count result comes in the same week the trust seeks public donations for a "double your money" £60,000 one-week appeal to help floodplain meadows like those at Iffley.

Mr Williams said: "Funds raised will help us to continue managing this reserve as a traditional hay meadow, so that not only the fritillaries but all the other important plants and animals here will continue to flourish."

08/04/2024

Total solar eclipse: The 4-minute window into the Sun's secrets

Eclipse fever is building. Millions in North America are hoping to spend around four minutes in total darkness as the Moon blocks the Sun's light on Monday.

For some, those precious minutes will be an opportunity for often impossible science experiments - a chance to unravel the secrets of our universe.

Researchers will fly rockets into the path of the eclipse, stand in zoos watching animals, send radio signals across the globe, and peer into space with massive cameras.

And you don't need to be a scientist to take part.

But it could still go wrong. A solar flare or even some humble clouds could throw those plans into turmoil.

Possibilities of mating turtles or snoozing gorillas
Prof Adam Hartstone-Rose from North Carolina State University will spend Monday at the zoo in Fort Worth, Texas.

He'll be looking out for strange behaviours in animals from gorillas to giraffes to Galapagos turtles. Spoiler: during the 2017 eclipse, the turtles suddenly started mating.

Lots of animals appear to have anxious responses to the sudden darkness.

"The flamingos last time did a beautiful thing," he says. "As the eclipse was building, the adults gathered the chicks into the middle of the flock, and looked into the sky as if they were worried about an aerial predator coming down."

The gorillas moved to where they sleep and began their bedtime routines, as circadian rhythms were disrupted.

One nocturnal bird called a Tawny Frogmouth woke up from where it usually camouflages as a rotting tree stump. It started looking for food, and then suddenly went back into disguise when the sun re-appeared.

Anyone can join the experiment. If you see pets, farm animals or wild animals behaving unusually during the eclipse, you can tell Mark's team online.

The team will have almost instant results and will publish their findings in the days after the eclipse.

Where in the UK can you see Monday's solar eclipse?

26/03/2024

Science Museum: New gallery about future energy opens

A "stunning" new gallery exploring the past, present and future of energy has opened at the Science Museum.

Energy Revolution: The Adani Green Energy Gallery examines how the world can limit climate change.

At the centre of the free gallery is Only Breath, a moving sculpture that stretches 5m (16ft) wide when unfurled.

Also on display for the first time is part of the Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly (ZETA), a nuclear fusion experiment created in the late 1950s.

The exhibit is divided into three zones:

Future Planet, which looks at complex computer-based models and how the climate might be in the future
Future Energy, about how energy is supplied and attempts to reimagine it
Our Future, which includes creative ideas from children about how the world will meet its energy needs.

Ian Blatchford, the director of the Science Museum Group, said: "This stunning gallery offers even more to ignite curiosity among the millions who will visit in the year ahead - provoking important conversations about the urgent need for the world to generate and use energy more sustainably.

"Our curators have created an inspirational experience, supported by hundreds of people from artists to those involved in acquiring, conserving and transporting vast objects safely into the gallery."

12/03/2024

Effort to tackle Hebridean isle's feral cat colony

A charity is trying to get to grips with a colony of at least 20 feral cats in the Isle of Barra.

Western Isles Support for Cats and Kittens (Wisck) volunteers have been trapping the cats and taking them to Stornoway in Lewis for vet checks and neutering.

Wisck hopes to eventually find homes for them.

The charity said there had been a problem with feral cats in Barra for a number of years, with many of the animals descendants of "barn cats" that were once kept on crofts to control mice and rats.

Karen Cowan, of Wisck, told BBC Naidheachdan: "You see 20 cats but there could be 30 because some don't appear at a house for food, but they are members of the same colony."

She added: "The breeding season for feral cats is April to September, depending on the weather and how well fed they are.

"Their number could triple by next winter."

Ms Cowan said there were few rodents in Barra for the cats to catch and eat, meaning they then posed a risk to ground-nesting wild birds.

She said: "We need to protect the fragile eco-system as well as the welfare of the cats."

Public donations have helped cover some of the vet bills, which can run up to £200 to vaccinate and neuter just one cat.

14/02/2024

Historic lime kiln discovered on North York Moors

A lime kiln dating from the 1700s has been unearthed under an "unsightly heap" in the corner of a North York Moors field.

The historic oven would have been use to produce lime to improve the local farmland after being transported from a nearby quarry.

The "well-preserved" discovery included the main firing chamber, handmade bricks and a stokehole, said experts.

Landowner Elaine Newham said she was "delighted" the kiln had been found.

Its discovery followed a collaboration between Mrs Newham, the National Park Authority and a local archaeology company.

She said: "It was completely neglected and was just a heap of earth covered in discarded stones, bushes and nettles.

"It was marked on an old map as a kiln so we knew that's what had been there, but we had no idea if anything was left of it."

The North York Moors National Park provided a £12,000 grant towards the excavation work.

Located on the Scarborough edge of the North York Moors, the site is now undergoing a more in-depth investigation and experts hope the kiln can be restored as an "educational asset for the local community".

New trees have also been planted nearby to replace those removed at the start of the project.

Dave Arnott, Farming in Protected Landscapes Officer, said: "While lime kilns are not an unusual sight in the North York Moors landscape, they remain an important link to our agricultural and industrial past."

Stephen Timms, Director of Quercus Archaeology added: "I've been an archaeologist for 30 years and it never ceases to amaze me what is just under your feet.

"We weren't expecting to see such a well-preserved kiln under what looked like a big pile of rubble."

01/02/2024

French farmer protests: Dozens arrested at Rungis food market in Paris

Dozens of farmers who descended on a food market outside Paris have been arrested, as tensions over protests for better conditions escalated.

The French government had warned that disruption at Rungis, a food distribution hub which feeds 12 million people, would cross a red line.

About 91 farmers who converged the market are in custody, police said.

Farmers are aiming to stop food deliveries reaching supermarkets, in a call for better pay and less red tape.

Rungis, located on the southern edge of the capital, is known as "the belly of Paris", providing much of the fresh fish, fruit, meat and vegetables the region consumes each day. It is the second largest market of its kind in the world.

In anticipation of their arrival, police units with armoured vehicles had been deployed along the A6 motorway to the market, and police checkpoints were set up around its access points.

The protesters entered the market's storage area and caused damage before they were taken out by security forces, a source told AFP news agency.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said authorities "cannot tolerate disturbances to public order", BFMTV reported.

Earlier, 18 people who were trying to blockade Rungis had been arrested for "interfering with traffic", police said.

Prosecutors said 15 of them were then taken into custody.

It comes as convoys of farmers' tractors have been blocking key roads into the French capital - dubbed the "siege of Paris" - over the past week.

Farmers block major roads around Paris over falling incomes
PM offers key concessions after roads around Paris blocked
Why Europe's farmers are taking their anger to the streets
France has been at the centre of a growing dispute across Europe, with tens of thousands of farmers across Germany, Poland, Romania, Belgium and Italy also staging demonstrations.

Arnaud Rousseau, head of FNSEA, France's main agricultural union, said there are "huge expectations" among farmers, but that not all of their demands could be immediately met.

"I'm trying to call for calm and reasonableness," he added.

The protests have created a crisis for French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is only three weeks into the job

Mr Attal said on Tuesday that his government stood ready to resolve the crisis and praised the agriculture sector as "our force and our pride".

He said Attal "new support measures" would be announced in the coming days.

15/01/2024

Pothole reports hit a five-year high in 2023

Potholes caused misery in 2023 on a scale not seen in years, but scientists hope technology like self-healing roads will help rid us of them for good.

Reports of potholes and damage they caused hit five-year highs, according to local governments and the AA.

The AA estimates they may have cost UK drivers as much as £500m in repairs.

Scientists warn climate change will worsen the problem as more wet weather and temperature extremes give an extra battering to the surfaces we drive on.

Almost 630,000 potholes were reported to councils in England, Scotland and Wales between January and November 2023, a five-year high, according to local government data compiled by campaign group Round Our Way following a Freedom of Information request.

Data was only available from 115 out of 208 councils approached, meaning the total number of reported potholes is likely to be much higher.

"Potholes are the bane of many of our lives and put drivers, cyclists and even pedestrians at risk of serious injury," says Roger Harding, director of Round Our Way. "The weather extremes that climate change brings are sadly creating many more of them at a time when cuts mean repairs are already not keeping up."

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A spokesman for the Local Government Association said councils shared the concerns of all road users with the state of our roads and were doing all they could to tackle what they said was a £14bn backlog of road repairs. He also called for more regular and consistent funding.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: "We're taking decisive action to fix potholes and resurface roads by investing an extra £8.3bn of redirected HS2 funding, the biggest ever funding increase for local road improvements and enough to resurface over 5,000 miles of roads across the country."

The AA said it dealt with 631,852 pothole-related incidents related to tyres, wheels, steering, and suspension last year - another five-year high according to the organisation.

With an average repair cost for a pothole accident being £250, the AA estimates they cost its customers around £160m in total last year. The AA believes the total figure for across the entire country could be as high as £500m as it only represents around a third of Britain's drivers.

25/12/2023

Recycled Christmas trees raise £175,000 in the West

Christmas tree recycling schemes are proving a lucrative fundraiser for West charities.

Organisation Just Helping, which partners with charities to help bring efforts together, said those who work with them made £174,988 in January.

Across Wiltshire, Bristol, Somerset and Gloucestershire, it adds up to more than 12,500 trees collected.

Dorothy House Hospice - based near Bradford-on-Avon - made the most in the region at £75,000.

Tom Laverty from Just Helping explained that they "provide charities with a registration platform and routing."

More than £930,000 was raised nationally during the last drive after Christmas 2022.

Dorothy House covers 17 postcodes across Wiltshire, Somerset and the Bath area.

When the charity started its scheme in 2017 it raised a total of £6,500 altogether but after opening the drive for this Christmas, it had raised that amount within one day of opening bookings.

They now get around 200 volunteers each year and it is all organised by Steph Cox, who said: "I'm a very competitive person and absolutely want to smash it again in January 2024."

She said they picked up more than 5,000 trees in January 2023.

To get it started a few years ago, she had to find a lot of people: "I just basically cold contacted people like tree surgeons, landscape gardeners, and all of those kind of people.

"Year on year, I can email the database of people that have helped and just say same again."

She explained that volunteers do engage in some friendly competition: "It's competitive in that people want to get as many trees in their van as possible or get their route done first, and be able to go for a pint afterwards."

They compare which group can get "the best prize or the best box of chocolates", with one having three on one route in the Warminster area.

02/12/2023

Why Scotland needs to 'up our game' on climate
Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf is taking his first tentative steps in international climate negotiations with big boots to fill.

He's spending five days at the COP28 summit in Dubai; the same climate change conference which came to Glasgow in 2021.

For years, his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon cruised the corridors of these UN talks, casually posing for selfies with players like Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough and US president Joe Biden.

She was the master at appearing to be a key part of the talks while only truly being able to operate around its fringes.

There's no doubt her climate profile was further boosted by Scotland - and part of her Glasgow Southside constituency - playing host to the 26th iteration of the gathering.

Just months into office, Mr Yousaf stepped onto the smaller stage of the New York Climate Week, where his utterings caused a stir at home.

His opponents characterised what he said as wanting Scotland to no longer be the oil capital of Europe.

What he actually said, repeated in Dubai, was that he wanted his nation to go from oil capital of Europe to being the net zero capital of the world.

19/10/2023

Many are optimistic of detecting life signs on a faraway world within our lifetimes - possibly in the next few years.

And one scientist, leading a mission to Jupiter, goes as far as saying it would be "surprising" if there was no life on one of the planet's icy moons.

Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently detected tantalising hints at life on a planet outside our Solar System - and it has many more worlds in its sights.

12/10/2023

Once the capsule is safely on the ground, it will be whisked off to the Johnson Space Center in Texas, where a dedicated cleanroom has been built to analyse the samples.

Dr Ashley King from London's Natural History Museum (NHM) will be one of the very first scientists to get his gloves on the material. He is part of the "quick look" team that will do the initial analysis.

"Bringing back samples from an asteroid - we don't do that very often. So you want to do those first measurements, and you want to do them really well," he says. "It's incredibly exciting."

05/10/2023

The prevailing thinking is that many of the key components were actually delivered to our planet early in its history in a rain of impacting asteroids, many of them perhaps just like Bennu.

Engineers have commanded the final adjustments to the Osiris-Rex spacecraft's trajectory. All that remains is to make the "go, no-go" decision to release the capsule to fall to Earth this weekend.

28/09/2023

"Much of the bright red emission comes from jets of shocked molecular gas flowing at high speed from an invisible protostar, VLA1623, a star so young that many Stone Age cave paintings pre-date it.

"JWST is not only going to revolutionise our view of how galaxies were born in the early universe, but also how stars and planets are being made today, much closer to home in our own Milky Way," the astronomer told BBC News.

25/09/2023

The telescope has other objectives, too, one of which is to show us the detail of how stars are created and how they spawn planets. And it's for this reason that Rho Ophiuchi is a fascinating target for the most powerful observatory in space.

"There's so much going on in this spectacular picture, as young stars splash vibrant colours across the clouds of gas and dust from which they're being born," commented Prof Mark McCaughrean, Esa's senior advisor for science & exploration.

22/09/2023

"JWST is not only going to revolutionise our view of how galaxies were born in the early universe, but also how stars and planets are being made today, much closer to home in our own Milky Way," the astronomer told BBC News.

To underline just what a marvel Webb is, the below image of the Rho Ophiuchi complex was acquired by Nasa's now retired Spitzer space telescope. Spitzer, like Webb, was sensitive to infrared light. It was a very capable facility, but with a primary mirror just 85cm in diameter, it could never have achieved the kind of detail we now see with Webb's 6.5m primary mirror.