Land Rover’s commitment to a sustainable future

As we make our way to the end of 2010 and plough our way into the new year we are all faced with daily headlines in the press reminding us of the recession, government cuts, global warming, sustainable living, our ecological footprint, thinking about how we shop, what we buy, organic or free range? Tested on animals? Farmed or fresh? Sustainably fished or hunted to extinction? Thinking about your next move, even if it is just to buy some milk from the corner shop, we are all faced with a number of choices daily which will affect not only our future but the future of our children and future generations. What does the future hold? And can we really influence the bigger picture? And does it really matter? A review article in NewScientist October 09 edition based on the book by Robert and Brenda Vale, two architects who specialise in sustainable living at University of Wellington, New Zealand compared the ecological pawprint of everyday family pets with SUV’s otherwise known as 4x4’s or ‘Sports Utility Vehicles’. The findings were astonishing!
They concluded that a Landcruiser’s eco-footprint is less than half that of a medium sized dog! John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, UK said “Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat”.

So what is it to be eco-friendly? And how do we achieve it when even our furry friends are no longer seen as being part of a sustainable future?
Well in my opinion we all hold a piece of the future in our hands, every single one of us, so every decision we make on a daily basis will in turn in one way or another affect another human/non human being sometime in the future. Therefore we can all make a difference, even if it’s in a miniscule contribution, a hundred thousand miniscule contributions soon add up! Therefore if you already own a pet, then changing its diet can help. Replacing meat with a more sustainable, less energy intensive replacement can almost halve the eco-pawprint of a dog or reducing the amount of birds a cat kills per year can drastically reduce their huge claw-print. And as for SUV drivers well you’ll be very happy to know that Land Rover have made a promise to a more sustainable future by actively supporting Conservation programs such as the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) which runs the world’s largest primate rescue project. As part of their sponsorship they have donated a Defender to the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Reintroduction Project in Central Kalimantan. The vehicle is currently being used in the most remote areas of Borneo for the transportation and return of Orangutan's to safe forests.
So its not all doom and gloom, there is always a greener alternative if we really want to make a greener choice, which made me think twice this week when I decided that the house was far too quiet and I wanted a pet…..
So I’ve decided on 3 bantam hens! At least they compensate for their eco-featherprint by providing eggs although I’m not sure I’m ready to go all the way and be completely eco-friendly by eating them, they’re never going to provide as much entertainment and pleasure on the dinner plate as seeing them pottering around the garden chattering away to each other.

Have a great week.
Nic

Top Ten Wildlife Spots

Emmy Award-winning director and producer of wildlife documentaries, Nick Stringer, walks us through his favourite places in the world to see nature at its finest, in this weeks guardian. Check out his list of top wildlife spots at http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/nov/03/top-10-wildlife-destinations Which made me think about my top ten favourite travel spots so far which I thought I would share on my blog. Although I have many more places on my wish list yet to see and adventure, my favourites so far have to be.....

1. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park for Gorilla treks and Ngamba Chimp Island, Lake Victoria for Chimpanzees



2. Phi Phi and Kho Lanta Island's, Thailand for diving


3. White Water Rafting the White Nile River in Uganda


4. Tunisia for Swimming with Wild Dolphins


5. Pilansberg National Park South Africa for Elephants and Big Cats


6. Phuza Moya Game Reserve South Africa for Dwarf Mongoose and Hippos


7. Dartmoor National Park, England for salmon leaping, wild swimming and yurting


8. County Clare, Ireland for Birds of Prey and good guiness


9. Lake Nakuru in Kenya for Bird watching, especially Flamingos and Colobus Monkeys


10.Cornwall, UK for snorkelling, seals and basking sharks


Send your comments/favourite travel wildlife spots to me at ukulalana@gmail.com or nicolefentonhowarth on facebook.

Also if you would like to see some amazing travel pics and read up on Japan, check out Matts homepage and blog at matthewbutton.co.uk

Until next time.........Hamba Kahle (Go well)
Nic x

As a new species is discovered another is going extinct……..

2010 is proving to be an exciting year indeed! There has never been a better time to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity with a new species of primate being discovered! Fauna & Flora International was part of a team of primatologists that recently discovered a completely new species of monkey Rhinopithecus strykeri in Northern Myanmar (formerly Burma). Local hunters reported the presence of a monkey which did not match any description of species previously identified in the area. Sadly this latest addition to the snub-nosed family is already threatened. Hunting pressure is rising thanks to loggers moving into the previously isolated distribution area of this species. Based on direct observations and evidence from local people, the team of researchers have estimated the total population of R.strykeri to be 260-330 individuals, making them a threatened species when they’ve only just been discovered. All species of snub-nosed monkey are considered critically endangered, including the striking blue-faced R.roxellana or golden snub-nosed monkey. With the new snub-nosed monkey Myanmar has now 15 species of primates, which underlines the importance of Myanmar for biodiversity conservation.

Photo credit: A digital reconstruction of the Burmese Snub-nosed monkey by Dr Thomas Geissmann

Hunting and habitat destruction are the key threats facing all primate species including the great apes. Just over 700 mountain gorillas remain in the world today. Two isolated populations survive, one in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, south-western Uganda, and the other on the forested slopes of the Virunga volcanoes, straddling the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. The forest has been recognised as one of the most biologically diverse areas on earth by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a World Heritage Site.




In 2003 I visited the magnificent Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest, home to half the world’s population of critically endangered Mountain Gorillas Gorilla beringei beringei. It was an unbelievable experience, one which I will never forget. We trekked for over two hours through the humidity of the forest and up steep inclines until one of the conservation guards held up his hand and told us to be very quiet as he had detected fresh signs of gorilla activity. Within minutes we were surrounded by them. There were mothers and babies all around us, feeding, playing and before we knew it the silver back roared past us in an attempt to show us who’s territory we were on, before sitting down and beating his chest wildly with satisfaction.


My heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to faint. We could only spend an hour with them and then we had to leave to prevent any cross contamination of disease, so I snapped as many quick photographs as I could get whilst hanging onto a branch to stop myself slipping down the ravine, hence the blurred photos, and then spent the rest of the time just watching them and being among them for I knew there and then that I may never get the opportunity again to walk and be amongst wild free Gorilla’s.


The only reason there still are this tiny number of wild Gorilla’s still living and roaming the forests free today is down to the countless hours of dedication and commitment of the national park staff who patrol these forests on a daily basis to protect the Gorilla’s from hunters and poaching. But these conservation efforts have cost many lives, both human and Gorilla, for life is cheap in Africa and a Gorilla to a man and his starving family is just another meal to survive yet another tough day in Africa.

Lets hope the next generation of conservationists and their efforts can help build a stronger future for all the amazing species which share our beautiful planet with us.








Comments are welcome and can be sent to ukulalana@gmail.com if you are not a google mail user. Have a brilliant week.
Regards
Nic x

Where the wild things are...

I have lived my entire life in Africa, running around barefoot, with acacia trees which grow thorns the size of toothpicks everywhere and managed to get away relatively unscathed, and yet you couldn’t find anyone on the planet less adapted to survive in the lush green English countryside. For, lurking underneath all that lush green grass, pretty blue bells and fields of daisies are the most dangerous and spiteful plants I have ever encountered! The dreaded STINGING NETTLE. Last night while frolicking in a field with the Kuni kuni piglets that I am currently babysitting, as the sun set over the rolling English countryside, I managed to find the only patch of nettles in the entire field and sit on them! I nearly gave the poor pigs heart failure as I ran around like a chicken on fire trying to work out what had attacked me so viciously, only to discover it was a clump of dammed leaves.


Anyway, enough about my inability to survive life on this small island with its peculiar range of deadly South African eating plants, I want to blog about the next chapter, in what is turning out to be quite an unfolding adventure, that is my little existence in Cornwall.


I’m graduating on the 6th of November, so armed with my BSc honours degree and truck loads of enthusiasm I’ve been filling every spare minute of my time volunteering for various conservation organisations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, and of course running the tag a turtle project with Blue Reef and the Marine Conservation Society, in the hope that not only will I gain some invaluable experience but that somewhere along the line I will hopefully build a career. So it was to my complete surprise when the Director of Newquay Zoo contacted me last week and offered me the opportunity to join their team as a Primate Keeper! This will give me the wonderful chance of working with these fascinating animals (lemurs, marmosets, monkeys and apes to name a few) up close and enabling me to observe and record behaviours which will contribute to their conservation in the wild.

Newquay Zoo is part of the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust (WWCT). The WWCT operates and supports over 20 UK and overseas conservation projects. Newquay Zoo recently signed up to the World Land Trust's Wild Spaces project with the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA). This aims to raise £260,000 to purchase a critically threatened 3,675 acre (1,500 ha) parcel of strategically placed land in the Brazilian Atlantic forests, home to over 930 bird species and 260 mammal species.
The World Land Trust takes direct action to save tropical and other wilderness land. They buy it, acre by acre and are currently working to create new reserves to save threatened habitats in Brazil, Ecuador and India. To find out more please visit their website.
Another great project at the moment worth mentioning is the The Tiger Corridor Initiative promoted by the conservation organization Panthera. It hopes to secure a major wildlife conservation corridor which could extend along the foothills of the Himalayas from Nepal into Bhutan and northern India, then through to Myanmar, stretching across 2000km with an area of 120,000 sq km. The ambition would then be to connect it to another corridor spanning Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, terminating in Malaysia.



The amazing images in this blog were taken by Matt Button on our recent trip to Newquay’s sister Zoo Paignton in Devon (where we will be visiting again next week for a week of hiking on Dartmoor) and are all of critically endangered species which need protection if we are to conserve them for future generations.

Look out for my next blog on my visit to the wild Gorrilla’s in Bwindi Impenetrable
Forrest in Uganda…

Have a great week
Nic x

Out and about in Cornwall this week....

Although I've been living in Cornwall for the past 5 years, I still find myself out and about discovering things to do and places to see that I've not visited before and am absolutely blown away when I get there! On Monday 27th Sept I found myself standing at the top of Godrevy Point on the rugged north Cornish coast completely spellbound by the incredible clifftop views of the vast sandy beaches of Gwithian and Hayle as well as St Ives bay and Godrevy lighthouse which is completely solar powered.

It's no surprise that this remote stretch of exquisite Cornish coastline protected by the National Trust made it to category finalist in the 2008 British Best Open Space, Green Space Travel Awards along with Kosi Bay in South Africa being nominated for best open space award worldwide! It was a beautiful sunny day so I had expected to have a lovely walk along the cliffs. I was even treated to a young seal putting in an appearance, but what I hadn't expected to see was Britain's most venomous snake! An Adder (Vipera berus) was slowly making its way across a grassy patch right in front of me. All I could think of was that awful South African snake wrangler wannabe Austin Steve who makes me cringe anytime I flick the TV channel onto one of his programs with him going...."yaaa like our snakes are so big they use your snakes for bait!" but of course me being me, I followed it..... much to the surprise of the now gathering group of spectators. They were warning me not to go too close in case it bit me but of course by then I was taking no notice of anyone, and managed to get some brilliant photos of my first Adder sighting which I've shared with you here... enjoy :)

For more Adder info visit the following link, as i've just found out from my narcoleptic naturalist fellow blogger and scientist friend Sally that my Adder is a female, due to the dark brown zigzag pattern on her back, whereas males have a black or grey zigzag pattern on the back.

http://www.surrey-arg.org.uk/cgi-bin/SARG2ReptileSpeciesData.asp?Species=Adder

Have a brilliant week all, until next time and my next adventure........ Nic x

Shark Bait

Early morning on September the 7th 2010 two intrepid zoologists set out to immerse themselves into the freezing Atlantic ocean in the hope of seeing what some people regard as the most feared creature in the sea but what we regard as one of the most incredible and intelligent ……. sharks.

Regardless of what we may think, sharks are in need of protection and raising awareness is one of the only ways in which we can begin to conserve them.
There are over 30 species of shark found in British Waters and over 50% of them are considered to be under threat. Of the sharks found around the coast of Britain the most iconic and loved must surely be the magnificent Basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus). The second largest living shark after the Whale shark (Rhincodon typus) they move glide silently through the world’s temperate oceans peacefully filter feeding on plankton.

Photo by: Annabelle Lowe Atlantic Diving

After Basking sharks the next species we were hoping to encounter on our dive were Blue sharks (Prionace glauca). They are pelagic sharks, found worldwide in deep temperate and tropical waters from the surface to a depth of about 350 meters. Males range in size up to 4 meters in length as a sight to behold as they flash past the cage.
Sadly thousands of sharks are fished commercially each year for their meat, fins and liver oil which is used in lamps, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, vitamin supplements and Chinese medicine. Some of course ends up served in some restaurants as a delicacy. These threats are decimating shark populations worldwide.
The British Shark Trust work proactively with the public and fisheries promoting worldwide conservation of sharks through science, education, influence and action to develop sustainable fishing practices, influence legislation and put an end to cruel shark finning practices.
Sharks are apex predators and therefore play important roles in marine ecosystems. A decline in shark numbers has had serious effects on the marine environment.

Photo from: BBC Wildlife Sept 2010

The main aim of our sponsored cage shark dive was to raise funds for the Tag-a-Turtle project and the Marine Conservation Society, helping to raise awareness and support turtle conservation. But submerged 2 meters underwater in the freezing Atlantic Ocean with nothing but a layer of neoprene for protection we quickly realised that it takes more than guts and determination to survive out in the ocean.
We need to educate, conserve and change fishing practices from short term quick fixes to long term sustainable methods if we are to conserve marine biodiversity for future generations.

For more information on sharks please visit the sharktrust.org or for a trip of a lifetime visit atlanticdiver.co.uk. We even made it to to the BBC Cornwall News Page http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cornwall/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8988000/8988488.stm

A huge thankyou to everyone for supporting the turtle project and reading my blog :)

Regards
Nic

Mobile phones and vanishing bees

Are mobile phones wiping out our honey bees?

The days of seeing honey bees on just about every flower and coke can are long gone…. Think about when last you opened a can of coke or the likes of a peanut butter and jam sandwich and within seconds a bee was trying to find its way inside to the sweet sugary treat awaiting… How many of these simple occurrences have gone unnoticed by so many of us in our busy lives recently? Recent scientific research suggests that the plight of our little buzzing friends is no longer going unnoticed, it is very much a hotly debated topic…..

The effects of mobile phone radiation on human health has been a question in scientific and medical communities for some time now. To date there has been a lot of research into the effects, or possibly non effects, of mobile phone radiation on human tissue. However as a result of the increasing world wide usage of mobile phones throughout the world the effects of GSM (Global System for Mobile Telecommunications) radiation on invertebrates has led to further investigations particularly on the declining honey bee (Apis mellifera).

Honey bees are keystone pollinator species. The sharp declines in honey bee numbers has raised many questions about the source of the problem. One area of research includes whether mobile phones, namely cellular phone radiation, is contributing to this global crisis. Honey bees are suffering from a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder, in which worker bees from a colony beehive abruptly disappear. Colony collapse is also economically significant because many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by bees.
The causes are not yet fully understood, although many authorities attribute the problem to biotic factors such as Varroa mites and insect diseases. The effects of GSM radiation is being widely investigated, but the data regarding the biological effects of radiation is as yet insufficient to draw any concrete conclusions. However there is some evidence to show that radiation does have an effect on flight navigation which could explain the disappearance of vast numbers of worker bees trying to navigate their way back to the hive.

We can’t ignore the environmental impacts that would result from a loss of vital pollinators such as honey bee’s, however who doesn’t have and use a mobile phone these days? I’m making sure I use mine indoors and no where near the garden or honey bees these days!

Reference
Effect of GSM Cellular fone radiation on the behaviour of honey bees (Apis mellifera), 2009. Science of Bee Culture. Vol 1 (2) pp22-27

Thai Tales

Thai Tales

When our two week holiday in Thailand in April this year came to an end I was definitely wishing for some monumental catastrophe to prevent our flight taking off, never in a million years would I ever have believed my ears when the lovely lady behind the counter in Bangkok airport told us that the volcanic ash cloud arising from the eruption in Iceland meant we were “stranded” in Thailand until further notice!! I had to physically restrain myself from jumping up and down for joy for there were many, not so happy faces around us! In fact the majority of the airport was filled with angry, impatient, yelling tourists, so we did what any logical forward thinking travellers would do…. we legged it. Rushing out of the airport as fast as we could, we caught a taxi into town and checked into the cheapest room we could find, before anyone could say UK airspace was open again. Dumping our bags on the tatty bed we headed out into the evocative chaos of Bangkok and tucked into a huge freshly cooked plate of pad thai….. ahhh the joys!
And Bangkok was where we stayed as day after day news headlines flashed across our screens showing the extent of the ash cloud, it soon became quite apparent that we were not going to get back to the UK or work anytime soon and there was simply nothing, anyone could do about it! How extraordinary! So yet again we conjured up a plan to make the best of this unplanned extra time in this most amazing place and caught the overnight train to Chiang Mai, “Place of the elephants”, in the north on what was fast becoming one hell of an unplanned adventure. The north was everything it promised to be and more, beautiful sunsets over lush green paddy fields, waterfalls and of course incredible food. However the one thing we craved was the border; if we could just manage a few days in Myanmar that would be the icing on the cake, or rather the chilli on the pad thai. Myanmar, once upon a time known to the world as Burma, was only a short bus trip away, and we desperately wanted to skip across and visit that most beguiling of countries so plagued by political torments but so wonderfully rich in culture and natural wonders.
However the country’s isolation and repressive junta has, by some miracle of irony contributed to the preservation of much of its environment and ecosystems as well as some of the worlds most endangered species such as tigers, leopards, rhinoceros, forest elephants, gibbons, as well as an abundance of bird species. The thought of exploring this forgotten landscape was almost too much to bare, but before we could rustle up the necessary paperwork Eyjafjallajökull started to get over its hissy-fit and the ash cloud began to dissipate. Bangkok, Mumbai and a forty hour journey back to Cornwall was calling so sadly we never did make it across the border into Myanmar. My appetite to visit that enticing land has only grown and so it was with a mixture of great relief and joy when I read that the Government of Myanmar have announced that 2.500 miles of the Hukaung Valley will be declared a wildlife reserve to protect tigers and inevitably all the other wildlife that inhabit the forests with them, now I just need to find a way and the time to get there…

Bush Diary 11/07/08

In the summer of 2008 I had the brilliant opportunity of going back home to South Africa to research dwarf mongoose (Helogale parvula) in the Phuza Moya Game Reserve assisting Dr Lynda Sharpe with her behavioural study of them in the wild. Below is an extract from my bush diary that I kept during my time spent at Mongoose Manor as we called it. Enjoy :)

"When I first found out I’d be going to Africa to research mongoose I started worrying about what to pack! Its winter in South Africa therefore I'll need warm clothes, socks, thermals, warm hat, gloves and what ever other home comforts I could force into my bag. But in fact nothing I packed, useful or not could prepare me for what I was to experience. It’s the height of the dry season in South Africa, the landscape is dry, the tree’s are bare, the red earth is scorched and worst of all most of the animals are emaciated, painfully thin and approaching starvation. The grazers have no food, the browsers even less, the giraffe are lucky enough to reach the tree tops where a few green leaves still remain. The game lodge are providing sustenance food for most of the animals such as hay and lucerne but most die before finding these feeding stations or get shot before they starve to death.
My first day started at 33 degrees celcius, tracking mongoose through the bush which is like searching for a needle in a haystack. They weigh no more than 250g each and live in termite mounds. The reserve is 6000 hectares of thick arid bush, most of which have dangerous thorns, which I’ve managed to get myself tangled in more than once.
On my second day I was given a can of pepper spray? ‘‘This is for when you meet any poachers or a leopard!’’ Okay so when I’m confronted by a group of poachers armed with AK47’s I'll aim and fire my pepper spray shall I? That should protect me!
My third day and I’m left alone to fend for myself in the bush. So I find a nice rock to perch on, it's a cloudy today and the mongoose have decided to stay in bed so I’m well prepared with a set of binoculars, which make you go cross-eyed because they’ve been dropped previously, to spot any mongoose which decide to brave the cool wind outside their termite mound, and I’ve been given a radio in case of an emergency. If you see a rhino and it charges you, radio through on channel four and someone will answer your pleas for help but climb the nearest tree fast! Okay roger that.
So I’m sat on my rock being the ever observant student and watching my mongoose specimens closely when I hear a sudden grunting noise behind me. Instead of obeying the bush rules of ‘remain calm and never run’ I jump up with fright and spin around to see two warthogs looking at me before turning and darting off in fright themselves at this hysterical human being wearing a funny hat in their garden!
Not long had I recovered from that when I heard a gun shot in the distance! Okay I’m armed with pepper spray, a radio and a climbable tree nearby. Which to use first?
But before my brain can register these thoughts and complete a sentence another two shots are fired! So I turn to technology instead and text Lynda telling her I’m in the middle of a crossfire! Her response was ‘‘I think its ok. If they are very close, call steve on channel 2 and tell him your at Bugbears and don’t want to be shot!’’
Met the manager of the reserve today and while he’s jabbering in his typical South African accent, using a mixture of Afrikaans and English ‘vrek’ ‘oke’ ‘ag man’, his ranger pulls up and gets out of the car with a rifle slung over his shoulder and blood dripping down his leg and in Afrikaans saiz ‘I shot myself by accident’ and walks off.

The Toyota ‘bakkie’ pick up truck has more dents than an armoured vehicle, jumps a kilometre when it starts and crackles while you drive. I’m due to drive it in the next few days!

Yesterday Lynda and I took the dogs for a walk around the reserve, and on the way back were walking through the river bed when I heard loud grunting noises ‘‘Hippos just there, was what she said’’
But the still quiet peaceful evenings are what I crave. The brightest night sky, cool breeze, the hippos chatter, a night jar calling off in the distance, the shrill sound of a hyaena calling, all the sounds of the African bushveld.
The second day I got here the bore hole pump broke. The old madala (man) who came to tell us said he didn’t know when it would be fixed, we could run out of water any time. So for now its no showers, flush the toilet only when absolutely necessary and drink water from jerry cans filled up in the town of Hoedspruit. As the weeks have progressed the bush is only getting ever drier and I’ve decided I'm cracking up! To my surprise there is a TV in our bush dwelling but not having one would have been decidedly easier but definitely less entertaining! It only has 3 channels, all of which are fuzzy unless you move around the house to a certain corner, stand on one leg, put your nose against the wall, and your foot up on the ceiling, then in this extremely comfortable postion you can enjoy a clear picture on the TV and be mesmerised by Isidingo or 7de Laan, A mixture of Afrikaans & Tswana program’s with English subtitles! The plot and cast have not changed in 10 years, riveting stuff! So when you don’t feel like watching the fuzz on the box then there are videos. Oh yes, millions and millions of VHR video cassettes! But don’t be fooled! The video machine doesn’t work…. Or at least it does but stops every five minutes to tell you to clean the heads… and then you have to pick the machine up and shake it violently upside down to get the video out!

We visit the mongoose everday or try to at least. As I wander through the thick thornscrub yelping every five minutes because I've got a ‘hak en steek’ thornbush wrapped around my leg, amongst the array of bird calls, wildebees snorts, fish eagles calling, breaking branches and crackling dry grass, Dr Lynda Sharpe’s ears prick up and as she glides silently through the bush, she suddenly saiz ‘I heard a mongoose!’ And then she says ‘there they are’ So I start scanning around, looking low, listening intently, can't see anything, so we walk for a another 500 metres through thick thorny bush and trees and there perched on top of a termite mound off in the distance is a mongoose sat on a termite mound! I only spotted him because I was looking at it through binoculars! So we get to the group and before me are 26 little brown bodies scratching here, zipping in and out of termite mound air chambers, running up branches, and all the while making tiny peep noises which Lynda heard 3km away!
And she knows every individual by name, number, sex and status. That’s Kodiak, Female 3 years old, she’s the dominant female. And that was only looking at her little pink nose stuck out of a great big termite mound. Oh boy! I have my work cut out for me! There are 4 habituated groups in total which we visit everyday and not only am I expected to locate them in their range using a GPS, or perhaps by my failing hearing and eyesight and woman’s intuition, but also learn to identify each one of the 70 individually, so that I’m able to collect data efficiently. So the first day she bravely sent me off on my own with the vehicle to track and find my very own mongoose group, before I’d even left the spot we’d parked in…. the steering of the bakkie locked! Ok not a problem.. surely you just turn the key and it unlocks? After a frustrated half hour of nearly breaking the key off in the ignition, headbutting the steeringwheel in fury and breaking my toe from kicking a landrover wheel I radio Lynda. And she saiz ‘oh yes I forgot to tell you when that happens, you have to turn the steering wheel with your knee, press the button on the dashboard with your left hand and turn the key with your right hand, all simultaneously otherwise it will never unlock.' Sorry run that by me again!!!

The binoculars in this setup are another whole story all together! There are three pairs in total. So you’d imagine at least one of them to be in proper working order! No, no that’s definitely asking too much. My pair make you see double and go cross eyed unless you only use one eye! Lynda’s pair have the eye pieces glued on in the most precarious way! I looked through them once while standing on a rock and when my eyes finally adjusted and I took them away I lost my balance and promptly landed in a heap on the ground! Then there is the final pair. How does anyone describe such a specimen? They are definitely an antique. I mean they’re metal for a start. And they’re made for another kind of mammal, but definitely not a human being. Either the eye pieces are too far apart or my eyes are too close together! The next volunteer to arrive will be the lucky owner of these masterpiece bino’s. Lynda & I had to laugh and say that perhaps he’ll be a herbivore with eyes on the side of his head to see out of these babies. In fact when the other volunteer first arrived, we were all sat around the dinner table in a very civilised fashion and I blurt out ‘would you like a shower?’ Totally out of context with the whole situation! Horrified he said ‘oh I'm sorry do I smell?’ And Lynda pipes up ‘A fumigation perhaps!!!!’ Well that was it. I was off in a fit of hysterics. Could not stop laughing!
Our after dinner delight was spent sipping hot chocolate under a full moon watching a hippo root around the veg patch. What more could I ask for? I’m living my dream."

Bats, Birds and Sunbathing Seals

Hi Everyone

So sorry for not blogging for a while! So much been happening, lots of exciting news and some sad news!

Not that I like starting on a sad note but last week we found a little Pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) trying to get out of a sink in the laboratory at Duchy College Rosewarne, thank goodness Matt found him and we tried to release him but unfortunately he didn’t make it, the poor little guy. We contacted Bat Conservation UK who came to collect him and said that he was an adult male and perhaps had just died of old age, so nature took its rightful course in the end. Still it was a sad event.

On a happier note the Tag-a-Turtle project (see last blog) is doing really well! Nic & I had our first fundraising event at Sainsbury’s supermarket in Newquay today, raising loads of money and awareness for the project, our sponsored cage shark dive and of course the Marine Conservation Society. It was a really brilliant and successful day, thanks to everyone who stopped by and for all the support from everyone!

Also on the news front, I have been volunteering for the RSPB –Royal Society for the Protection of Birds since the beginning of May, assisting one of the Conservation Officers at the Marazion office near Penzance in Cornwall. I have also been asked to survey a colony of kittiwakes in Newquay, noting their courtship and nesting activities. I’m happy to report that they now have chicks and appear to be doing well, although there have been some issues with disturbance which may be affecting their breeding success, which is why monitoring them is important. On my last visit to photograph them a seal named Dr Who (kindly identified by the Cornwall Seal Group ) had hauled himself onto a rock in the sunshine and was happily advertsing his handsomeness for all to view.

Im sure you’ll agree he is a very handsome creature indeed!

Till next time....
Regards
Nic