Second badger cull begins in Gloucestershire

A cull of thousands of badgers in Gloucestershire has begun - a week after the first stage of the government pilot got under way in Somerset.

Gloucestershire Police said its badger cull policing operation was at "full capacity" but no arrests had been made.

About 5,000 badgers are expected to be killed in controlled shootings over six weeks to try to stop the spread of an illness called bovine tuberculosis (TB).

Anti-cull protesters say they'll disrupt the shootings and more than 100 campaigners have gathered in Gloucestershire.

Supporters claim culling badgers is the only way to tackle the disease, which they say is spread from infected badgers to livestock.

But animal charity, the Badger Trust, say that shooting the animals won't solve the problem

Controversial cull

Campaigners have fought the plans since the test areas were revealed last year.

Some protestors and wildlife groups have tried to disrupt the cull by digging up bait laid by farmers and disturbing the ground near traps, so that the animals will be scared to come out.

An online petition against the cull has been signed by over 250,000 names.

But the National Farmers' Union president, Peter Kendall, repeated his claim that the cull was necessary.

He said: "Thirty-eight thousand cattle were slaughtered last year in Britain because of TB. For beef and dairy farmers dealing with TB on their farms, these badger culls are an essential part in the fight against this terrible disease."

From CBBC newsround

Q&A: The badger cull

Badgers are being shot in the south west of England in an attempt to control TB in cattle.

The badger is a protected species under British law

Under the proposals, about 5,000 badgers will be culled in two pilot zones - Somerset and Gloucestershire.

The government says the action is needed to help tackle bovine TB, a disease of cattle that has been steadily rising since the 1980s.

Campaigners against the cull say it will have no impact on bovine TB, and could lead to local populations of badgers being wiped out.

Q: What is taking place?

A: The trials are taking place in areas where there are a high number of TB infections in cattle to assess whether badgers can be culled humanely, safely and effectively.

The precise areas where badgers will be shot by trained marksmen have not been revealed.

One area is in West Somerset and the other is in and around West Gloucestershire.

A third area - Dorset - is being considered for a cull, but a licence is not yet in place.

The cull will aim to kill at least 70% of badgers across areas about the size of the Isle of Wight in each zone.

Q: How will the success of the pilot culls be measured?

A: The pilots will not look at scientific data. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will review:

• How humane the cull is. A government agency will carry out sample post mortems to see if the badgers have been shot humanely. The carcasses will not be tested for signs of TB infection.
• How effective (in terms of badger removal) the two badger pilots are. In West Gloucestershire, a target has been set for killing between 2,856 and 2,932 badgers over the six-week period - around 70 badgers a day. The target in West Somerset is between 2,081 and 2,162 badgers - around 50 badgers a day.
• How safe the two badger culling pilots are.

On the basis of this evidence, ministers will make a decision about whether or not to extend the pilots to other areas in England.

Q: What is the scientific evidence for and against a cull?

A: Scientific evidence suggests sustained culls of badgers under controlled conditions could reduce TB in local cattle by 12-16% after four years of annual culls, and five years of follow-up, although it could be lower and it could be higher.

The randomised badger culling trial in England found that killing badgers disrupted their social groups, with surviving animals moving out to establish new groups, taking TB with them. This perturbation effect led to an increase in cases of bovine TB outside of the cull zone, although the impact diminished over time.

The pilot culls are attempting to use borders such as rivers and motorways to reduce the risk of badgers spreading TB to neighbouring areas, but this approach has not been fully tested.

The trial trapped badgers in cages for the cull, while the main method planned for Gloucestershire and Somerset is free shooting. Any deviation from methods used in the original trial will decrease or increase the expected impact on bovine TB, according to scientists.

Q: What is cattle TB?

A: Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease of cattle. It presents a serious problem for the cattle industry, causing financial and personal hardship for farmers.

The disease is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis), which can also infect and cause TB in badgers, deer and other mammals.

Cattle are regularly tested for TB and destroyed if they test positive.

Q: Why are badgers implicated in spreading TB?

A: Scientific evidence has shown that bovine TB can be transmitted from cattle to cattle; from badgers to cattle and cattle to badgers; and from badger to badger.

Badgers are thought to pass on the disease to cattle through their urine, faeces or through droplet infection, in the farmyard or in cattle pastures.

However, it is not clear how big a role badgers play in the spread of bovine TB since the cows can also pass the disease on to other members of the herd.

Data from the randomised badger culling trials found that 16% of badgers were infected.

According to one estimate, in areas where TB cattle infections are high, about 50% of infections in cattle are from badgers, although this figure is disputed.

Q: What are the costs of TB?

A: TB has cost the taxpayer in England £500m to control the disease in the last 10 years.

According to Defra, each pilot cull will cost about £100,000 a year, with these costs met by farmers who want badgers killed on their land.

This figure does not include policing costs, which have been estimated at £0.5m per area per year, according to a written answer to parliament.

According to Mary Creagh, shadow secretary of state for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, other costs include:

• Over £300,000 for costs related to licensing the cull

• £750,000 for sett monitoring

• £17,000 for independent panel to monitor the cull

• £700,000 estimated costs for humaneness monitoring

• £750,000 for carrying out post mortems on badgers.

Q: How are the badgers shot?

Most of the shooting is likely to be carried out at dusk or at night, since the animals are largely nocturnal. There are two main methods used to shoot badgers: The first involves searching over an area with a spotlight and rifle; the second entails placing bait at a fixed point, then lying in wait for the badger.

It requires a team of two or three people: the shooter, a spotter and a potential third person to drive a vehicle or act as an additional safety lookout. Shooting must be avoided if the teams are near rights of ways, or close to rural dwellings in order to prevent accidental injury to the public.

To comply with humane standards, the person using the firearm must endeavour to kill the animal quickly with the first shot. As such, they must be able to accurately locate the heart-lung area on the badger's body and be confident of a "clean" kill up to a range of 50-70m.

But there are inherent problems in shooting the animals at distance in the dark. Coloured filters can be used with spotlights in order to reduce a badger's awareness of the spotlight, allowing teams to approach more closely, or take more time on a shot. But they also reduce visibility for the shooter. Night vision sights can be used if certain conditions are met.

Officials accept that second shots may sometimes be necessary. Though it makes sense to select a site near a badger sett, the shooting must not take place so close to the entrance (at least 30m away) that a wounded badger could quickly retreat inside before a follow-up shot could be taken.

Licensed operators must pass a Defra-approved marksmanship course and must have received training on humane shooting. There are restrictions on firearms and ammunition: For rifles, Defra stipulates a minimum calibre, bullet weight and muzzle energy, because less powerful weapons cannot be relied upon for a "clean" kill. The use of shotguns is allowed, but only at close range (no more than 10 metres away from the animal).

Q: What is happening in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?

A: Scotland is classified as free of TB. The Welsh Assembly Government has chosen to vaccinate badgers, with trials underway in North Pembrokeshire.

Northern Ireland is conducting research into an eradication programme involving vaccination and selected culling of badgers with signs of TB infection.

The Republic of Ireland has been culling badgers since the 1980s.

Q: Can badgers or cows be vaccinated?

A: There is a vaccine for badgers - the BCG jab, which has been used by a number of wildlife and conservation bodies in England, including the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, the RSPB, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and the National Trust.

Badger vaccination is also underway in Wales, and there are plans to introduce it in Northern Ireland.

Cattle can also be vaccinated with the BCG vaccine. Vaccination of cattle against TB is currently prohibited by EU legislation, mainly because BCG vaccination of cattle can interfere with the tuberculin skin test, the main diagnostic test for TB.

Vaccination is not effective in badgers or cattle that are infected with TB.

In Wales, the cost of vaccinating each badger is put at £662.

Greenland is melting too fast!

Watch this amazing video of the centre of global warming Greenland (2009)It's scary but very real and worrying, no doubt!

Greenland’s surface ice melt season reached a peak in late July, coinciding with a period of very warm weather. Greenland’s melt season this year will be closer to average than was 2012, with far less melting in the northern ice sheet and at high elevations. Nevertheless, an all-time record high temperature for Greenland may have been set in 2013.Surface melt on the Greenland ice sheet spread to the northern coastal regions and became especially frequent in the far northeastern corner of the island (Kronprins Christians Land). However, while some high-melt-extent years recently have seen elevations above 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) warm to the melting point, this rarely occurred in 2013, nor was there extensive melt in the northern interior portion of the ice sheet. A small region of the northwestern ice sheet, the drainage areas of Peterman and Humbolt glaciers, saw some inland melting. (However, some of these dark red pixels are mixed land areas, including ice plus rock and permanently frozen ground.) Melt lakes were prevalent along the central western coast in 2013 (as is typical of most seasons) but far less extensive in the northeastern and northwestern regions than in 2012. Melt lakes in Greenland may be seen in NASA Rapid Response-MODIS Arctic Subset images.

FromNational Snow and Ice data Center (Colorado-USA)http://nsidc.org/

Read the whole article

Huge canyon discovered under Greenland ice

One of the biggest canyons in the world has been found beneath the ice sheet that smothers most of Greenland.

Scientists are surprised the feature has not been worn away by successive glaciations

The canyon - which is 800km long and up to 800m deep - was carved out by a great river more than four million years ago, before the ice arrived.

It was discovered by accident as scientists researching climate change mapped Greenland’s bedrock by radar.

The British Antarctic Survey said it was remarkable to find so huge a geographical feature previously unseen.

The hidden valley is longer than the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It snakes its way from the centre of Greenland up to the northern coastline and before the ice sheet was formed it would have contained a river gushing into the Arctic Ocean. Now it is packed with ice.

The ice sheet, up to 3km (2 miles) thick, is now so heavy that it makes the island sag in the middle (central Greenland was previously about 500m above sea level, now it is 200m below sea level).

The canyon still runs “downhill”, though, and meltwater from the ice sheet seeps out below sea level at the northern end – at a relative trickle, rather than a torrent. Glaciologists think the canyon plays an important role in transporting sub-glacial meltwater produced at the bed towards the ocean.

Prof Jonathan Bamber describes how the Greenland canyon was discovered

The canyon was discovered by researchers working on one of the great scientific puzzles – how much will the Greenland ice sheet contribute to sea level rise if, as predicted, the Arctic continues to warm as greenhouse gases increase?

They sought the answer with myriad flights using radar to bounce signals back off the bedrock underneath. Ice is transparent to radio waves at certain frequencies.

Studying the data collected mainly by Nasa and researchers from the UK and Germany over decades, they were amazed to stumble across the canyon.

The lead author, Prof Jonathan Bamber of Bristol University said: "With satellite images instantly available on a mobile phone we could assume that the Earth has been fully mapped, but there's clearly a lot left to discover. We're incredibly excited about this - it really is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery to find something on this scale."

Prof David Vaughan from British Antarctic Survey (Bas) told BBC News: “The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets hide a lot. It’s pretty surprising to find this canyon. Greenland isn’t that big for a canyon of that size, and for it to survive in its pre-glacial form after successive glaciations is quite something.”

Prof Vaughan said the canyon would have been partly uncovered at the time of the last interglacial 100,000 years ago. “There’s likely be some sort of bacteria down there - whether it’s viable is a different matter,” he said.

The canyon has never been seen by humans, who didn't exist four million years ago. If the Greenland ice sheet melts completely it will raise global sea level by 7 metres and swamp many major cities, so hopefully this is one great geographical feature that won't become a tourist destination.

From BBC Sci/ Environment

Russia's Arctic: Mission to protect wildlife

Russia is planning huge oil and gas developments in the Arctic Ocean off its northern coast - drilling that could threaten pristine wildlife habitats.

The early retreat of ice makes life harder for the polar bear and walrus

Large-scale production could begin in the next two decades, if the price of oil rises high enough.

Preliminary exploration has already begun, including in the Laptev Sea.

But scientists say the region is home to important, thriving populations of walrus and polar bears, which could be put at risk.

Biologists on the 2013 Laptev Expedition this summer have been trying to establish if the walruses and polar bears there are a unique group, in need of special protection. BBC journalists went with them to investigate the issue.

We flew to Khatanga, one of the most northerly towns in Siberia, and there we boarded a small boat, the Taimyr.

From Khatanga it was a two-day, 500km (310-mile) journey almost due north.

Darts are used to collect vital samples from the walrus

Polar bears

After the first day it became clear we had entered the domain of the polar bear. First we saw a mother with two five-month-old cubs on Maliy Begichev Island.

Then we saw a big "haul-out" of walrus at Cape Tsvetkov - perhaps 400-600 there, resting on the beach. Towering above them on the last large lump of ice was a large polar bear.

But our destination was Maria Pronchishcheva Bay, half-way up the Taimyr Peninsula. It is the most northerly bit of land in the world still attached to a continent.

"The oil companies are coming here with exploration projects already, and there are ongoing seismic explorations," said Igor Chestin, chief executive of the environmental group WWF Russia.

"So before the real oil and gas projects develop in the area we need to know that there is sufficient knowledge of the conservation needs here, which would allow us to put in the necessary protection if this development ever happens."

From satellite photographs taken a week earlier, the scientists on the expedition knew there had also been a large walrus "haul-out" there previously. By the time we sailed into the bay the number had dropped to around 60. But it was still enough for the crucial scientific work of the expedition - collecting DNA from the Laptev walrus.

From BBC Environment

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