Archive for January 20th, 2013
United Kingdom: Sad to see the tide turn against the otter
Posted by Guardian: Rob Penn on January 20th, 2013
Guardian: I love otters. I recall my father's excitement at seeing one glistening on a rock beside the sea on the west coast of Scotland in the summer of 1982. When I lived in a cottage beside the river Usk in my 30s, I used to rise before dawn in the hope of glimpsing the resident otter bitch teaching her pups to fish. Even now, I still get a thrill stumbling across a fish carcass, the debris of an otter's dinner, rotting on a riverbank.
I was surprised to learn recently that otters are now so numerous...
Can oil save the rainforest?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 20th, 2013
Guardian: American biologist Kelly Swing thwacks a bush with his butterfly net and a dozen or so bugs and insects drop in. One is a harvester, or daddy-long-legs, another a jumping spider which leaps on to a leaf where two beetles are mating.
This is the Tiputini research station, on the edge of the Yasuni national park in Ecuador, where the foothills of the Andes meet the Amazonian rainforest right on the equator. Swing and I are searching for unidentified creatures and within a minute or two of looking...