Tag: extinction

Five threatened bumblebee species make a comeback in UK

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England’s five rarest bumblebees have made a comeback in a former stronghold thanks to wildlife-friendly farming that aims to support an extinct bee being reintroduced from New Zealand…

The five threatened species, including the shrill carder bee which is England’s rarest bumblebee, have spread their geographic range in the south-east as a result of environmental schemes in Dungeness and Romney Marsh.

Around 50 farms in the area have been working since January 2009 to restore habitats suitable for the short-haired bumblebee ahead of its reintroduction from New Zealand where it was taken more than a hundred years ago – and survived while becoming extinct here.

The project to bring back the species, which was transported to the other side of the world in the 19th century to pollinate red clover grown to feed sheep, was delayed after captured bees died in hibernation.

But the work to improve habitats in the area ahead of the short-haired bumblebee’s eventual release has already had a positive effect on threatened species which are still found in the area, the wildlife experts said.

The five bumblebee species – the large garden bumblebee, the shrill carder bee, the shanked carder bee, the moss carder bee and the brown banded carder bee – have all increased their ranges in Kent and East Sussex this summer after decades of decline.

The shrill carder bee has been seen in areas where it has not been recorded for 25 years, according to the groups running the project…

Project leader Dr Nikki Gammans said…”We hoped that we would begin to see results like this for these species but we really didn’t expect to see it quite so quickly. It’s a great result, and one we’re very excited about…”

Of course, the new Conservative-led government will probably cut the funding for programs like this one. Next month, we hear.

We didn’t kill off the Mammoth. Phew!

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Woolly mammoths and other large, lumbering beasts faced extinction long before early humans perfected their skills as spearmakers, scientists say. The prehistoric giants began their precipitous decline nearly 2,000 years before our ancestors turned stone fragments into sophisticated spearpoints at the end of the last ice age…

“Some people thought humans arrived and decimated the populations of these animals in a few hundred years, but what we’ve found is not consistent with that rapid ‘blitzkrieg’ overkill of large animals,” said Jacquelyn Gill…who led the research team…

Gill’s team rules this out by putting a more accurate date on the decline and fall of woolly mammoths and more than 30 other large mammals that dominated the landscape as the ice sheets retreated from North America…

Specifically, the scientists measured levels of a fungus that is known to thrive in the excrement of giant herbivorous mammals and nowhere else. They reasoned that more fungal spores meant more dung, which in turn reflected a larger population of roaming mammals. The sediments also held ancient pollen and charcoal dust, which gave the team clues about the predominant plant life and frequency of wildfires.

Writing the US journal Science, the researchers describe how the amount of mammal dung started to fall around 14,800 years ago, long before advanced spearheads became commonplace. The animals had been almost completely wiped out a thousand years later…

The study is among the first to reveal the environmental consequences of such a catastrophic decline in species. Pollen and charcoal recovered from the sediment cores show that wildfires became far more common and that the variety of plant life changed dramatically, as the nutritious and easily digestible trees and shrubs that were eaten by the mammals grew back.

This more gradual decline appears to have been an understandable result of changing food sources on the tundra. We just jumped in at the end and finished the critters off.