World’s fastest man adopts world’s fastest animal
Olympic champion and world record holder in 100 and 200 meters Usain Bolt sponsored a new baby cheetah on the 2nd of November in Kenya. The Jamaican sprinter’s support of the three-month old male cheetah has been made in order to boost Kenyan conservation efforts of its wildlife, whose survival is threatened by trophy hunting, climate change and human encroachment. Usain Bolt will pay $3,000 a year to care for the new cub named Lightning Bolt who will be raised at an animal orphanage in Nairobi. The money will go to the Kenya Wildlife Service. Bolt is the sports ambassador of The Zeitz Foundation, a German ecological association.
Golf courses used as sanctuaries to wildlife
Golf is often accused of being harmful for the environment because of heavily watered fairways and greens saturated with weed-killing chemicals. But the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds now wants to involve 2,600 golf courses to the fight to save rare species. With the R&A, golf’s governing body, they published a handbook to help course greenkeepers think of birdie in a different way. There are 140,000 hectares of suitable rough and out-of-bounds areas across UK golf courses. For example, the Royal Troon golf club in Ayrshire has surveyed populations of breeding birds including skylark and linnet, and manages the course around them. Hankley Common in Surrey has rare nightjar, woodlark and Dartford warbler while several courses in the Highlands are one of the best places to spot the Scottish crossbill, the only bird species unique to Britain.
Key information :
-The Beaky Birdsearch : This site is a geographical search engine of UK bird species.
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Snow sports stress to wildlife
Winter is a period of stress for wildlife. Scientists have found that in areas of the Alps heavily used for snow sports, black grouse produced large amounts of hormone suggesting tension. This fact led them to think that snowboarding, off-piste skiing or trekking are responsible. During the winter, these birds make burrows in the snow. Rising winter temperatures are reducing the availability of these hiding places on lower slopes, while this new study suggests the growing popularity of extreme winter sports is affecting their chances higher up the slopes. These researchers from Switzerland
and Austria have concluded that the perturbation caused by those sports may make birds leaving their igloos frequently, exposing them to cold and predation. More research will measure these impacts.
bravenet.com