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It seems that life is imitating Bike - I know it goes in cycles - but the Royal Mail has just issued a new set of stamps about endangered UK mammals. It's interesting the hedgehog is included, as is Muscardinus avellanarius about which I write reams. The pictures are worth a look, pity it won't shame the Japanese, Norwegians and Icelandians to stop killing whales for spurious research, which we all know goes straight to Japanese restaurants - disgusting people.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/apr/13/ro...
Angharad.
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Thank you for providing this link
and have a splendid day!
Con grande amore e di affetto, Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
"I Know It Goes In Cycles"
Har! Har! Har! They're lovely stamps though. I must admit I never thought of sperm whales or humpback whales as being UK animals, and hedgehogs were everywhere when I was a kid. No backyard was complete without them,
Joanne
Hedgehogs
>> hedgehogs were everywhere when I was a kid. No backyard was complete without them,
Isn't that rather a confirmation of the fact that they're endangered? They certainly aren't everywhere now.
Alas, the wicked Japanese, Norwegians, and Icelandians are not the only ones killing whales. The Italians kill around thirty sperm whales a year in the Mediterranean, as "accidental by-catch" by means of wicked driftnets which "economically" kill everything that passes by. These "legitimate" fishing practices are used by every country in the world, or pawned off by those few nations which forbid these wasteful methods through "flags of convenience."
We're all of us implicated, not just a "dirty" few. Is there a can of tuna on your pantry shelf?
Driftnetting
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Horned Lizards & Box Turtles
As Puddy says, we all share the blame. I'm not a great subscriber to the various global warming theories, but even to me it is still obvious the impact H. Sapiens has had. In my own area of the U.S. when I was a kid, two staples of spring and summer were box turtles and horned lizards. We'd avidly chase them down and capture them; and they were numerious enough for this to be a common thing for children to do..
Today, the fields where we'd catch horned lizards are filled with rows of suburbia. I can't remember when I last saw one, but it has been a long time. Box turtles are almost as scarce, except an ocassional sighting along the road in the more rural areas. We have not done well in considering our impact on other creatures, and it is past time to change.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
I think ...
... one of the main by-catch of tuna fishing by very long (several kilometres) lines is that most beautiful bird, the albatross. I'm a piscatorian (actually my diet is mostly vegetarian with occasional fish) but we avoid tuna and certainly whale meat (whales aren't fish, anyway).
Hedgehogs were common up to a few years ago but we see fewer spiky flat things on the road these days which must mean there are fewer running around. Not seen one in the garden for ages - don't they eat slugs? Incidentally I've spotted several badgers as road kill recently which perhaps means there's more of them about round here, at least.
Robi
I'm informed
that most of the bashed badgers are male, who apparently go looking for females at this time of year.
Drift netting and deep trawling are destroying the marine environment, most of it comes from Italy, Spain and France - although occasionally one of our submarines sink them - get caught in the nets and capsize them.
The waters around the British Isles used to be one of the richest for fish, in the whole world. The EU have virtually fished it dry.
Angharad
Angharad
Seen "The Cove"
As explained in this documentray, it isn't any one group of people -- it's all of us.
http://www.thecovemovie.com/
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Odd how things happen...
I didn't know the ocean from Adam when we moved back from OK to SC.I learned a lot very quickly though. They put me into Junior/Senior honors Marine Biology because it was the closest thing they had to 2nd year Human Physiology.(I was a sophomore). I didn't do well, possibly because I stopped going to class.
The truly odd and ironic thing is that they expelled me for truancy. Bit of an oxymoron, eh?
Anyway, this is how I managed to learn about things like bycatch and fisheries management from a woman who was a truly passionate and dedicated conservationist. She infected me with her passion and I live it every day.
Some of my memories of childhood were things like crabbing off the dock in the backyard. Not something I would recommend for young kids today. You can't eat em anymore, the runoff from pig and chicken farms has poisoned the water.
A funny side note. The company I work for(kgb)has acquired some UK services(118118 and Orange and a couple of others). Anyway, somebody asked on Sunday "Why don't people eat the flattened badgers on the road?"
I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. I actually didn't take the question because someone else got it first. It did make for a couple of hours of bad badger jokes around the house, though!
What I really wanted to say was "Well, mashed badger doesn't seem to have caught on as an entree"
I actually wanted to find some way to go on about "Badgers and mash" but I couldn't think how to make it work.
Abby
You'd be surprised.
There are people, odd people perhaps, but people never the less, who do make a habit of eating road kill - including badgers. I saw a badger about a couple of weeks ago when I was out cycling that looked almost undamaged - of course I've also smelled ones that even eaters of hung pheasants might choose not to eat. A friend of mine had a pheasant put its head through one of the back wheels of his trike and that was quickly stowed in his saddlebag for later :) Even my non-meat-eating self has grudging respect for the waste not want not attitude. Probably down to my war time up-bringing.
The only time I've been more than 200 miles from the sea was when we toured Nepal and that felt very strange. I live nearly as far from the sea as it's possible to get in the UK and still there are two coasts I can access within 100 miles.
btw you really work for the KGB? Does Obama know? Even more worryingly (for you) does Cheney? LOL
Robi
OK, reality check.
I totally don't work for anybodies intelligence agency. Yes, I am good at what I do but I ain't for hire, I don't care who you are. I'm busy having a life and being in love.
Abby
Road Kill
My stepfather once hit a Posum on the road and stopped the car and ran back and threw it in the trunk. "Yep, we're gonna eat that one"! He exclaimed. Truble was when we got home and opened the trunk, the posum, he waked up!
That's what I call
A first hands experience in encountering the playing possum*!
Faraway
*Playing possom - feigning death
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Kenya, early 2001
Talk about disgusting people, when I was preaching in Kenya, in 2001, we worked in an area not far from Mt Kenya around a place called Nyeri. The place had been decimated by HIV/AIDS, and more than 2/3 of the people were dead from it. Whole farms were deserted.
One of the reasons that the disease spread so fast is that in Native culture, it was believed that the disease was a daemon, and that a Man having sex with an infant would be cured. Kenya is not a Muslim country, but even if the men were married, they would lurk in the night, having sex with any available female.
Now that is Disgusting People!
Sa'eed