Plant hitchhikers that just refuse to be left behind

A while ago I very much enjoyed an article by Helen Dillon in which she mused on the challenges and opportunities presented by downsizing from her much-admired Dublin garden, and home of 44 years, to a smaller property.
                                             

Much of her article was concerned with the plants she intends to take with her and, even more interestingly, those she plans to leave behind. Among the plants she’s had enough of is the purple-leaved lesser celandine, Ficaria verna ‘Brazen Hussy’, although she admits that it will probably hitch a lift on some plant or other and turn up in the new garden, whether she likes it or not.

I sympathise; during my recent move from one end of the country to the other, I brought a few plants with me. Not very many, mainly because I knew that in the short term there was nowhere to put them, but even so I was impressed by how many unintended hitchhikers I had also brought with me. These include foxgloves, forget-me-nots, opium and Welsh poppies, dog violets and assorted aquilegias.

While returning from a walk in the national park, I would occasionally drop in at Steve’s nursery to say hello. On one of these occasions, Steve scraped some green stuff off a lump of tufa and said ‘Here, have some of this’. ‘This’ turned out to be Mentha requienii, by far the smallest and also most charming of the mints; a native of Italy, Sardinia and Corsica, it’s usually known as Corsican mint. Barely 1 cm tall, it bears a superficial resemblance to mind-your-own-business (Soleirolia soleirolii), but is a superior plant in every way, with tiny mauve flowers and a pungent mint smell.

Animal cruelty is given own ranking

CAMPASPE Shire ranked 34th of Victoria’s 79 local council areas for animal cruelty reports, placing it 19th on a per capita basis.
                                                 

The data comes after a list of hotspots on the issue was released by RSPCA Victoria last week.

RSPCA Victoria received 10,180 cruelty reports across the state in 2016-17 — about 28 per day.

Of these, 106 were concerns about the welfare of animals in the Campaspe region, which equates to one report for every 350 residents in the area.

Last year Campaspe ranked 41st and 30th on a per capita basis.

RSPCA chief executive Liz Walker said understanding the rate of cruelty reporting and the different offences in local areas is critical to ensuring that RSPCA Victoria directs its education, advocacy and enforcement efforts to the places that need it most.

As with last year’s data, reports received in 2016-17 about animals not receiving basic care far outnumbered all other offences reported.

“It’s disappointing to see that, for the second year in a row, too many Victorian animals were reported to us because of concerns about very basic issues: food, water, shelter and vet care when they’re sick or injured. These kinds of problems are so preventable.

Reports received from Campaspe included 51 reports of animals with insufficient food, water or shelter (4,763 across the state) and 48 concerns about hygiene, grooming and housing conditions (3,349 statewide).

Welfare concerns for dogs, cats and horses continue to make up the majority of issues reported.

Animals injured, orphaned in storm being cared for at Dane County Humane Society's Wildlife Center

Dozens of critters injured or orphaned in a storm that raged through the region Wednesday night have found refuge at the Dane County Humane Society’s Wildlife Center.
                                         

Jackie Edmunds, the center’s wildlife rehabilitation training coordinator, said Friday that 67 animals have been brought in over the past two days.

Birds were displaced from their nests due to high winds, and squirrels had to escape flimsy nests destroyed due to falling trees. The struggling animals were rescued after people saw them in their yards or neighborhoods and called the center, Edmunds said.

Among the injured animals are an American toad with an eye injury and a red-tailed hawk with spinal trauma. Other animal patients include American robins, mallard ducklings and sandhill cranes.

Bats, despite being nocturnal animals, cannot see in the dark. Instead they have evolved a similar ability known as use echolocation to navigate and locate prey at night. The bat emits a very high frequency sound and listens for the echo that bounces off objects. The difference in time between emitting the sound and hearing the echo allows the bat to build up a mental “picture” of its environment. Sounds that take longer to bounce back indicate that the surroundings are further away.

Of course, Magneto’s magnetic powers can produce a much wider range of effects, from lifting and manipulating metal objects to rearranging matter (a power definitely not seen in animals). However, his daughter Polaris has the ability to perceive the world as patterns of magnetic energy, which actually isn’t too dissimilar to the powers present in the animal kingdom.

Even ugly animals can win hearts and dollars to save them from extinction

The Earth is home to millions of species, but you wouldn’t know it from the media’s obsession with only a few dozen animals like tigers and gorillas.
                                                 

This narrow focus makes the most of popular fascination with large and cute creatures. Conservationists take advantage of these nonhuman celebrities to raise awareness about important issues and to seek donations to help save endangered animals. Given the multi-billion-dollar funding shortfall for nature conservation, public support is crucial.

Very popular species attract the most wildlife conservation funding. But what about the Nimba otter shrew, the Cuban greater funnel-eared bat or other threatened yet obscure species? And don’t all imperiled green spaces, not just the homes of snow leopards and orangutans, deserve attention?

These campaigns are very different. WWF-US raises money for a broad set of projects, addressing global issues from climate change and illegal wildlife trade to forest and ocean conservation. The EDGE campaign we analyzed focuses on saving 100 threatened mammal species.

Given these contrasting approaches, we wanted to see if and when marketing makes a difference. To do this we also had to account for whether the species used for fundraising mattered. This involved measuring an animal’s “appeal,” which depends on lots of factors, such as whether it is cute, large or famous. To see which animals were the most appealing, we showed 850 conservation supporters a random selection of the animal photos featured on the WWF-US and EDGE websites and asked these volunteers to rank the photos.

Let’s first consider WWF-US, which raises money through animal “adoptions.” When people donate, they signal their support for the well-known species. In return they get a stuffed toy, photos of the animals and adoption certificates. But the money WWF-US raised funds projects that benefit more than just the “adopted” animals.

Sabah to fight nature with nature

Researchers are racing against time to breed a tiny insect that they hope will destroy an aquatic plant that is drying up lakes and ponds around Sabah.
                                           

State Agriculture Department director Idrus Shafie said the Salvenia Molesta had thus far infested 19 out of the 20 oxbow lakes in the Kinabatangan region in Sabah’s east coast.

He said the fast-growing aquatic fern that could double its area from 10sq m to 20sq m in just three days choked lakes and ponds in Kota Belud, Tuaran, Paitan and Papar.

They believed the fern, native to South America, was brought in as an ornamental plant for aquariums and later discarded in drains or lakes where it began to spread rapidly.

He said the department was alerted about the infestation by Kinabatangan villagers in 2015 and were shocked when satellite imagery showed that almost all of the oxbow lakes there were choked with the weed.

The plants dry up the lakes as they displace the water.

“They are upsetting an entire eco system,” Idrus added.

He said the department brought in more than 350 of the Cyrtobagous salviniae weevils from Melaka last year and had been breeding these insects at its research centre in Tuaran and at the Tungog oxbow lake in the Kinabatangan.

“The weevils will take at least another year before we have enough to contain the situation.”

The weevils, originally from Australia, were used to control a similar infestation of the water ferns in the peninsula during the 1980s.

He said there was no fear of the insects – about the size of rice weevils – getting out of control as they were host specific in that they only consumed that particular water fern.

Australians are spending $12 billion a year on their pet animals

Australians are spending $12 billion a year on food, grooming, vets and insurance for their animals, making the pet care industry one of the major growth hot spots of the country’s business sector.
                                     

There are an estimated eight million pet owners, primarily of cats and dogs, which means Australia has one of the highest domestic animal ownership rates in the world.

And as more people choose to live by themselves with their animals, the growing level of spending has prompted new businesses to enter the market to take advantage of the boom in spending on pets.

On most days during the week Gustavo Montagut can be found around Sydney’s off-leash beaches and parks in the east with a pack of up to 10 dogs.

Mr Montagut, 30, left Colombia after studying marketing at university for a decade, to travel and learn the art of dog grooming in Shanghai.

He has increased the number of dogs he regularly takes out from 15 to as many as 105 in three months. He charges $45 a dog for four hours’ care. “I realised I didn’t want to just walk dogs anymore; I started to think of the idea of dog adventures,” he said.

It is estimated that 5 per cent of all Australian pets are insured, which is ahead of the 2 per cent in the United States but well behind Britain’s 25 per cent, which is the highest in the world.

In Australia, it is estimated that $600 million was spent last year on clipping and grooming services — owners can spend $150 every month for professional dog groomers — $500m on short-term boarding kennels and accommodation and $200m on training and behavioural programs.

Total spending in the pet industry, an estimated $12bn, was up 42 per cent last year over the figure for 2013. PetSure’s number of customers has risen from 45,000 in 2009 to 390,000 so far this year, which means its compound annual growth rate has been in the mid-20 per cent range for the past three years.