Veronika Wild

  The Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity THE ARCTIC Polar Bears Who can forget the widely circulated image of a polar bear trapped on an icefloe with neither prey nor land, nor even another ice floe in sight. Although Polar Bears can swim short distances, it takes five times as much energy as simply shuffling across the ice. Although polar bear numbers have improved in some regions – largely as a result of the ban on unregulated hunting in the 1970s, numbers generally are either  static or in decline. For the most part, shorter winters and warmer summers mean a shorter hunting season and poor condition which in turn leads to lower reproductive success. Some Polar Bears have taken to scavenging in settlements in order to get enough food. Ringed Seals which are staple of the Polar Bear’s diet, are also facing threats due to climate change and sea ice loss because they depend on sea ice for resting, breeding, and pupping in snow dens on the ice. Shrinking and th...

Just a quick update tonight. It's been 37oC all day.  At least there are a few things to celebrate this week. The chickens are doing well, Amazon has withdrawn it's whale meat offerings from its Japanese website and there have been a couple of wins for gay people. It would be nice if we could now extend a little of that sympathy to sharks and stop shark finning . Sharks are not cuddly and not a few people wish they would stay away from our beaches, but sea life is under threat everywhere and not even they deserve to be treated like this.Watch the video and you will see what I mean.   Eating shark fin strikes me as another frivolous food fetish which causes unnecessary suffering, in much the same way as paté fois production does, not to mention the criminal waste involved. That is, it would not be so bad if the sharks were being used for food, but the fins are just cut off living creatures which are then left to drown, rot or be eaten by predators.  Although the abo...