Photographers, endangered animals, and a little from myself.

Photographers, endangered animals and a little from myself

Hello and welcome to my latest blog. What a week! I can't remember having a week as busy as the one just passed for quite some time. I hope you all have been having a good week yourselves and are now enjoying the weekend.

 

I start my blog off this week by pointing you towards the amazing work of some highly talented photographers who entered and were subsequently recognised and rewarded for their work when the final judging took place in the Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.. A mention should go to Matthew Button for bringing this article to my attention, so please take the time to appreciate these exceptionally talented photographers work.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2012/oct/18/veolia-environnement-wildlife-photographer-2012-in-pictures

 

Endangered Animals Part 2: Four - toed Terrapin Batagur baska

 

The Four -toed Terrapin is classified as critically endangered and thirty ninth overall in the hundred most endangered species on the planet by the IUCN and the Zoological Society of London. This species of Terrapin are separated from all other species of Terrapin as a result of having four rather than five claws on the forelimb, hence the name Four-toed Terrapin. The Terrapin prefers estuaries and coastal habitats, feeding on aquatic plants and animals such as clams. The distribution of the species is known to include Bangladesh, Cambodia, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. It has been declared extinct in Viet Nam, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand.

Numerous threats mean the future of the species is bleak. These include harvesting of eggs, pollution, accidental deaths caused by power boats, loss of Mangrove Forest, loss of suitable nesting beaches and the decline in food supplies. One of the main actions taken to protect the Four -toed Terrapin was to include it in the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972. This is the main law put in place to protect rare species in India.

 http://www.envfor.nic.in/legis/wildlife/wildlife1.html
The future looks bleak however unless more is done to protect them from habitat loss, human predation and all the other threats they face unsurprisingly most of these are man made problems.

 Information for this section was found for the following links.

Image copyrights: Asian Turtle Conservation Network

http://indianbiodiversitytalk.blogspot.co.uke/2012/09/Great-Indian-Bustard-Four-Toed-Terrapin-White-Bellied-Heron-Gooty-Tarantula-among-the-100-m
ost-threatened-animals.html
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2614/0
http://www.biosearch.in/publicOrganismPage.php?id=131440

Finally from myself, did anyone here about this recently? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19812064   What a turnaround for an animal that for long periods of time has been feared by people, as it now comes to light  could provide a huge amount of medical benefit to people. I believe that any species that faces problems should be properly looked after and conserved and with this new possiblity coming to light it can only help their cause.

That's it from me have a good week and I will be back next Friday with my latest blog,
George.