Some good news: otters!

Oct 18, 2010 11:38

From the BBC News site:The otter has made a remarkable comeback from the brink of extinction, the Environment Agency has said ( Read more... )

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Comments 22

lil_shepherd October 18 2010, 11:03:22 UTC
Except, for some odd reason, Kent - despite some excellent clean rivers.

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keristor October 18 2010, 11:09:33 UTC
Yes, I haven't found anywhere yet which explains why they are boycotting Kent. Too close to France, perhaps *g*.

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cmcmck October 18 2010, 13:32:26 UTC
Who CAN you mean? :op

I'm veggie anyway.

It is a bit of a mystery as to why they haven't recovered here although they were never common because they were hunted to the edge of extinction by the middle ages.

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watervole October 18 2010, 12:41:48 UTC
It's also good news for other species like water voles. When the pesticides are gone, otters do much better against mink. REducing mink numbers is good for watervoles (which were also being pushed to the edge of extinction)

Mink eat watervoles, otters don't.

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keristor October 18 2010, 13:02:23 UTC
Mink kill pretty much anything they can, it seems to me, nasty little blighters. If otters can hold their own then good for them. Otters are more fun, anyway, like water-puppies, I'm glad they are recovering. Now if we could get beavers successfully re-introduced (limited numbers have been let into the wild, and there has been at least one report of young, but nowhere near a viable population) I'd be really happy.

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Beavers janeg October 18 2010, 13:07:42 UTC
Careful what you wish for. We have lots of beavers, and lots of landowners cursing dams that flood areas they don't want flooded, redirected rivers, etc. As a city dweller I think it's wonderful to be out for a walk and see beavers, but rural dwellers have reasons to disagree.

Otters are one of my very favourite animals, and people who come with me to a zoo will attest that it is hard to pull me away from otters at play. They have the same problem getting me away from lemurs and meercats.

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Re: Beavers keristor October 18 2010, 14:38:10 UTC
The lemurs I've seen have tended to be not very active, but I love meerkats. We have a TV advertisement here for "Compare the Meerkat dot com" (actually run by "CompareTheMarket.com", an insurance price comparison website) which I enjoy very much.

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janeg October 18 2010, 13:08:32 UTC
By the way, your post came up as inappropriate for minors. I wonder why otters are considered a problem by LJ.

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keristor October 18 2010, 14:34:33 UTC
All of my posts are LJ's "covering adult matters" or whatever they call it (i.e. the middle one, neither the "extreme pr0n look away!" nor the "suitable for politicians and other infantile beings"). So if you aren't logged in, or if you have the screen setting enabled, you will indeed get a warning.

Re. the beavers: any animal[1] can be a pest in the wrong circumstances, just as any plant is a weed in the wrong place[2]. I'm not against keeping them to safe areas, but I do think that they should not be exterminated.

[1] Including, and especially, those of genus homo species sapiens.

[2] When I was a kid the rose bushes tried to put up suckers through the lawn, thus earning the title 'weed'. Similarly with the plum trees which used to try to propogate on the lawn.

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cmcmck October 18 2010, 16:28:19 UTC
Wonders what this 'extreme pron' that Keris is into might be? :o)

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keristor October 18 2010, 16:55:51 UTC
I take the fifth! (As long as it's a good Islay single malt, anyway...)

I don't actually remember what LJ's top setting is, but it's some sort of "adults only, strengste jugundverboten". OK, I just checked, the settings are "No Adult Content", "Adult Concepts", and "Explicit Adult Content". My LJ is unlikely to contain things which I could guarantee have /no/ adult content at all (I use words of more than one syllable!) so "Adult Concepts" is about right, but LJ then puts up the warning page if the viewer hasn't said that they want to be warned (or haven't logged in). (I'm also unlikelt to post "explicit adult content". Explicit adult discontent, on the other hand...)

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