Florida Panther: When will we learn?

pantherA new year, means a new calendar, and here in the office I have just got mine – and it is animal themed! I have decided at the start of each month I will write a blog about the featured animal. So, lets start the brand new feature to my blog!

The Florida Panther

As you might expect, this panther lives in the forests and swamps of southern Florida, and as is to be even more expected in current times, this animal is endangered.

But! The news for these panthers is actually quite positive!

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Too many mouths and too little time

Just a quick apology to all my regular readers. Over the last 2 months I have been taking the final exams for my degree and deciding what to do with my future! As such I have been unable to blog as frequently as I would have liked. I will be regularly posting from now, so your summers are already looking brighter!! Thanks for your patience, and feel free to get in touch!

Most (if not all) of the people reading this post consider supermarkets, greengrocers or corner shops a necessity, something that is just part of everyday life. The commotion caused when these shops close for bank holidays only emphasises that fact. During these public holidays shelves are often left empty and fresh goods go short. But what if this was more common than just on bank holidays? What if there was a national food shortage? Where would you get your food from?

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Ready or not, here European malaria comes … are we ready?

The questionnaire linked below is now closed. Thank you for your participation, I truely appreciate it.

To those of you who are not familiar to my blog, my name is Victoria Ellis and I am in my final year at the University of Manchester studying Zoology. As part of my final year project I am required to write a post on my blog and access how useful the post was to my readers. To do this I have created a very small questionnaire (7 questions), that simply requires you to answer questions on various aspects of malaria before and after reading this post. This is not a test of your knowledge, but a test of how your knowledge has changed as a result of reading my blog post. I would really appreciate it if you took the time to do this; it will only take a couple of minutes and is completely anonymous.

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Ethical considerations of sustainable fishing in Europe

The United Nations (UN) estimate that 200 million people are directly or indirectly employed by the fishing industry and around 1 billion people depend on fish as their primary source of protein. The UN also reports that one quarter of the world’s fish stocks are over exploited and half the world’s fish stocks are fully exploited (UN, 2010). To try and counter this problem the concept of sustainable fishing has been proposed.

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Orangutan “who do you think you are” sheds light on conservation prospects

The orangutan is an animal very close to my heart. I was lucky enough to work with some of these beautiful and engaging animals during a trip to Borneo a few years ago. There are only two species of orangutan left on the entire planet, both of which are endangered! One species is found on the island of Borneo and the other species on the island of Sumatra. The orangutan is an arboreal animal that lives in dense tropical rainforest. The recent destruction of its habitat for timber extraction and oil palm plantations has resulted in a considerable global effort to conserve the species, before it is too late. However, modern conservation projects are not just a simple case of instigating a rehabilitation, relocation or reproduction programme.

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Mosquitos – To kill or not to kill, that is the question.

The climate we live in today is one of change. There is a huge debate as to if that change is for the better or worse, but the fact remains the climate is changing. This is not a new phenomenon. The climate has radically changed since the beginning of life some 3.6-3.8 billion years ago. However, no single species has ever been directly responsible for changing the climate – until Homo sapiens rocked up. We are changing the climate so quickly evolution can’t keep up. This means many species are struggling to survive, leading to a significant number of species extinctions. We are very quick to jump to the needs of endangered species, particularly those that are beneficial to us. But what about the species we don’t like? What about mosquitos? How many times have you been on holiday and got a nasty bite, or been forced to religiously take anti-malaria tablets? Mosquitos are irritating disease spreaders, so why don’t we just get rid of them?

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Orangutan real-estate provides new hope.

Spending time with a particular animal undoubtedly creates a bond that stays with you for a long time, if not for life. In my life, this has been the case for my horses, dogs, the elephants I looked after at the zoo, as well as a certain cheeky tapir that liked to have his tummy tickled. Another animal I became particularly attached to was the Orangutan.

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