Latest news with #extinction
CTV News
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Beloved monster-sized Alberta dinosaur set for tests ahead of possible extinction
Tyra the Tyrannosaurus, the lovable landmark that towers over the Drumheller skyline in the heart of the Canadian Badlands, is facing an extinction-level event and is pictured in Drumheller, Alta., Tuesday, April 1, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh Tyra the Tyrannosaurus is set to be poked and prodded this fall to determine whether Drumheller's towering, monstrously popular icon can be saved from extinction. Mayor Heather Colberg says a technical check will determine how much work — and money — may be needed to keep the 25-metre figure in its current place dominating the skyline of the town northeast of Calgary. 'We've agreed on the engineering study, so that's going to take place probably this fall,' said Colberg, who also is leaving office this fall. 'Once that is done then, we'll have a good idea what her longevity is and everything about her, and then hopefully, we can make a decision before I'm gone.' 'If, all of a sudden, they come and say she's actually going to fall apart, then that's a whole different discussion. But if they say she's good for 30 years and she might need an outer coating, then that's different, too.' Tyra is four times the size of a real T. Rex and attracts 150,000 visitors a year, serving as the backdrop to hundreds of thousands of tourists' photos over the last quarter of a century. She stands across from the intersection of Gorgosaurus Street and Tyrannosaurus Drive near a visitor information centre. A nearby ice cream stand offers fossils, T-shirts and dino toys. Tourists can climb 106 stairs through Tyra's innards to stand inside her mouth and look down. While the town owns the land where she's located, the Drumheller & District Chamber of Commerce owns the attraction. The chamber has said the dinosaur is set to be dismantled when the lease runs out in 2029. That announcement has resulted in a public backlash, including 25,000 names on a petition calling for her to be spared. The Town of Drumheller also demanded meetings with the chamber and Travel Drumheller. The town announced in April the three groups would explore options, and the engineering study flowed from that. Colberg said she's optimistic the landmark won't go the way of the dinosaurs. 'I would be amazed if she's not (saved),' Colberg said. 'There's got to be a solution. I'm not giving up.' The town of 8,400 bills itself as the Dinosaur Capital of the World. Home to the famed Royal Tyrrell Museum, the community also has statues of dinosaurs that look like they crawled out of the Flintstones cartoon, greeting people on the streets. Colberg said she was initially surprised — but then not surprised — at the amount of national attention that Tyra's possible demise has garnered across Canada. 'People like the dinosaurs and love coming here for the dinosaurs,' she said. 'When you promote that you're the dinosaur capital of the world with the world's largest dinosaur, that's what people expect to see.' — By Bill Graveland in Calgary This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 28, 2025.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Nature: Bobcats are making a comeback in population in Ohio
Some of the most iconic mammals on Earth are large carnivores: lions, polar bears, tigers, snow leopards and many others. Unfortunately, nearly two-thirds of them are at risk of extinction due to the hand of man. Ohio once had a thriving suite of carnivores, including bears (more precisely an omnivore), mountain lions, wolves and bobcats. But as our human population flourished, these animals suffered. At the time of statehood, 1803, there were about 45,000 settlers of European descent. Today, the Buckeye State's human population is pushing 12 million. Bobcats, mountain lions and wolves vanished by 1855, victims of human persecution. People, in general, do not like larger predatory animals and do not want them around. Tangential to the disappearance of these charismatic mammals was the tremendous loss of the state's forests. At the time of settlement, 95% of Ohio was blanketed in rich tapestries of various woodland types. By the mid-1800s, most of that had been cleared, leading to the extirpation of another large mammal, the elk, a common prey item for mountain lions and wolves. Almost unimaginable, today, white-tailed deer and wild turkey had been vanquished from Ohio by the early 1900s. But people can right their wrongs, sometimes. Now, nearly one-third of Ohio is forested again, and that has allowed some forest-dependent animals to proliferate, perhaps most conspicuously the aforementioned deer and turkey. Far more exciting, to me, is the return of the charismatic bobcat, our only extant wild cat. In 1946, a bobcat was confirmed in Scioto County, the first record in nearly a century. Their numbers steadily increased, although bobcats remained rare for many more decades. Nature: The beauty of a red-shouldered hawk As forest cover has improved, bobcats have proliferated and they were removed from the Division of Wildlife's endangered and threatened list in 2014. While tenacious and scrappy, some readers have housecats that eclipse the average bobcat in size. While bobcats can range from 15 to 40 pounds, the average weight is around 22 pounds. A big Maine coon cat is larger. In keeping with its size, bobcat prey items are generally small, and rodents like white-footed mice and voles, along with rabbits, are their stock in trade. While bobcats are primarily nocturnal, they'll take day-active creatures like chipmunks and squirrels if chance permits. While I shouldn't even have to waste space on this, humans have absolutely nothing to fear from Lynx rufus. Wise creatures that they are, bobcats generally avoid us like the plague. No human has ever been killed by a bobcat, and attacks are nearly unknown. Since 1970, bobcats have been documented in all but 11 of Ohio's 88 counties. As would be expected, the largest numbers occur in the rough wooded hill country of southern and southeastern Ohio. According to Division of Wildlife data, Noble County is No. 1 with 340 reports. Numbers drop dramatically in the glaciated flatlands to the east, but there have been five reports from Franklin County. The return of the bobcat should only be considered a positive — unless you are a mouse — and they are furry stub-tailed proof that we can reclaim human-induced environmental damage. Nature: Clyde Gosnell and Omie Warner are extraordinary conservationists Bobcats' greatest foe today is vehicles. Vehicle strikes account for up to 20% of annual bobcat mortality. A car collision victim was recently brought to the Ohio Wildlife Center (OWC); she is the animal in my accompanying photo. While not badly injured, she suffered some neurological issues that have rendered her unreleasable. Shauna Weyrauch, a researcher and senior lecturer at OSU's Newark campus, has been studying Ohio's bobcats for the past decade. Through the use of trail cams and other tactics, she has unearthed many interesting facets of bobcat behavior and ecology. Weyrauch will be giving a program about bobcats on Aug. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ohio Wildlife Center, 9000 Dublin Road in Powell. Attendees will have the chance to see the bobcat whose image runs with this column. To register, visit Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jim This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Bobcats grow numbers in Ohio
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Rare colour footage of extinct Australian animal seen again after 90 years
An extinct Australian animal can once again be seen bounding across a paddock after rare 16mm film was digitised by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) this week. Taken almost 90 years ago, the clip contains the only known colour footage of a living Toolache wallaby, a species relentlessly hunted to extinction. While the marsupials were once common, the film itself shows just one female fenced in a paddock. She was likely the last living representative of her species when the footage was shot in 1936. Bernard Cotton, from the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia, would have understood the animal's significance as he travelled to film her at Robe, a coastal town located more than 340km south of Adelaide. The trip was in October, just one month after the last-known Tasmanian tiger died at a zoo in Hobart. The film begins in black and white and ends in colour, showing a Toolache wallaby completing common behaviours like hopping, eating, and cleaning itself and ends with a snippet showing four rock wallabies for comparison. Three years later, this individual was dead, and her species was extinct. Related: Unseen photos of Tasmanian tigers spark hope more could be discovered Australia has the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world, and watching back the newly digitised footage in 2025, the Field Naturalist's current vice president, Peter Matejcic, said he felt 'saddened'. Not only did the Toolache wallaby lose habitat to the agriculture industry, it was both culled and shot for fun. A diary from the 1800s that was unearthed by the Field Naturalists indicates recreational hunting of native species was a common weekend pastime across Australia. 'Co-existing with native fauna is difficult given human priorities,' Matejcic lamented as he spoke with Yahoo News Australia. The film, Toolache Wallaby in 1936 by BC Cotton, is owned by the Field Naturalists and it has granted Yahoo News permission to obtain and use it for this article. A digital copy of the film has been held at the South Australian Museum for 20 years, but that version is entirely black and white. What's incredible about the newly digitised NFSA copy is that it contains 34 seconds of colour footage at the end. Few people alive today had likely seen the colour version until it was removed from a canister and digitised in June. In black and white, it can be hard for modern viewers to imagine what it was like to see a living animal that has since gone extinct. In 2021, the NFSA engaged experts in Paris to painstakingly colourise footage showing a Tasmanian tiger, but luckily, this wasn't required for the Toolache wallaby. As NFSA technicians stared at the canister, they were initially unsure of the film's condition. Its film services team lead Dave McGrouther explained older 16mm film is made from diacetate, a material that shrinks and warps over time. 'The reality of working with film is that it's all deteriorating. The controlled storage conditions we have slow that down to a great extent, but there are occasions where we come across a film and it simply can't be saved,' he told Yahoo News. The first five minutes of the Toolache wallaby film, which are in black and white, were in reasonably good condition. And while the colour section had deteriorated and turned a deep magenta in colour, it still helps viewers imagine what this fascinating creature was like to see in real life. Anyone visiting the South Australian Museum can see a taxidermy specimen on display, but watching one alive on film, moving through its environment, adds another dimension of excitement. Although Yahoo has colour-corrected two stills from the footage, NFSA opted to release the video without alteration because doing so could result in the loss of some detail. McGrouther is one of the world's most experienced film preservation experts. He's working on an NFSA initiative called Deadline 2025, which aims to digitally preserve sound and film from the Twentieth Century before it ages and degrades. This includes thousands of old newsreels from cities and regional towns that tell Australia's history. At current rates, it's estimated the team has at least 70 years worth of work ahead of them. 'Film is our cultural record, it's how we view ourselves, it's a visual record of what Australia looked like in this previous century,' McGrouther said. While film is an important way for Australians to visualise their history, written first-hand accounts are also powerful. In March 1945, months before the end of World War II, an article in the Field Naturalists journal reflected on the demise of the Toolache wallaby. It includes a historic description detailing when the species were in such great numbers they 'swarmed in the neighbourhood of Kingston', at the southern end of the state's famous Coorong wilderness. A separate account indicates visitors to Australia have always marvelled at its wildlife. A man who saw Toolache wallabies in the mid-1800s says, 'I never saw anything so swift of foot as this species: It does not appear to hurry itself until the dogs have got pretty close'. When it became apparent that the Toolache wallaby was vanishing, less than a century after it was first described in 1846, efforts were made to preserve the species. But a plan to capture and breed the last survivors in the late 1920s was disastrous, because most were left exhausted, stressed, and quickly died. Secret hidden beneath Australia's 'most important' parcel of land Tourists almost kill 'world's oldest' creature 'Inconvenient truth' that's a growing threat to Australia's reputation At 72 years of age, Peter Matejcic from the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia has seen 'significant declines' in biodiversity across the country. In 2025, there are more than 2,000 species federally listed as threatened with extinction. Some are already likely extinct, but not enough time has passed without a sighting for this to be officially declared. Others are in such small numbers their genetics could be compromised, making recovery a challenge. History has shown that captivity is not the magic bullet for preventing extinction, as seen with the Tasmanian tiger and Tooloache wallaby. Matejcic wants to see increased focus in Australia on protecting natural spaces so that native animals can thrive in the wild. 'Once a species is confined to only zoo enclosures, survival of that species may be too late,' he warned. Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Colour and black and white footage of the extinct Toolache wallaby
This is the last known Toolache wallaby, seen living in a fenced paddock in 1936. The footage was made available by the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia, and digitised from a copy in the collection of the National Film and Sound Archive.
News24
5 days ago
- Science
- News24
SA's national bird now listed as vulnerable
South Africa's national bird, the blue crane, now faces a high risk of extinction, as it was recently uplisted from near threatened to vulnerable in the latest regional red data book classification system. The Regional Red Data Book follows the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List framework – and covers South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini. The IUCN has also listed the blue crane as vulnerable. The regional red data book's assessment reflects that the blue crane faces a high risk of extinction in the wild, in the medium term, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) noted in a statement. The EWT also pointed out that the species' decline in the Overberg, in the Western Cape, is of particular concern, as blue cranes occur in this region at higher densities than anywhere else in South Africa. The bird population in the Overberg has declined at an alarming rate of 44% in 14 years (between 2011-2025) according to data collected through a citizen science project, the Coordinated Avifaunal Roadcounts (CAR). CAR is conducted twice a year, relying on volunteers to count birds along specific routes. The data that is collected helps inform conservation decisions, as well as the decision to up-list the blue crane to vulnerable, EWT said. The blue crane population is projected to decline by 'more than 30% over three generations', said EWT conservation scientist Dr Christie Craig. Recent research by Craig showed that breeding success in the Overberg region in the Western Cape has halved since 30 years ago. The causes of the decline in the Overberg in the last 14 years remain unclear. Another researcher, Michelle Bouwer, has found that disturbance and high temperatures are also impacting nesting negatively, the EWT said. 'It certainly looks like, if temperatures are going to continue getting higher, that could definitely be a concern, and higher temperatures could be what's causing blue cranes to breed less well than they used to,' said Craig. Barbed wires and loose fences are another concern. When chicks get stuck in loose fences, they often can't get out and die. Older blue cranes can also get stuck in fences while flying when they can't see at night, explained Craig. Blue cranes are also affected by unintended poisoning and collisions with power lines. As for the latter, the EWT pointed out that power line collisions have declined in the past 15 years. This is mainly due to collaborations between EWT and Eskom to have the power lines marked, so the birds can see them better. Blue cranes are often found in agricultural areas, and conservation efforts in the Overberg have been driven by actively engaging landowners to raise awareness about the birds' protection and ensure that farming and cranes coexist peacefully. Conservation efforts must continue to address these threats — power line collisions, protection of natural habitats, and reducing poisoning and fence entanglements. 'The uplisting of blue cranes has demonstrated that this species is dependent on ongoing conservation efforts, especially as they occur almost entirely outside of protected areas,' Craig said.
