It’s miraculous! “The critically endangered European eel was found near Coventry city centre” 😟 Just look at the state of that river bed.

LOL

I missed it, again.

Oh yes.

Thanks for that link. A permanent ban, it says. Some part of this Government isn’t so bad, then.

Isn’t the sea a commons? (I checked and it’s the high seas that are “Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction”) Maybe the Govt doesn’t require the water-company to keep the rivers and seas disease-free - they did reduce environmental standards, at least once. So legally they might be correct. But in reality, a shitty company doing the dirty work of a shitty government.

I’ve lived in this place on the South Wales coast, a little inland, for the past 20+ years. There’s always been a large colony of the common type of gull living nearby. Someone maybe stopped feeding them recently (past 2 years) as they now perch on our house, and generally come a lot closer than they used to. There are many hundreds of them, which you can plainly see when they do their mass spiralling. I find their calls, especially when they’re all at it at once, deeply affecting and lovely.

So something has changed, for sure, but I can’t say what. The impression of there being more in my neck of the woods might be because colonies from elsewhere can’t find food so have moved here 🤷‍♀️ .

Also, what was that in the video about sand-eels not being fished any more?

At the end of that article it says 30% of the two species tested had antibodies for the avian 'flu. I’m staying with that idea.

I don’t see how monitoring the many kinds of damage caused by road traffic would do an ounce of good: everyone loves their cars, and our infrastructure - not just England’s - relies on fossil-fuels use.

I haven’t tried it. Trouble is my phone’s on its last legs, but that’ll be going on the new one.

Liked the ‘spawn’ pun in the headline.

I started reading this and thought of Wietse van der Werf, who I know of from his years of tackling illegal fishing. And yes, it’s he who’s behind this.

Pop-up ecology!

I assume the docks are still active. That’s the beauty of these large spaces where public access is limited. The creatures make the most of it while they can.

I’ve never seen more than one urban fox at a time, yet. My time will come, when I least expect it, like it did for you.

Yes, it really does all boil down to what people’s values are.

Yes, it makes all the difference to any day. That reminded me of the raven (or jackdaw?) having a half-hearted peck at the raptor, at one point. It made zero impact. That fuzzy edge where the industrial world meets with the natural, fascinates me. It’s like a tide-line.

I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’m sure that’s part of it. And it’s a similar story here, with reduced numbers of waste-bins. I was waitng at a bus-stop yesterday - for quite a long time 😒 - that is, unsurprisingly, a rubbish hot-spot. The council removed the bin a couple of years ago. Garbage is flung into the bushes here too. But yesterday there was a small bird of prey hunting there. Well that was a treat, but seeing him fishing about amongst all the trash irked me all the more. By the way, the company I emailed about the guff by their houses got back to me and denied having any connection to that street, so then I reported it to the council as fly-tipping. Neverending story.

Yes, that seems to be the underlying attitude.

O cleverest Bot, A soul you have not ;-)

Shameless jockeying. I’m sure I signed a petition not long ago to stop this sort of thing.