I love to travel, mainly to Africa where I was born, I enjoy reading and playing bridge. I go for rambles in the countryside. I collect stamps and go to T'ai Chi classes. I love my two cats and my garden birds. I adore the African wildlife and try to help Conservation groups.
'Gorilla kingdom' opens in London.
A new enclosure is to be officially opened at London Zoo, where keepers hope gorillas will begin to breed. Gorilla Kingdom consists of a large open island, surrounded by a moat, an indoor "gym" and a back den.
Three western lowland gorillas will live in the enclosure: Bobby, a 23-year-old male; and two females, Zaire, 32, and Effie who is 13.
The £5.3m project means that Bobby can see the sky without bars for the first time since he was captured as a baby. Rescued from a circus in Italy in 1983, he has not yet sired any young.
Effie, who has recently arrived from Leipzig Zoo, has already had two babies. With her slim physique, her keepers have dubbed her "the Kate Moss of gorillas".
The newcomer has been introduced to Bobby and Zaire gradually. The zoo wants to recreate the social structure that exists in the wild - where a single dominant mature male - or silverback - has a harem of about five females.
Effie is impatient to join the others outside on the island."We've seen the end of environments that are totally divorced from nature," said David Field, director of the Zoological Society for London (ZSL), which owns the zoo.
Mr Field has a special relationship with Bobby. As he speaks, the gorilla watches him carefully. Mr Field says the silverback notices how the keepers react to his presence, perhaps wondering if there is another "alpha male" around. But the director asserted that gorillas were not aggressive. "There's a lot of bluff involved in their displays; it's all about bravado," he said.
While the silverback appears more interested in the people watching him, Zaire is busy "gardening", digging at the earth on the island. She was born in captivity and seems to be copying what she has seen zoo staff doing. She loves to play with shoes and fabric, "especially if it's pink or red", said keeper Daniel Simmonds.
London Zoo has been criticised in the past for not having enough space for the animals it claims to conserve. International wildlife charity Born Free would rather the zoo phased out its keeping of gorillas in captivity and invested more in wild habitat conservation.
"The Democratic Republic of Congo... has an estimated 12 million hectares of national parks and reserves, containing perhaps as many as 5,000 individuals," said Daniel Turner, Born Free's spokesperson.
But ZSL, itself a charity, argues that its zoo raises money for overseas projects. Efforts to protect the species continue, and it is illegal now to capture gorillas in the wild, although poaching still goes on.
Baby gorillas are sold in central Africa to be kept as pets - their whole family is killed to get at the youngster.
Freaky Beaky's love of dripping.
Freaky Beaky the blue tit owes his life to a diet of bread and dripping. The bird has a one-inch (2.5cm) beak, almost five times the average, which has left him unable to enjoy a normal blue tit diet of insects, seeds and nuts.
The four-inch (10cm) bird was a regular visitor to a house in Brambridge, near Winchester, in Hampshire, where the owner noticed the unusual bird was unable to eat the food in her bird feeder. She tried putting some wholemeal bread fried in beef dripping into the feeder, and was delighted when Freaky Beaky kept coming back for more.
Wildlife photographer Richard Lawrence took photographs of the bird from inside his mother's house.
Mr Lawrence, 51, from Looe, in Cornwall, said: "I was inside the house, about 10ft away from the bird when I took the shot. "My mother had been going on at me for a long time about coming over to get a shot of Freaky Beaky. "But I couldn't believe it when I actually saw him. "He wasn't able to eat anything like peanuts because of his beak. "But my mother found that he loved bread fried in dripping. She just put it inside the bird feeder. "The bird's not actually tamed but he definitely knows where the food is. "He keeps coming back every day to feed because he can't get food anywhere else. "He wouldn't have lived if she hadn't found a way of feeding him."
Mr Lawrence, who works as an operator for South West Water, has been taking wildlife and nature photographs for 35 years. But he says that getting a shot of Freaky Beaky was one of his more unusual challenges. He added: "It was certainly pretty remarkable - I've taken a lot of pictures of birds in my time but I haven't seen a bird like him before."
Bird experts agreed that Freaky Beaky owes his survival to his special diet.
Andre Farrar, spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said: "Blue tits normally have short, powerful, stubby beaks that allow them to pick up insects, seeds and berries but this one clearly has a gross deformity which means he can only eat out of the side of his beak.
"The bread and dripping was a lifeline for this plucky little chap. "It's going to be a challenge but this is clearly an adult bird which has survived the winter so he may do just fine." Freaky Beaky can expect to enjoy the average blue tit life span of three to four years.
Mr Farrar said it was difficult to say what caused the super size beak but that it may be what farmers know as "feather and beak" disease, a condition that causes abnormalities in birds.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Cameroon mourns presidential lion.
People see the lion's death a bad omen for President Biya. Cameroon's wildlife minister has encouraged people to pay their last respects to the country's most famous lion, named Paul after the president. The lion died in Mvog Beti zoo in the capital, Yaounde, on Saturday.
Wildlife Minister Elvis Ngolle Ngolle said Paul's body has been preserved and the public is now able to visit it.
A BBC correspondent says people see the death as a bad omen for President Paul Biya whose party is seeking to extend his time in office beyond 2011.
This week, parliament began debating a bill to amend the constitution. The president is elected for seven years and, following a 1996 amendment, can only serve two terms. Mr Biya has ruled Cameroon for 24 years and will be about 78 when his current term expires in 2011.
The BBC's Randy Joe Sa'ah in Yaounde says Paul and his mate were named Paul and Chantal after the presidential couple. Chantel has been Paul's partner for a long time.
Last Thursday, Mr Ngole Ngole gave the zoo a cash donation for the treatment of the sick lion. But despite these efforts the lion died two days later from kidney problems. The minister said his illness is thought to be related to the lion's earlier castration.
That operation was performed after a lioness he mated with gave birth to deformed cubs, the minister said.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Dog saves US owner with Heimlich.
Toby licked Debbie's face to stop her from passing out. A dog owner in the US state of Maryland says her golden retriever Toby saved her from choking to death by performing the Heimlich manoeuvre.
Debbie Parkhurst, 45, said she was eating an apple at home last Friday when a piece became lodged in her throat and she began to choke. Ms Parkhurst said she pounded on her own chest but could not move the piece. Toby joined in, jumping on her chest and dislodging the apple, then licking her face so she would not pass out.
Ms Parkhurst, who lives in the town of Calvert, said she was convinced Toby was not playing and was trying to perform his own version of the Heimlich.
The manoeuvre, named after Dr Henry Heimlich, who first recorded it in 1974, aims to clear airways with abdominal thrusts.
LIFE-SAVING PETS
2006: Belle the beagle saves the life of her Florida owner from a diabetic seizure by telephoning emergency services. The trained beagle sniffs Kevin Weaver to detect the seizure, then hits 9 on the keypad
2006: Cat saves family of four from blaze in Queensland, Australia, by scratching face of its sleeping owner
2004: UK rabbit owner Simon Steggall says his 1.5 stone (9.5kg) pet Dory saves his life by jumping up and down on his chest as he slipped into a coma
Ms Parkhurst, who works with jewellery, said two-year-old Toby got serious after her own efforts failed.
"The next thing I know, Toby's up on his hind feet and he's got his front paws on my shoulders," she told Associated Press. "He pushed me to the ground, and once I was on my back, he began jumping up and down on my chest."
Ms Parkhurst is recovering from chest and stomach wounds from Toby's jumping.
"I literally have paw print-shaped bruises on my chest. I'm still a little hoarse, but otherwise I'm OK," she said. "They say dogs leave a paw print on your heart. He left a paw print on my heart, that's for sure. "The doctor said I probably wouldn't be here without Toby. I keep looking at him and saying, 'You're amazing'."
Ms Parkhurst and Toby have now been asked on to numerous US chat shows.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Thames 'clean enough' for salmon.
Salmon have been introduced to the River Thames after experts declared the water clean enough for the fish to breed - after almost 200 years.
The young salmon, were released into the Thames tributary, Lambourne river, at Welford, near Newbury, Berks.
Thames salmon died out in the 1830s, with salmon from other sources, which do not breed there, present from 1974, the Environment Agency (EA) said.
It is hoped a salmon population will be back in the River Thames in 5-10 years.
An EA spokesperson said the new salmon should stay in the river for a year before heading downstream through London, and up to Greenland before coming back to breed.
Darryl Cilfton-Dey, of the Environment Agency, told BBC news: "People do fish for salmon on the Thames but the population is so small at the moment that there's not a great deal of chance of catching one.
"Hopefully if these come back, and if they breed and if the young from those come back, then in a few year's time there'll be quite a few salmon around."
Salmon eggs, about 5,000, were incubated and 2cm (0.8in) long baby salmon introduced to the river.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Battle over Bruno the bear's body.
By Steve Rosenberg -BBC News, Berlin.
A diplomatic row has broken out between Germans and Italians over a bear shot dead by Bavarian hunters last summer. Rome is demanding Bruno the bear back, claiming he is Italian state property.
But despite a request from the German government, the Bavarian state environment minister is refusing to hand the brown bear's body over.
Bruno wandered from Italy to Germany via Austria and was gunned down after eating 30 sheep, four rabbits and a guinea pig. Bruno took a tragic wrong turn in becoming the first brown bear to have been spotted in Germany for 170 years. Bavarian hunters ended his life - but not the story.
Nine months on, the Italians are demanding Bruno's body back. All 100kg of it. But the Bavarians have blown the idea that Bruno is Italian state property out of the water. As far as they are concerned, since Bruno died on Bavarian soil - the carcass is theirs to keep. They plan to stuff him and put him on display in a local museum.
Germany's federal government tried to intervene on the side of the Italians. But the Bavarians will not budge. As for the late bear himself, as long as Bruno's fate remains unclear, he will remain in a freezer somewhere in Bavaria.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Gardens 'attract fewer songbirds'.
Robins are among the birds spotted less in gardens this winter. Fewer songbirds visited UK gardens this winter than last year - with the numbers for some species at a five-year low, a survey for the RSPB suggests. The number of song thrushes spotted in gardens has fallen 65% in a year, while the number of blackbirds fell by 25%.
The RSPB blamed the mild European winter and a bumper countryside fruit crop, meaning the birds did not have to visit UK gardens for food as often. Some 6.5m birds were counted in 236,000 gardens for the RSPB on 27-28 January. More than 400,000 people took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch.
Chaffinch tops Scotland poll.Some 41,000 children participated in the Big Schools' Birdwatch, involving 1,200 schools. The RSPB's head of climate change policy Ruth Davis said birds would adapt their behaviour to suit changing conditions.
"A snapshot in winter gives only part of the picture, but the varying birds visiting our gardens is one example of the impact climate change is having on the natural world," she said. "Although the mild winter seems to have provided more food for song thrushes in the countryside this year, as changes to our climate become more extreme many birds will struggle to cope with the altered weather patterns."
The number of robins spotted has also fallen, according to the survey. It suggests the house sparrow is the most common garden bird, followed by the starling and the blue tit.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Dog-sized toad found in Australia
By Phil Mercer - BBC News, Sydney.
A giant cane toad the size of a small dog and nicknamed Toadzilla has been captured in northern Australia.
Toadzilla is the biggest cane toad ever found in Australia's Northern Territory and weighs just under two pounds, according to an environmental group.
Environmentalists have been trying to stop the spread of the poisonous creatures across the country's tropics.
The toads were introduced from Hawaii in the 1930s in a failed attempt to control native cane beetles.
Toadzilla was caught during a community hunt in Darwin. Residents have been urged to help stop the spread of this most unwelcome of pests.
Environmental group FrogWatch, which organises hunts to destroy the toads, said the creature measured 20.5cm (8 inches) and weighed 861g (1.9lb).
"He is huge. I would hate to meet his big sister," said FrogWatch co-ordinator Graeme Sawyer.
Cane toads were first released in Queensland and have since marched in their millions across the country.
They are prolific breeders. Some estimates put their number as high as 200 million.
What is beyond doubt is their effect on the environment.
They have poisoned countless native animals, including crocodiles which have died after eating them.
The population of some snakes, lizards and small marsupials have also suffered greatly.
A Northern Territory MP once said the toads were such a menace that people should attack them with golf clubs to keep them at bay.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Elephant kills British tourists.
Elephants in Zimbabwe killed 12 people in 2005, figures show.
Two British tourists were killed in an attack by an elephant in Zimbabwe on Saturday, the Foreign Office has said. The mother and daughter were charged by the bull elephant during a safari walk with a guide and a professional hunter in Hwange National Park. A third Briton, the husband and father of the two women, was slightly injured and a tour guide was seriously hurt, officials said.
A guide had attempted to shoot the elephant, but missed.
The Foreign Office did not release any further details at the request of the tourists' family. Investigations are under way to see if the tour group's armed guides were negligent, Bulawayo police and wildlife authorities said.
Elephants charged and trampled 12 people to death in 2005, according to official figures of reported incidents.
The elephant population in the western Hwange park, the country's largest nature reserve, has soared in the absence of regular culling measures, conservation groups said.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Highway shut for butterfly travel.
The migration is only one of two mass butterfly movements worldwide. Taiwan is to close one lane of a major highway to protect more than a million butterflies, which cross the road on their seasonal migration.
The purple milkweed butterfly, which winters in the south of the island, passes over some 600m of motorway to reach its breeding ground in the north.
Many of the 11,500 butterflies that attempt the journey each hour do not reach safety, experts say.
Protective nets and ultra-violet lights will also be used to aid the insects.
Taiwanese officials conceded that the decision to close one lane of the road would cause some traffic congestion, but said it was a price worth paying.
"Human beings need to coexist with the other species, even if they are tiny butterflies," Lee Thay-ming, of the National Freeway Bureau, told the AFP news agency.
Each year thousands of butterflies die when turbulence generated by fast-moving cars drags them into the traffic or under the wheels of oncoming vehicles.
Ecologists hope the triple-action effort of lane closure, protective nets and ultra-violet lighting will dramatically increase the milkweed's chances of reaching the breeding ground.
The protective nets are designed to force the butterflies to fly higher, reducing the chances of them getting caught in the traffic. Ultra-violet lighting will be used below an elevated section of road to encourage the butterflies to head beneath.
The measures are estimated to have cost $30,000 (£15,20O)
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Troubled Japan whaler back home.
Japan's main whaling ship has arrived back in port after an Antarctic hunt hit by setbacks including a fatal fire. Despite being forced to end the hunting season early, the crew still killed 508 whales out of a target of 860.
The annual hunt always makes headlines, as Japan insists it is done for research, while campaigners say that is just a pretext to procure whale meat. This year's hunt was more controversial than usual, due to a high seas showdown with environmental campaigners.
The whaling fleet left for the Antarctic in December, and planned to hunt 850 minke whales and 10 fin whales until mid-March. It was involved in several clashes with protest group Sea Shepherd, leading Japanese officials to accuse the activists of behaving like pirates.
Then the 8,000-tonne flagship, the Nisshin Maru, was crippled by an unrelated fire, and one crew member was killed in the blaze.
Environmentalists raised fears that chemicals from the damaged ship could spill into the Southern Ocean, close to a large penguin colony. Such concerns proved unfounded, but the stricken ship was forced to make its way back to Japan without its quota of whales.
Now it has reached port, plans for the rest of the year - including whether the ship can return to service for next season's hunt - are being assessed.
"Everything depends on the results of our inspections of the ship, but the fact that it returned all the way to Japan on its own suggests there aren't major machinery problems," a fisheries agency official told reporters on Friday.
Japan is strongly opposed to the international ban on commercial whaling. It hunts whales every year under what it describes as a scientific research programme, but after research has taken place the meat is sold.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Pirates put bounty on dogs' heads.
Lucky and Flo are being kept in a secret location. Two sniffer dogs have been so successful hunting pirated films in Malaysia that crime bosses have put a price on their head, officials say. The black Labradors, Lucky and Flo, made dangerous enemies this week after their first bust, discovering about a million pirated DVDs and CDs.
Authorities say there is now a bounty on offer to anyone who eliminates the dogs, though the amount is not known. The animals are being kept in a secret location with increased security.
"The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates, thus the instruction to eliminate them," Firdaus Zakaria, enforcement director at the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, told the New Straits Times.
Six people were arrested when the dogs led handlers to a stash of pirated material, thought to be worth up to $3m (£1.5m), in Malaysia's southern city of Johor Baru on Monday.
The animals were trained in Northern Ireland to identify the smell of polycarbonates - chemicals used in the disc manufacturing process.
Malaysia is one of the hubs of Asia's huge trade in pirated films, music and games.
The Motion Picture Association of America says big entertainment studios lost $1.2bn (£600m) to movie piracy in the region last year.
A spokesman for the MPAA said Malaysia is the first country in the world to use dogs to detect fake discs.
The dogs are being loaned to Malaysian police on a one-month trial from the MPAA, which is ramping up efforts to fight counterfeiting.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Pulling species from the brink
By Charles Colville- BBC Horizon.
The northern white rhino is under threat in the wild.There are only thirteen northern white rhinos left in the world. The species is hovering on the brink of extinction. But three men are pushing forward the frontiers of science to try to save them.
Thomas Hildebrandt and his team, from the Berlin Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research, are world leaders in using artificial reproduction to breed rare elephants, rhinos and even komodo dragons. Their work has never been more urgent. Throughout the history of Earth, 99% of all species which ever existed have disappeared. It is called the natural rate of extinction.
But now scientists think human activity is causing species to disappear at up to 10,000 times this rate. Many claim the last time this happened was 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs died out. The great conservationist Richard Leakey has called it "the Sixth Mass Extinction".
Only one northern white rhino baby has been born in the last six years. Now, the Berlin team is working with six captive animals, at the Dvur Kralove Safari Park, 110km (70 miles) north-east of Prague, in the Czech Republic.
Last summer, they inseminated Fatu, one of only two fertile females in captivity. She had not been ovulating and needed hormone injections to get her cycle started. Months later, the results came in and unfortunately she did not get pregnant.
"Despite the setback, we have to continue and we are very determined," says Dr Hildebrandt. "We know that the work that we do is very important." Captive breeding programmes will reduce dependence on wild animals. Dr Hildebrandt is now convinced that artificial insemination alone will not save the species, so he is developing a ground-breaking IVF technique.
Working with an international team from the Netherlands, Australia and China, he has already successful collected an oocyte, or egg, from a female of the more numerous southern white rhino species, at Western Plains Zoo, in New South Wales.
The egg was fertilised in vitro, in a test tube, to produce an IVF rhino embryo. "Reproduction technology is increasingly important for saving species," says Dr Hildebrandt, who knows that time is running out. Later this year, the team will start to harvest eggs from the northern white rhino in the Czech Republic, and if all goes well, create baby northern whites. With so few northern white rhinos remaining, the researchers hope to use southern white rhinos as surrogate mothers.
Dr Hildebrandt and his colleague Frank Goeritz were brought up in the former East Germany. They both suffered under the former communist regime and were initially not allowed to attend university, because of their middle-class background.
Instead, they had to work as porters in an agricultural vet college. However, Dr Hildebrandt persuaded the head of the institute to allow him to study for a degree. That is when he started work on artificially inseminating cattle.
Within a few years, the zoologist was working with wild animals. Such was his passion for the subject that when the Berlin wall came down in 1989, he was too busy inseminating rare animals at the East Berlin Zoo to join the millions of his compatriots crossing to the West.
Since then, the team has travelled ceaselessly across the world. Zoos and conservation projects from Australia to California have requested their services to boost breeding programmes. However, the German scientists often confront unexpected obstacles on their travels. Last October Dr Hildebrandt collected semen from a male elephant at Pittsburgh Zoo, to use for inseminating a female elephant 3,000km away in Salt Lake City.
Captive breeding of rhinos is far from a straightforward business. The semen had to be placed in carry-on baggage, to avoid it being exposed to extreme temperatures or cosmic rays. At the time, liquids could not be transported on American planes, following the attempted terrorist attacks on transatlantic planes in August 2006. Initially, airport security refused to give the go ahead and the project appeared doomed. Only after the intervention of the head of Pittsburgh Zoo did airport security officials relent, and allow Dr Hildebrandt and his elephant semen on board the plane.
But even then, Dr Hildebrandt, and the elephant semen, had to be escorted by a bodyguard through the airport. Happily, the semen arrived within the eight-hour deadline, just in time to inseminate Christy, the female elephant at Salt Lake City Zoo.
So far, Dr Hildebrandt and fellow zoologists, Frank Goeritz and Robert Hermes, have successfully created 19 successful elephant calves. They are helping to create a captive breeding programme so that zoos will not be dependent on animals captured from the wild.
But their biggest challenge is the northern white rhino where the stakes are far higher. It is the second largest land mammal and has lived on Earth for 50 million years, but is now dependent on Dr Hildebrandt's team for its survival.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Rabid cheetah bites BBC presenter,
King said "all hell was let loose" during the attack.
BBC presenter Simon King, best known for the Big Cat Diary programmes, was attacked by a rabid cheetah while filming in Kenya, it has emerged. King was filming the story of orphaned cheetah cub Toki when a wild female ran at him, leaping up at his body.
Both he and assistant Stephen Nangunye were bitten and scratched during the attack but were not badly hurt. The men were given rabies jabs after the incident last summer. The wild cheetah later died of the disease.
"The attack was unprecedented - cheetahs just don't do this," said King in the documentary, Toki's Tale, which will be screened on BBC Two next month. "Having spent 20 years watching cheetahs in the wild, I was utterly shocked by this female's behaviour".
Toki's Tale tells the story of King's attempts to return a hand-reared cub to the wild. The animal was raised by humans after its twin brother, Sambu, was killed by lions - as seen in King's previous film, Fast Track to Freedom. The wild female cheetah was discovered near Toki's enclosure a few days before his release.
Seeing that she appeared tame, King assumed the animal was also hand-reared and approached it cautiously before it attacked. "I managed to plant a foot in her chest and push her back," the photographer and film-maker wrote on his website.
But the animal attacked again, biting Nangunye and leaving King with cuts. Tests were carried out and the animal was diagnosed with rabies. "It was desperately sad that such a beautiful animal should succumb to such a deadly virus," said King.
"I, meanwhile, am fine. Seven jabs later, I should be able to bathe in the rabies virus without being infected."
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Robotic birds scare 'fat' pigeons.
The Robops squawk and flap their wings to scare off pigeons Pigeons are not part of Liverpool's plans for its year as European Capital of Culture in 2008. The city council is mounting a campaign to rid the city of the birds, which it says are being fattened up by the public feeding them leftovers. Ten robotic birds of prey are being brought into the city centre to scare off the pigeons and visitors are being warned not to give them food.
The council wants to encourage the birds into parks and open spaces. The mechanical birds - called "Robops" - are to sit on the roofs of buildings, and can be moved around. They look like a Peregrine Falcon, which is a natural predator of pigeons, and even squawk and flap their wings to scare off the birds.
Councillor Berni Turner, Liverpool city council's executive member for the environment, said: "Feral pigeons are a real nuisance in the city centre, they fly up at people and they leave droppings everywhere which not only makes the city look really unattractive but can make surfaces slippery and dangerous.
"We need to get the message across that anyone who feeds the birds intentionally, or occasionally with leftovers such as sausage rolls or burgers, are responsible for our streets being so crowded with these birds." The pigeons get bigger because their natural diet is seeds and insects, rather than high-fat junk food.
Councillor Turner said it is making them "overweight and gives them a scruffy, unhealthy appearance". She added: "We want to be able to showcase our city centre in our birthday year and of course in 2008, so it's essential we tackle this issue now and educate members of the public that if there's no food, there'll be no pigeons."
The city council uses the equivalent of 88 man hours a day cleaning droppings from streets and buildings, at a cost of £160,000 a year.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Berlin Zoo has vowed it will not kill a baby polar bear amid a heated row over whether it is right to hand-rear the cub, who was rejected by his mother. Knut has been nurtured by a keeper who has slept by his side, bottle-fed him, and strummed him Elvis Presley songs.
But suggestions the three-month-old should have been put down to stop him becoming emotionally and physically reliant on a human have caused outrage.
"We are keeping Knut," Berlin zoo's vet told the BBC. "He's staying alive."
The zoo says Knut should be strong enough to make his first public appearance at the end of this week, having amassed an army of fans who have followed his development - from walking to weaning - in the city's newspapers.
He has already posed for the world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz as part of an environmental campaign, and next week is to be the subject of a documentary series by German broadcaster ARD.
Letting Knut go
But ahead of his debut, several voices have questioned the decision to keep him alive after he was rejected by his mother, a 20-year-old former performing bear from East Germany.
Both Knut and his twin were left exposed to freezing temperatures shortly after they were born in December. Knut's brother died, at which point the zoo intervened to save the surviving cub.
Each time his keeper leaves him, and he can't follow, he will die a little
Wolfram Graf-Rudolf
Aachen Zoo
"One should have had the courage to let the bear die then," said Wolfram Graf-Rudolf, head of the Aachen Zoo, cited by the Sueddeutsche newspaper.
The zookeeper, who has watched the hand-rearing of two animals, said Knut will find life intolerable once bars inevitably come between him and his carer.
"Each time his keeper leaves him, and he can't follow, he will die a little."
Frank Albrecht, an animal rights campaigner, had started the debate in the mass-circulation Bild newspaper by declaring the zoo was violating animal protection legislation by keeping him alive.
"If truth be told, the zoo should have killed the baby bear."
New home
Animals similarly rejected by their mothers in captivity have in the past been killed. Last December, a baby sloth was put down at Leipzig zoo after his mother refused to care for him.
Knut has been on his feet since late February
But each case is individual, argues Andre Schuele, Berlin Zoo's vet, and should be decided on their own merits.
"Knut was a healthy baby bear when we found him and so there was no reason for us to put him down," he said. "And there's certainly no reason to do so now."
To help Knut gain independence, he was already being left on his own for a couple of hours each day, and had been weaned off the bottle.
Polar bears were lonesome creatures, and so spending several years without the company of other bears would not be a problem, said Mr Schuele.
The cub will however eventually be introduced to others - although not back to his own family in Berlin Zoo.
"He will go to another zoo," said Mr Schuele. "Eventually, we will find him a new home."
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Scientists now believe the two species diverged more than one million years ago, and have evolved separately since.
Clouded leopards are the biggest predators on Borneo, and can grow as large as small panthers.
It's incredible that no-one has ever noticed these differences - Andrew Kitchener.
The separation of the species was discovered by scientists at the US National Cancer Institute near Washington DC.
"Genetic research results clearly indicate that the clouded leopards of Borneo should be considered a separate species," said Dr Stephen O'Brien, head of the Institute's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity.
"DNA tests highlighted around 40 differences between the two species."
Supporting evidence came from examination of fur patterns. Leopards from Borneo and Sumatra have small "clouds" with many distinct spots within them, grey and dark fur, and twin stripes along their backs.
Their mainland cousins have large cloud markings on their skin with fewer, often faint, spots within the cloud markings, and are lighter and more tawny in colour.
"The moment we started comparing the skins of the mainland clouded leopard and the leopard found on Borneo, it was clear we were comparing two different species," said Dr Andrew Kitchener from the National Museums of Scotland.
"It's incredible that no-one has ever noticed these differences."
WWF, which maintains a large conservation operation on Borneo, estimates there are between 5,000 and 11,000 clouded leopards on the island, with a further 3,000 to 7,000 on Sumatra.
"The fact that Borneo's top predator is now considered a separate species further emphasises the importance of conserving the 'Heart of Borneo'," said WWF's Stuart Chapman, co-ordinator of a project seeking to preserve the island's wildlife.
The three governments with territory on the island - Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei - signed an agreement earlier this year pledging to protect the "Heart of Borneo", 200,000 square kilometres of rainforest in the middle of the island thought to be particularly high in biodiversity.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Radar 'saves bats at wind farms' .
It is feared bat numbers could be threatened by wind farms Bats at risk of being killed by the growing number of wind farms could be saved with the use of radars. Bat deaths at wind farms are thought to exceed those of birds and it is feared some species could eventually become endangered if action is not taken.
Now researchers at Aberdeen University believe radar may be key. They studied the behaviour of bats at radar installations and found they did not forage where electromagnetic radiation could be measured.
Bat experts Prof Paul Racey and Dr Barry Nicholls studied bats at various distances from 10 radar installations across Scotland. They said they found bats foraged where no radiation was detectable.
Prof Racey, of Aberdeen's school of biological sciences, said: "We found that the bats were deterred by the electromagnetic radiation emitted from the radar installations. "This raises the possibility that radar could be used to deter bats from approaching wind turbines. "And so far this would appear to be the only real possibility of preventing bats colliding with turbine blades worldwide."
He explained: "People are aware of bird deaths at wind farms but are not so aware that many bats are perishing too. "Bat fatalities at wind turbines has been documented in Australia, North America, Germany, Spain and Sweden but really the scale of the problem in the UK has yet to emerge as the area is largely under-studied.
"Three years ago nearly 3,000 bats were killed in a six-week period at one wind farm in the USA, and nearly 1,700 were killed over a same period of time at another wind farm.
Wind farms are on the increase across the world.
"If bat fatalities continue this has the potential to be really serious. The problem is likely to get much worse with the proliferation of turbines, not just from large power companies erecting them, but private individuals doing so as well." It was a chance remark that led Prof Racey and Dr Nicholls down the route of exploring radars as a potential deterrent to bats around wind turbines.
A student said when was driving to Aberdeen he would wedge his bat detector in the window of his car and listen out for bats. He noticed that every time he passed the Aberdeen Airport radar he could never hear any. Prof Racey said: "We think the bats either feel the heat of the radiation or can actually hear it. Either way, they appear not to like it, and forage elsewhere.
"What is needed now are further studies to determine the characteristics of radar which best deters the bats."
A paper written by Prof Racey and Dr Nicholls - Bats Avoid Radar Installations: Could Electromagnetic Fields Deter Bats from Colliding with Wind Turbines? - appears in the Public Library of Science Journal PLoS ONE.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Vanishing bees threaten US crops
By Matt Wells
BBC News, Florida, USA
It is officially called Colony Collapse Disorder, but a more pithy way of describing it would be Vanishing Bee Syndrome. Bees are driven around Florida to help pollinate early crops. All over America, beekeepers are opening up their hives in preparation for the spring pollination season, only to find that their bees are dead or have disappeared.
Nobody, so far, knows why.
The sad mystery surrounding the humble honeybee - which is a vital component in $14bn-worth of US agriculture - is beginning to worry even the highest strata of the political class in Washington.
"Hillary Clinton's got interested in this in the last week or so," said David Hackenberg, the beekeeper leading the drive to publicise their plight. "And she's not alone," he said. "There's a lot of Congressmen have called...wanting to know what's going on. It's serious.
"It's not just affecting the beekeepers, it's affecting the farmers that produce the food, and in the end it's going to affect the consumer," he added, sighing deeply. What makes our interview slightly surreal is that we are standing next to an orange grove, in rural Florida, while about 70 hives of bees buzz angrily behind us, as if to emphasise their predicament.
Mr Hackenberg is suffering along with his bees. Like many in his rather neglected profession, he and his son spend the summer and autumn in the north of the country, driving their bees down south during the winter, to kick-start the early fruit and vegetable crops.
In a matter of weeks, he lost just over 2,000 of his 3,000 hives. The yard of his small honey farm near Tampa Bay, is littered with empty boxes, which normally would be full of worker bees, doing what they do best. As we speak, his mobile phone chirps constantly, with yet more beekeepers across the US, reporting losses of up to 95%. Federal scientists, the National Beekeepers Association and state researchers have come together to form an emergency working group to try and halt the disastrous trend.
There are as many theories as there are members of the panel, but Mr Hackenberg strongly suspects that new breeds of nicotine-based pesticides are to blame.
"It may be that the honeybee has become the victim of these insecticides that are meant for other pests," he said. "If we don't figure this out real quick, it's going to wipe out our food supply." Just a few miles down the sunlit road, it is easy to find farmers prepared to agree with his gloomy assessment.
In the old days, crops would be pollinated by bees living in the woods around the fertile fields, but housing developers have gobbled up much of the natural habitat, according to Carl Grooms, who runs Fancy Farms Inc. "The squash crops that we grow have a male and female bloom, and the bee has to visit...to make it pollinate and produce," he said. "We're going to have a hard time finding rental bees to aid in this pollination and if it's as critical as it looks like it will be, I probably won't even plant anything this spring."
Back at the Buffy Bee honey farm - the Hackenberg's Florida base - two members from the working group checked in to pay their respects, and take some bee samples on their way back to Washington.
Dennis van Engelsdorp, a Pennsylvania-based beekeeper and leading researcher, walks over to an isolated group of hives, and pulls out two different wooden frames that would normally be covered in bees, busy making honey. The difference is obvious. While one is teeming with insects, the other is virtually uninhabited. "The adult population totally disappears," he said. He shakes his head in frustration.
The US Department of Agriculture is working on finding the cause.
He runs through the long list of possible causes, ranging from new mite infestation to new chemicals, but he is adamant that it is too early to pin the blame on insecticides. "We have no evidence to think that that theory is more right than any other...There's stronger evidence for some other things really," he said. He points to the fact that the Colony Collapse Disorder is inconsistent even within localised regions. Some beekeepers have managed to retain completely healthy hives. His caution is backed up by Nathan Rice, from the Department of Agriculture's bee research laboratory. "While there is a lot of this crazy guessing going on, people get kind of concerned," he said. "We're here to try to figure out why it's happening."
The sensitivity of the beekeepers themselves is easy to understand. For the Hackenbergs, their livelihood is at stake, not to mention the millions of bees that have died. David Hackenberg's son, Davey, 35, is angry and frustrated that there are no answers yet. "We're working hard at it every day, and we're going to keep working hard until the bank comes and says, 'hey, we're taking the place,'" he says with a defiant edge. As a father of four, he thinks that the time may have come to get out of the bee business.
Tales abound around the Hackenberg breakfast table of beekeepers who have already given up after a calamitous few months trying to pollinate the huge almond crop in California. Some bankrupt beekeepers do not have the money to get themselves home, let alone their equipment. A bumper-sticker on one of the family trucks shows support for the Bush-Cheney ticket in the 2004 election, but Davey is now wondering whether anywhere near enough has been done by governments - and everybody else - to keep his fragile industry and environment going.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Pining panda prosthetic paw plea.
The rescue centre says Niu Niu has problems feeding and finding a mate. A Chinese animal rescue centre is appealing for ideas on how to fit one of its ailing giant pandas with an articifial front paw.
Niu Niu lost her left front paw along with part of the leg in a fight with three other females in December. She was taken to the Rare Animal Rescue Centre in Shaanxi province, but staff say without two front paws she is finding it difficult to eat.
They also suspect the loss is hindering her ability to find a mate.
"Niu Niu was badly injured during the fight and was rescued by a local farmer," the rescue centre's Ma Qingyi told the Shanghai Morning Post newspaper.
Her weight has increased since the incident, Mr Ma said, but other problems have emerged.
"She is at the prime age to breed, but she cannot mate normally as others do, which adds to the difficulty in inducing captive pandas to mate." She lost the left front paw and part of the limb in a fight. The centre is appealing for any ideas on creating an artificial paw, and says it hopes to receive "meticulously scientific" advice.
Recently, conservation scientists in Japan fitted a captive dolphin with a prosthetic tail made of rubber that allows it to swim and jump as normal.
The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) has become endangered primarily through human encroachment into its traditional habitat.
But the population is believed to have stabilised in recent years as the Chinese government has moved to protect its most iconic mammal.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Gazelles released back into wild
Seventeen mountain gazelle have been released into the wild Captive-bred mountain gazelles have been successfully released into the wild for the first time in 10 years. Conservationists released 17 of the creatures into the Ibex reserve in Saudi Arabia. The mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) is at a high risk of extinction because of factors such as habitat loss and hunting.
Some of the gazelles have now been radio-tagged so scientists can track them as they explore their new home.
The radio collars will provide information about the dispersal and establishment of the animals on the reserve, as well as their survival.
"After many years of dedicated work to identify and conserve different species of gazelles in Saudi Arabia, it is fantastic to see a successful release of these elegant creatures," said Dr Richard Kock, head of the Deserts and Rangelands Conservation Programme at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
The gazelles were bred and raised at the King Khalid Wildlife Research Centre, in Thumamah, Saudi Arabia.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Call for better seal protection !
The animal groups claim seals are killed by fishermen. Animal welfare and conservation groups have called for new legislation to protect seals in Scottish waters. The Scottish Seals Forum is being asked to back calls to the Scottish Executive for a comprehensive review of the Conservation of Seals Act 1970.
The groups, including Animal Concern and the Marine Conservation Society, want a Protection of Seals Act.
They claim thousands of seals are killed every year by fishing, fish farming and salmon angling industries.
Campaigners said the current act assumes that the unregulated killing of seals is acceptable and legitimate, at odds with the law relating to the conservation of other mammals in the UK including whales, dolphins, porpoises, otters and badgers.
Killing seals outside the "close season" is not regulated, and therefore seals of any age or sex can legally be killed for most of the year. The animal groups said even during the close season, a loophole allows fisheries to shoot seals in the "vicinity" of fishing gear.
The act also allows lactating females to be killed and allows seals to be shot from moving boats which campaigners said leads to a high probability of wounding.
The campaigners said the basis of a new Protection of Seals Act should be that any killing of seals is prohibited except in specific, very exceptional circumstances, when any killing would be licensed, regulated and recorded.
Libby Anderson, co-author of the paper calling for a review, said: "The Conservation of Seals Act 1970 is a relic of an era when attitudes to the killing of wild mammals were different, and much less was known about the population dynamics and global importance of seals in UK waters.
"The act is seen as providing guidance on the killing of seals, rather than as legislation to promote their conservation."
She said seals in British waters were a "very important asset" to the growing wildlife tourism industry and needed better legal protection. "We believe that the time has come to replace an existing outdated and unenforceable law with more effective legislation that will deliver the desired conservation and animal welfare benefits," she said.
"We hope that the Scottish Seals Forum will support our efforts for improved legislation that will effectively protect seals in Scottish waters."
The Scottish Executive recently said a review of the legislation could be appropriate to "consider whether or not changes might be necessary or helpful". Scotland is home to globally important populations of grey and common (harbour) seals.
As there is currently no requirement for records to be kept, it is not known how many seals of each species are killed.
BBC NEWS REPORT,
Japanese whale hunt ended early.
The Nisshin Maru is the whaling fleet's only processing ship. Japan's whaling fleet has cut short its hunt in the Antarctic after a fire two weeks ago crippled the main boat. The controversial annual hunt, which Japan says was carried out for research purposes, was meant to continue until the end of March.
But Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research said the Nisshin Maru boat could not be fully repaired at sea.
Japanese government officials said the fleet had caught 508 of this season's target of 860 whales.
The six-vessel fleet had been dogged by anti-whaling activists since it set sail in December.
But an unrelated fire aboard the Nisshin Maru, which killed one crew member and left the boat without power for 10 days, proved a bigger problem.
"Far from an embarrassment, the situation in the Antarctic was an unfortunate event that no-one could have predicted," said Hiroshi Hatanaka, director general of the ICR. He said much of the boat's whaling equipment had been damaged.
The government of New Zealand and the environmental group Greenpeace protested to Japan after the boat had floundered off Antarctica, near a large penguin colony.
Fears of a fuel oil leak prompted an offer from Greenpeace to tow the vessel out of the area which Japan rejected.
Japan is strongly opposed to the international ban on commercial whaling. It hunts whales every year under what it describes as a scientific research programme.
Japanese officials said the research hunting would resume in December.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
Saving Gabon's orphan gorillas
By Sarah Monaghan - BBC News, Gabon.
At the moment Gabon, in West Africa, is reliant on oil for its income. But with supplies due to run out by 2020, President Omar Bongo is keen to turn some of the virgin equatorial forest - full of elephants, chimps, gorillas, mandrills, hippos and leopards - into national parks for tourists.
President Omar Bongo has ruled Gabon since 1967.
It is a bit disconcerting to travel as far as Gabon to do an interview, only to find that your subject does not much like talking.
Liz Pearson is director of a pioneering gorilla reintroduction project on the Congo border.
When she meets me at Franceville Airport, she is monosyllabic, albeit with a shy smile. I notice bites and scratches on her bare arms. Later she will say that after eight years living cloistered with gorillas in the forest, she has "lost the habit of small talk". When I get there the next day, I understand why.
That evening, in town over a beer, she becomes more talkative. The air smells of roasting meat. "It is hard to find a restaurant here that does not serve bushmeat," she says.
Next-door is offering crocodile, monkey and antelope; it is a clear sign that despite the fact that hunting is seriously endangering Gabon's wildlife, bushmeat remains the meal of choice.
Primatologists hope the gorillas will mate and form new family units.
It was the late John Aspinall, the eccentric British millionaire who founded two private zoos in Kent, who had the vision for the gorilla reserve. "I flew over the site for an hour and was beguiled by its beauty," he said. "I saw no human habitation. I knew it was ideal for a sanctuary."
Getting to camp involves a bone-shaking five-hour journey in a four-wheel-drive vehicle across savannah to the River Mpassa, where we unload supplies into a motorised canoe to chug upstream for three hours.
Thick vines line the banks; under the water, snout-nosed crocodiles lurk; this is a journey reminiscent of The African Queen. An hour in, just as it did for Bogart and Hepburn, lightning cracks, thunder rumbles and we sit hunched in oilskins as a tropical storm beats down.
"We are home," says Liz as we trudge up a muddy track. "Home" is a hut with a gas-powered freezer, a satellite phone and laptops on which data from her and a team of trackers is logged.
As dusk falls, the tropical night strikes up its orchestrated concert: the piped squeaks of bats, the maracas buzz of cicadas, the soprano whoops of bushbabies. It is an astonishingly soothing blanket of primeval sound.
Somewhere, sleeping in the trees, are 23 gentle gorillas.
Many started life as bushmeat orphans. One was just a month old and weighed as little as a bag of sugar. Another's mother was caught in a snare, her foot left behind. "She had chewed it off," Liz says. "The baby was clinging to the dead body."
Kongo was rescued from a cage and had machete scars. She will never forget his cry when he arrived. "It was a heart-rendingly hollow call, like he was glad to see the forest again," she says. For rehabilitation to work, establishing an attachment is crucial. "Gorillas are very sensitive," Liz tells me. "If you do not develop a bond, they do not eat. The lights go out in their eyes."
A second group of gorillas arrived here in 2002 from Aspinall's Howletts Zoo. It is the first time reintroduction has been attempted with captivity-born young and although not psychologically harmed like the others, these zoo babies presented a different challenge.
Reared in cages, they were scared when they saw the forest. They did not like its sounds; they panicked at the sight of a beetle. And there was worse to come.
Snakes, leopards and on one occasion, Liz and her youngsters stumbled on an elephant which trumpeted and charged. The gorillas leapt onto her, clinging out of fear, so she could not move. Slowly Liz backed away. Afterwards, she examined the tracks and realised there had been an elephant calf too. That is why the mother was so aggressive. She was being protective, just as Liz was.
These young gorillas are self-sufficient now but while they may have flown the nest they cannot contain their joy when they see Liz in the forest. The older ones want her to play and show it by biting and scratching. She is less thick-skinned so play hurts. The youngest climb on her lap.
Liz Pearson is this pioneering gorilla reintroduction project's director. Gorillas thump their chests and cough to show they are unhappy. Liz uses imitative sounds to communicate with them. She knows all the noises, she says. But she never wants to "say" too much in case she is speaking the wrong words. She uses body language instead. "If I sit hunched up," she says, "they will not approach me but if I am open, they do."
What does the future hold for these gorillas? The international primatologists following the project are hoping they will mate and form new family units.
"It is a bit of a Lord of the Flies experiment," Liz admits. "These gorillas have grown up without adult gorilla parenting. There is the possibility they will see each other as just brothers and sisters and not as mating partners."
But at least now the gorillas are living independently in their new habitat. "They are going through the adolescent phase," Liz says. "They have sugar rushes from overdosing on fruit - they are a real handful."
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday 1 March, 2007 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
BBC NEWS REPORT.
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