Note that if you purchase something via one of our links, including Amazon, we may earn a small commission.
Good news from the animal kingdom.
Dear Reader,
Dot’s back with a collection of Feel-Good stories focused on some of our most charismatic critters, from dolphins and beluga whales to elephants and wolves. Let’s get started.
Folks in Churchill, Manitoba, were understandably confused when a group of large, white creatures loomed into view just after another group of large white creatures had been evicted from their town. Let me explain: Churchill, Manitoba, is famous for its polar bears (don’t miss one of Dot’s favorite Bluedot stories about living alongside these gorgeous giants). But, as the CBC reported, “After a night of receiving multiple calls to chase polar bears away from a northern Manitoba town on the western shore of Hudson Bay, their tip line [for the region’s conservation officers] rang once more around 7:20 a.m. Monday. The caller saw something large and white near the public beach behind the town complex.” The sergeant dispatched a staffperson, who discovered a pod of seven belugas, stranded in a pool when the tide had gone out. The belugas were under siege from seabirds who saw easy pickings. The conservation officers worried too that the polar bears would arrive for a feast. With the Royal Canadian Mounted Police standing guard, the officers got to work, ensuring that the whales weren’t fatally injured and shifting a couple of the roughly 200-pound calves to unblock their breathing holes while they waited for the tide to come in and free the pod. For two hours, as the tide slowly rose, the calves continued to cry and the officers splashed water on all of the whales. As one conservation officer said, if they could hear the babies, so could the polar bears. But this story has a happy ending. The gulls and bears were kept at bay, the tide came in, and the pod swam away. One conservation officer summed up the experience by saying, “Churchill, it’s a very unique place, not only in Manitoba, but on the planet Earth.”
In dolphin news, it turns out that plastic bottles … save them? While hunting dolphins is forbidden in most places around the world, far too many dolphins get caught in fishing nets. But researchers have discovered that “Plastic drink bottles tethered to drift nets cut bycatch of an endangered South American dolphin by nearly 90% without affecting the overall amount of fish caught, according to new research in Marine Mammal Science, a story in The Anthropocene tells us. It’s a remarkably low-tech solution that puts a ubiquitous piece of trash to work saving dolphin lives.
Meanwhile, over in China, early warning systems issuing 210,000 alerts since 2022 have averted more than 1,000 potential elephant/human conflicts. The system, along with habitat protection and other conservation initiatives, has allowed the decimated wild Asian elephant population to grow to almost 400.
And a few years ago, Bluedot ran a story about an innovative red wolf breeding program that placed captive-bred baby red wolves in wild wolves’ dens to be raised alongside their new litters. Now comes news that four litters of wild red wolf pups were recently born in North Carolina, an amazing boost to the most endangered wolf species in the world.
Resiliently,
Dot
For more Bluedot Climate Quick Tips, click here.
