Latest news with #wildlife
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
A Michigan bear roamed the woods for two years with an awful lid on his neck. Not anymore.
Michigan wildlife experts finally were able to trap a black bear and remove a large lid that was stuck around his neck — for two years. 'It's pretty incredible that the bear survived and was able to feed itself,' state bear specialist Cody Norton said Wednesday. 'The neck was scarred and missing hair, but the bear was in much better condition than we expected it to be.' The bear first turned up on a trail camera as a cub in 2023 in the northern Lower Peninsula. After that, the Department of Natural Resources was on the lookout for the elusive animal with a hard plastic lid around the neck, Norton said. The bear appeared again on a camera in late May, still wearing the barrel lid, and the DNR responded by setting a cylindrical trap and safely luring him inside. The bear was immobilized with an injection and the lid was cut off in minutes on June 3. The bear eventually woke up and rambled away. Angela Kujawa, a wildlife biologist who was at the scene, said she wondered about the bear's ability to climb trees with the uncomfortable accessory. 'And he probably laid more on his back or side when he was resting,' she said. Norton said it's not precisely known how the lid got stuck on the bear's neck. Bear baiting is legal in Michigan, but the hole on a barrel lid typically must be large enough to avoid what happened to this bear. The bear weighed 110 pounds (49.9 kilograms), which is fairly typical for a 2-year-old. 'We were pleasantly surprised. It was still able to make a living like a pretty typical bear,' Norton said.
CTV News
2 hours ago
- Sport
- CTV News
Moose family swim: Mom teaches two calves
Northern Ontario Watch A video taken in Killarney, Ont., shows a mama moose swimming with two tiny babies trying to keep up behind her.
New York Times
3 hours ago
- General
- New York Times
Bear Whose Head Was Stuck for Two Years Is Freed
Once upon a time there was a black bear in the Michigan woods. He roamed, hibernated, searched for food and did whatever else a bear does in the woods. But the world of humans encroached on this bucolic setting. The bear got his head stuck in a plastic lid. And it would not come off. Thus began a two-year odyssey. The bear kept roaming with his new collar. He grew, only making the collar tighter, and while human beings wanted to help, he remained elusive. But fear not, dear reader, this story has a happy ending. The bear, then just a cub, was first spotted on trail cameras in 2023. His head was stuck in a 5-inch diameter hole in a blue plastic lid, the kind that might be found on a 50-gallon drum. Such drums are sometimes used by hunters: the containers are filled with food, luring the bears to where hunters await. But under Michigan law, baiting containers must have holes that are either less than one inch or greater than 22 inches in diameter. 'Container openings of a certain size can result in bears and other wildlife getting their heads or other body parts stuck in them, leading to injury or death,' said Cody Norton of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, who carries the title of 'bear, furbearer and small game specialist.' 'It's important to remember that the opening diameter is more important than the size of the container,' he said. Plastic containers have been an ongoing problem for bears, with cases popping up in Florida, Wisconsin and Tennessee recently. All of these incidents involved bears with their heads stuck in cheese ball jars (and all of them were freed). And it's not just bears who become entangled in human detritus. An elk in Colorado carried a tire around his neck for two years (he, too, was eventually freed, though at the cost of his antlers). Over the past two years, the bear in Michigan was periodically seen on trail camera photos only to vanish again before help could arrive. Finally in May there was a sighting in Montmorency County in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. Officials trapped the bear earlier this month. The bear — 2 years old, 110 pounds and still growing — was sedated, and rescuers cut off the lid. Upon awakening, he was then released back into the wild, where his ramblings will now thankfully be less encumbered. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Times
4 hours ago
- Times
Chinese hotel ordered to stop red panda ‘wake-up call' service
A hotel in southwestern China that allowed residents to wake up to the pitter-patter of a red panda's footsteps has been told to stop its unusual wake-up call offer on safety grounds. The Lehe Ledu Liangjiang Holiday Hotel, which is situated in mountainous countryside near the metropolis of Chongqing, advertised 'red panda-themed holidays'. At many safari experiences in China, close contact with the animals is promised. At the hotel, staff went one step further, allowing a red panda to visit tourists in their room, at least until its publicity proved too successful. After an article in a Chinese magazine and consequent social media discussion of the ethics of the 'red panda wake-up call', the local forestry bureau stepped in, sending inspectors to find out what was going on. In a statement the bureau said it had ordered an immediate halt to all 'close contact' activities with animals, and would report back on any further findings it made — often a threat of prosecution or fines. The red panda, despite its name, is part of the extended raccoon family. It is not a bear and its only relationship to the giant panda is that it lives in the same part of China and is similarly photogenic. Close-contact activities — paying to be photographed holding a cub — has been banned in giant panda breeding centres in China since 2018. Before that, it was a regular form of income. That seems to have been interpreted by the Liangjiang Hotel as a special case. Since it started the practice of taking a red panda, one of four kept at the hotel for the purpose, around the rooms last year it has become a popular feature. A British couple, Ben and Reanne Ridger from Portsmouth, who are keeping a YouTube video blog of their tour of China's provinces, enthused about the red panda experience two months ago. 'Everyone watching at home, they've never had anything like this,' Ben Ridger said, almost certainly correctly. The panda was brought to the room by staff. How long it stayed, they said, 'depended on the red panda's mood that day', China Newsweek reported. The Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, issued a severe warning that the practice might be an abuse of animal rights. The hotel responded to concerns that the pandas might be unhygienic or dangerous to children by insisting that they had all been vaccinated, and that children were not allowed to enjoy the experience without the presence of an adult.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Nepo baby, 21, is spitting image of '90s TV star mother as she cuddles lion in Africa - but can you guess who her famous parent is?
A nepo baby looked the spitting image of her 90s TV star mother as she cuddled a lion in Africa. The conservationist and model, 21, recently took to her Instagram to share a video of herself cuddling two lions before releasing them into the wild with her father. Resting her head on one lion, she penned: 'My beautiful ZEMO on the day we released him in Africa. I can't wait to see him soon.' The 21-year-old has followed in both of her famous parents' footsteps as she dropped out of school to pursue her interests in both the entertainment and conservation industries. She now boasts 1.5 million followers on Instagram and regularly gives fans an insight into her daily life surrounded by animals. But can you guess who the nepo baby and her famous parents are? That's right! It's Freya Aspinall, the daughter of English actress Donna Air and businessman Damian Aspinall. Donna was just 21 when she met and fell in love with multimillionaire Damian, who was 40 at the time. They were introduced at a dinner party in 2000 by mutual friend, former It Girl Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, and went on to have a seven-year relationship, before they split in July 2007. Damian owns The Aspinall Foundation, which partners with Howletts Wild Animal Park, founded by his father John Aspinall. The Aspinall Foundation is a British charity founded in 1984 that strives to promote wildlife conservation and return captive animals back to the wild, while also running projects abroad to protect endangered species. It runs both Howletts and Port Lympne Park, which is set on 600 acres and houses many rare and endangered species, with the largest breeding herd of black rhinos in the UK. Freya has inherited her father's love of conservation and dedicates her time to caring for various animals in the sanctuary and is being lined up to one day inherit his position as chair of the Aspinall Foundation. She has also inherited her mother's good looks as she became the youngest model on the books of Storm, the agency discovered by Kate Moss, in 2018. But rather than spend most of her time on the runway, she spends her days in the park caring for orphaned lion cubs and gorillas. The influencer uses her Instagram to promote the importance of conversation work, sharing heartwarming videos of her cuddling with big cats and feeding gorillas by hand in their enclosures, raking in an impressive 1.5million followers. Freya has shown she's not a typical 'nepo baby', with it being reported that when she signed her modelling contract she insisted she would use her profile to promote conservation issues. Calling herself a 'mini version' of dad Damian, she has said if she ever books a magazine cover it will be as a conservationist rather than a model. Speaking to the Financial Times, she admitted: 'I grew up with animals and couldn't imagine my world without them. This is in my blood – I've always known what I wanted to do.' And it's no wonder she shares such a close bond with animals, after being placed in in a gorilla enclosure at Howletts as a baby to be carried off by the female of the group. It was a ritual Damian had carried out with his first two daughters, Tansy and Clary, from his 15-year marriage to Louise Sebag-Montefiore. Describing his plans for Freya at the time, he told London's Evening Standard: 'It's a ritual. I'll probably give her to the dominant female who will take her off, sex her, and introduce her to the others. I did this with my other daughters, now it's Freya's turn.' While Donna fully approved of the plan because she did not believe that Freya would be in any danger. Damian added: 'Why would I not trust them? I know them, I grew up with them. They are my friends.' And Freya is certainly not afraid of getting up and close to exotic animals at the family wildlife park. She has described Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent where she loves to feed the giraffes as one of her 'favourite places to be'. She's often seen cuddling and feeding treats to a pair of gorillas, Silverback Kifu and Tambabi, that she has known since birth.
