Jho

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7387368

Britain’s tallest bird, the spectacular, wetland-loving crane bred in higher numbers last summer than at any point since they disappeared from the UK in the 16th century.

At least 80 pairs of cranes were recorded in 2023, up from the previous high of 72 two years earlier. The birds, which make distinctive bugling calls but are surprisingly elusive in the breeding season, as they hide in reedbeds, successfully fledged at least 36 chicks.

The species, which performs elaborate mating dances each spring, first returned from Scandinavia to breed in east Norfolk in 1979. The population was kept secret for years and very slowly spread.

More recently it has been boosted by a reintroduction project where hand-reared cranes were released on expanded wetlands in the Somerset Levels.

Hi everyone! I've been thinking of making this community for a while now and finally decided to go ahead with it today.

I think it would be nice to spread a bit of positive energy. A lot of what is posted on Lemmy is doom and gloom, but it's important to strike a balance between educating oneself about the injustices of the world and celebrating the good that humanity can do.

The main question I have right now is, what counts as good news here on feddit.uk? And are there any particular community rules we should implement?

What is good news to me might be bad news to others. Furthermore, a lot of news can be a bit of a mix of both good and bad. I see a lot of comments in other positive/good news communities which are like "actually this isnt good news because...". I don't think we will ever be able to please everyone, unfortunately.

In the sidebar I think it would be a good idea to explicitly state what topics we want people to post about here.

For example, here are some of my personal picks:

• Renewable energy and medical breakthroughs.
• Progress in equal rights for people of colour, immigrants, women, LGBT+ folk, or any other minority groups.
• Progress in restoring nature and the environment.

And, of course, this community should be for news specific to the UK. Communities exist elsewhere for good news elsewhere in the world.

My sibling has been working on this project for the last 18 months and it fully launched yesterday. It has now made the news! I'm immensely proud of them, their work will surely save many lives.

Anyone aged over 18 who has at least one Jewish grandparent is eligible for testing. If you meet this criteria you can order a test here: https://jewishbrca.org/

Article TL;DR:

The tests check for faulty BRCA genes. People with Jewish ancestry are far more likely to have inherited faulty BRCA genes than the general population. There is a 50% chance of someone who has a faulty BRCA gene passing it on to any children.

Those born with impaired BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes have a greater risk of developing breast, ovarian, prostate or pancreatic cancer.

The NHS England screening programme is part of a drive to detect cancer early. Tests can be ordered online and completed at home, by taking a sample of saliva and sending it off to a laboratory.

My TL;DR:

Photos mostly garnered from fishing industry social media accounts, show that trawling the seabed for langoustines to produce scampi also traps many other fish, including young white fish, flatfish, starfish and sharks.

Fishing for langoustines in Scotland is big business, with landings worth £91m in 2019, providing 43 per cent of the world’s supply.

But there have long been concerns about the fish accidentally caught in the nets of the langoustine trawlers.

One picture shows a critically endangered flapper skate, dead and allegedly dumped on the seabed.

The industry body, Seafish, insisted suggestions that bycatch made the langoustine fishery unsustainable were “incorrect”. Whiting, haddock and cod caught along with langoustines can be harvested and can together make up 80 per cent of catches, it said.

But Seafish accepted that “unfortunately, endangered, threatened and protected species can occasionally get caught in fishing gear”.

My TL;DR:

Downing Street is facing calls to explain why it has appointed an unelected shooting enthusiast as its animal welfare minister after it emerged he has backed the culling of seals and wild birds.

Robbie Douglas-Miller, who was last week given a peerage to allow him to become minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), owns a grouse moor in Scotland and has argued for the relaxation of rules on shooting wild birds that prey on salmon.

He is also on the board of a fishery which applied to obtain a licence to kill seals in 2021; last year he gained a licence to kill wild cormorants and sawbill ducks.

Furthermore, in September, he signed a letter with fellow grouse moor owners lobbying the Scottish government to water down new laws that bring in licences for grouse-shooting in an effort to address persecution of birds of prey.

Douglas-Miller was made a baron on Friday in a surprise appointment as an environment minister and given the portfolio responsibility for animal welfare this week.

My TL;DR:

Red squirrels are one of Scotland’s most beloved and most threatened woodland animals.

Red squirrels and their tree nests are protected under law. But in 2017 Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) was granted a licence by the Scottish Government’s wildlife agency allowing dreys to be damaged during forestry operations.

FLS estimated that the “theoretical maximum” of red squirrel babies killed when their nests were destroyed during tree felling between 2017 and 2022 was 1,976.

FLS’s estimates, however, were dismissed as “bullshit” by Dave Anderson, an award-winning wildlife expert who worked for FLS and its predecessor bodies for 43 years.

What was going on within FLS was a “disgrace”, with staff being put under increasing pressure to ignore wildlife so that more money could be made from selling timber, Anderson alleged.

FLS treated the deaths of red squirrels, birds and other wildlife as “collateral damage”, he told The Ferret.

Currently wondering if we should stay here on !whiterose@feddit.uk or move over to !yorkshire!yorkshire@feddit.uk.

Basically, c/yorkshire came first but the original creator deleted their account which rendered the community inaccessible. I contacted an admin about this. I didn't expect it to be able to be restored because Lemmy is pretty jank behind-the-scenes. That, alongside my impatience, caused me to create c/whiterose.

However, the admins managed to successfully restore c/yorkshire, so now we have two communities for Yorkshire! Oops! My bad.

Should we continue to move this one or move to c/yorkshire?

Just in time for the festive shopping season, we’ve opened a new temporary Raspberry Pi store in Leeds, UK. Following the success of our pop-up store tours over the last couple of years, we’ve decided to trial an extended pop-up which will last until the New Year.

We have every single Raspberry Pi computer and microcontroller in stock. Yes, including the newly released Raspberry Pi 5. We also have stock of Compute Module 4, which is usually only available from a limited number of Approved Resellers. All the peripherals you might need — including keyboards, power supplies, LEDs, and breadboards — are for sale too.

Even when the weather calls for some outdoor fun, 11-year-old Riley Cox grabs his litter-picking kit and heads off to make his locality [...] rubbish free. Come rain or sunshine, litter picking is an essential part of his routine.

“This is my contribution to the community. I want to continue this work even when I grow up to ensure that the city remains clean at all times”, smiles the shy 11-year-old [.]

Bradshaw is the chief caretaker of some of the country’s rarest flowers. She has spent seven decades obsessively studying the unique arctic-alpine flora of Teesdale, in the north of England.

Where once [these flora] were widespread in Britain, now only fragments remain, and 28 species are threatened with extinction.

“Everything about Teesdale is unique,” says Bradshaw with pride – and the authority of someone who has just written a 288-page book on the subject.

[...]

Since the 1960s, plant abundance has dropped by 54% on average. Some have essentially disappeared, such as the dwarf milkwort, down by 98%, and the hoary whitlow-grass, down by 100% (there is now just one recorded plant). Her data suggests these “shocking” declines are continuing.

Bradshaw sees those declines as British heritage disappearing. She says: “We’ve got various buildings in the country – Stonehenge, Durham Cathedral, and others; if they were crumbling away, there would be groups and money helping stop it, because people would say: ‘We can’t let this happen.’

Despite Bradshaw’s guardianship of this land, and the love and energy she has put into saving it, the future here is unknown. The last words of her book speak to this unrelenting loss. “This is our heritage, this unique assemblage of plant species, mine and yours,” she writes. “In spite of trying, I have failed to prevent its decline, now it is up to you.”

Campaigners fear the change of approach could lead to more pollution in England’s rivers and waterways if the new measuring methods are less rigorous.

Recent analysis found that many toxic chemicals and pesticides banned in the bloc since Brexit are not outlawed for use in the UK. Ministers are also attempting to rip up EU-derived sewage pollution rules for housebuilders.

In 2019, the last time the full water assessments took place, just 14% of rivers were in good ecological health and none met standards for good chemical health.

The Guardian can reveal that the government will be using its own, as yet undisclosed methodology to assess river health. Activists say this may make it harder to compare the state of the country’s rivers against those in the EU, and will leave the public in the dark over pollution from sewage and agriculture.