Fens are rare wildlife 'hotspot'

Ouse Washes is a Special Area of Conservation

The Fens are home to 25% of Britain's rarest wildlife and 13 globally rare species, according to a new report.

Researchers from the University of East Anglia studied over one million records collected by scientists and amateur enthusiasts that date back to 1670. The Fens Biodiversity Audit details evidence of 13,474 species of plants, insects, birds, fish and mammals. The area covered 3,800 km sq, spanning the Fenlands of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Christopher Panter, an ecologist from the school of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia and one of the authors of the audit, commented: "One of the most surprising things was that, despite it being a very large area, most of the area was previously unrecorded."

 
Fantastic fens

Predatory Great Raft Spider - East Anglica.

Data was collected from well-known fen sites such as

Rarest dog: Ethiopian wolves are genetically vulnerable

Populations of the world's rarest dog, the Ethiopian wolf, are genetically fragmenting, scientists say.

Fewer than 500 of Africa's only wolf species are thought to survive. Now a 12-year study of Ethiopian wolves living in the Ethiopian highlands has found there is little gene flow between the small remaining populations. That places the wolves at greater risk of extinction from disease, or habitat degradation. In a study published in the journal , Dada Gottelli of the Zoological Society of London and colleagues in Oxford, UK and Berlin, Germany, quantified the genetic diversity, population structure and patterns of gene flow among 72 wild-living Ethiopian wolves.

 
Red dog

Scientists say billions required to meet conservation targets

The most threatened species tend to be relatively cheap to save because of small range sizes.

Reducing the risk of extinction for threatened species and establishing protected areas for nature will cost the world over $76bn dollars annually. Researchers say it is needed to meet globally agreed conservation targets by 2020. The scientists say the daunting number is just a fifth of what the world spends on soft drinks annually. And it amounts to just 1% of the value of ecosystems being lost every year, they report in the journal Science.

“Nature just doesn't do recessions, we're talking about the irreversible loss of unique species and millions of years of evolutionary history” Donal McCarthy RSPB