We recently launched Team WILD, an exciting new online game in which you have the opportunity to become a science superhero where you must protect and conserve the planet’s species and habitats from destruction. While the aim of the game is to engage young people with career opportunities in conservation, Team WILD has certainly caught the imaginations of the big kids in the ARKive office too. In between competitive keyboard tapping, drawing up an office leader board and lunch hours spent practising and perfecting those double jumps, the team here started to think about the environmental issues they could tackle if they really did have superpowers. As we all know, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’, and with this in mind, the team have come up with some ingenious ways they could use their ‘powers’ for good.

Kicking things off is Carolyn, our Online Marketing Officer, who took inspiration from our favourite web-slinger and decided that she would like spidey superpowers so that she could create webs to catch poachers. Preventing poaching would be a great step in helping to conserve species such as the Endangered eastern gorilla.

Researcher Jemma went for a marine-themed power – the ability to breathe underwater so that she could free turtles trapped in fishing nets, a common cause of sea turtle mortality.

Online Outreach Manager Ellie decided to think big – literally! She decided that by growing to giant size she would be able to defend habitats and halt the destruction of forests, protecting forest dwelling species like this Barbour’s forest tree frog.

Thinking along similar lines, Text Author Liz decided that she’d like the power to make plants grow instantly just by touching the ground so that she could restore all the areas that humans have destroyed, as well as making towns and a bit greener and nicer!

Our Education Officer Helen thought outside the box, and decided that her superhero power would be time travel, so that she could travel back and save species before they go extinct – clever! First on her list would be the baiji, which although still technically listed as Critically Endangered is now sadly thought to be Extinct.

Wildscreen Festival Assistant Becky opted for a stealthy power, the ability to be camouflaged and blend in with any habitat to observe animal behaviour and keep an eye out for poachers! The Critically Endangered black rhino would certainly benefit from such protection.

Finally, Text Author Kaz opted for a more subtle power, the power of persuasiveness, in order to convince more people to make the necessary changes to fight against climate change and species extinction. This is a vital tool in any campaign to protect the environment, and a power that we hope is both realistic and achievable.

Have your say!

We’ve also been putting this question to our followers on social media and have had some great responses so far. If you haven’t already, join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter:

@clairecjl: I’d be super-fast like The Flash and carry out a speedy vaccination program to protect African wild dogs from rabies #speciespower

@jimmac140: Although Aquaman seems kinda useless he must be good for something, Be warned anyone after sharks fin! Aquaman is on it!

@_Daktari_: I want Cupid’s Power to shoot arrows of LOVE for all living things in every human heart. It would save all species & their habitats.

@WWFHoBGI: Super-forest-defender – all species everywhere RT @ARKive Superpower would you like and which species would you save with it? #teamwildgame

@Owen_Thornton: there aren’t many superpowers that can help. Although, maybe ice control for saving the polar bears could help.

Harry Purple Monkey Dishwasher: Harry would have the superpower to heal all the forests, water, earth & air instantly. :D

Soph Kitty Preston: I would want xray vision to catch ppl smuggling animals and parts across borders.

Demetris Bertzeletos: The power to grant David Attenbourough immortality

Deborah Marland: I’d love the power of being able to make people forget that they are in wars & destroying the planet & make them start to treasure & nurture this world & all living creatures on it. The way it should be… If only……

Jan Hooper: i would like the power to make all weapons not work!

Dominique Hoekman: A bird with gigantic wings to fly whole over planet Earth to protect ‘Wildlife’

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As you may be aware, not only is this week the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties of CITES, it is also Climate Week in the UK. The biggest climate change campaign in Britain, Climate Week aims to inspire us to create a more sustainable future through a range of activities.

Throughout the course of the week schools, businesses, charities, councils and many other organisations will run over 3,000 events attended by around half a million people interested in finding out more about the future of climate change and what we can do to safeguard against its impacts.

With such a wide range of events on offer there is bound to be something for everyone so do try to attend if you can. Not only will it be informative, by the sounds of it you will also have a lot of fun. Activities include test driving electric vehicles, growing your own food in community allotments, a green building show with a Climate Week Pledge Wall, swapping clothes, books, toys and DVDs, developing a Community Energy Plan and even an event at Manchester United hosted by none other than England football coach Gary Neville. There are too many to list but more information can be found on the Climate Week website.

Polar bears are dependent on sea ice for its survival, but climate change is causing drastic reductions in the extent of ice cover

If you are unable to attend any events near you (or, alas there are no events in your proximity), we’ll do our best in this blog to give you an overview of climate change and why it is so important for us to safeguard our wildlife and environment against it.

About climate change

Without wanting to be too accusatory, there is no doubt that climate change is caused by man-made impacts on our planet. You may have heard it referred to as ‘global warming’, due to the steady rise in the Earth’s temperature that is occurring. Both terms are correct, however they actually refer to different phenomena. Climate change refers to the changes in climate which arise as a result of the increasing global temperature. These can include changes in precipitation patterns, increased incidence of drought, heat waves and other extreme weather conditions. In essence, global warming does not mean that we will all have increasingly warmer weather; the planet’s steadily rising temperature will be associated with changes across the world in climate pattern, and more extreme and unpredictable weather. Some places may well become hotter, but some will become colder, and others wetter or drier.

Antarctic krill die due to ocean acidification

These changes in climate may not sound like much, but they are creating huge problems on a global scale for both wildlife and people. The severity of storms and floods are increasing, and ruthless droughts are on the rise. The acidity of our seas is rising, affecting species such as coral and krill and destroying marine food chains that ultimately maintain the balance of life in the oceans. The lack of arctic ice in the summer creates a dire situation for polar bears as well as compounding global warming because the ice would usually serve to deflect sunlight away from the planet. The increased heat absorbed due to the absence of this natural deflection in turn causes permafrost to thaw, releasing trapped methane gas. This gas, along with carbon dioxide released by the process of deforestation and the warming oceans both serve to increase what is known as the greenhouse effect; some gases trap and retain the sun’s heat giving rise to this phenomenon.

Rising sea levels could wash away hawksbill turtle nests and decrease nesting habitat

As we can see, this process is not pretty, and we’ve only scratched at the surface of what is happening in this blog. Mass extinction of wildlife is predicted in the near future, including species such as polar bears and emperor penguins that will lose their habitat to melting ice and rising sea levels. Colourful corals such as the Acanthastrea coral will die as a result of ocean acidification. Also affected are species that live and breed on low-lying remote islands, for example marine turtles like the giant South American, hawksbill and leatherback turtles. There are too many to name here, but you can check out more species that will be affected by climate change on ARKive.

Climate change is already having measurable impacts on coral reefs worldwide

So, even if it’s just spreading the word on climate change, will you do your bit this Climate Week?

Find out more about climate change, the species it affects and what we can do to mitigate the effects on our Climate Change topic page.

Download Climate Week resources from the Climate Week website.

Kaz Armour, ARKive Text Author

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Everybody loves polar bears – don’t they? Today is International Polar Bear Day, a chance for us all to celebrate this magnificent species and do our bit to help them.

Polar bears on thin ice

Polar bears might look big and tough but with their arctic habitat disappearing fast, the future of the world’s largest land carnivore is in our hands. Climate change is the biggest threat facing polar bears, as they depend on sea ice for hunting and breeding grounds and as the ice retreats, they must increasingly travel longer, more challenging distances across open water.

Video of polar bear moving over thin ice and swimming between ice floes

We can all play a part in reducing the threats to polar bears. Today, Polar Bear International is encouraging us all to do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint. You can take part in their challenge to turn your thermostat down (or up) a few degrees (depending on where you live), lowering your carbon emissions and helping  polar bears today and everyday .

Share your love for polar bears

We’re celebrating polar bear day across all our social channels – why not join in and help us to raise the profile of polar bears.

Get creative with our caption contest!

Can you think of a witty or fun caption for this polar bear photo?

Our polar bear-loving Twitter followers have already come up with these gems:

@Podgeosaurus

“Delilah was so relaxed during her Yoga session, she didn’t notice all the other girls had left for lunch already…”

@pasikas

Yeah Baby !!! thats reeelaxed

Can you do better? Tweet your captions, post them on Facebook or email us! We’ll choose and share our favourite tomorrow!

Support

Show your support for polar bears, by joining in with our campaign to become a polar bear for the day – simply add this polar bear badge to your Facebook and Twitter profiles.

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When Carolyn at Arkive invited me to be a guest blogger, I jumped at the opportunity to tell everyone about our exciting new campaign – Saving Big Cats and Wild Dogs.

Instinctively I started by writing down all the shocking statistics, such as: ‘as few as 3,500 snow leopards, 2,500 dholes and around 1,000 Persian leopards are left in the wild’ but then I thought – how depressing! This is the last thing people need to hear, especially as we are all recovering from a cold wet winter and looking forward to the joys of spring. So, instead I’ve decided to skip the miserable bit as much as possible and focus on the positive difference we will make to some of our top predators.

The Persian leopard is one of the eight recognised subspecies of leopard

For the next year or so we will be raising awareness and raising money to save nine species of big cat and wild dog from extinction across the globe. I don’t have the space to tell you everything here so I’ll just focus on a couple of species for now.

Scottish wildcat

Let’s start close to home – the Scottish wildcat. Ok it isn’t officially a ‘big’ cat but it is the only native cat we have and as it is at serious risk of extinction we felt it was essential to include it in the campaign. Now confined to the highlands of Scotland it has been dubbed the Highland tiger but this cat once roamed freely throughout the UK. The biggest threat to the Scottish wildcat is hybridisation from breeding with domestic and feral cats and producing viable hybrid offspring. There is thought to be as few as 35 true wildcats left in Scotland but it is difficult to be sure because apart from being incredibly elusive, it is also very hard to tell a pure wildcat from a feral hybrid by sight alone.  In order to save our only native cat we need to know where the pure populations exist so we can put measures in place to protect them. Therefore, we are funding a project to study DNA samples and isolate the ‘wild gene’ in order to confidently identify once and for all the true wildcat.

The biggest threat to Scottish wildcats is hybridisation from breeding with domestic and feral cats

Snow leopard

Further afield, in Mongolia we are concentrating our attention on the endangered snow leopard. Whilst the threat of poaching is often the most quoted reason for the snow leopards decline, it is not that clear cut. In fact one of the biggest threats comes from the conflict with local herdsmen who kill the snow leopard in retaliation to them predating on their livestock. This, in conjunction with the domestic livestock out-competing the snow leopards’ natural prey species (the ibex and argali) for grazing rights, paints a bleak future for this charismatic animal. However, all is not lost and we are funding vital work to reduce the conflict between the local herdsman and the snow leopard and also assessing the availability of natural prey species. The teams in Mongolia are making great progress and you can keep up to date with it all on our website.

Snow leopards are able to jump as far as 15 metres!

We are also supporting work on the dhole, or Asiatic wild dogs, in Cambodia and Nepal, the lion, African leopard and African wild dog in Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya, the cheetah in South Africa, the Ethiopian wolf in Ethiopia and one of the rarest big cats, the Persian leopard in Iran. Here at People’s Trust for Endangered Species we work in partnership with other organisations and believe that conservation should be built on sound scientific evidence. We identify the problem then research possible solutions before investing in practical on-the-ground action.

Each African wild dog has a unique coat pattern

We have put on our thinking caps at PTES and come up with some fun new ideas on how you can get involved in saving our big cats and wild dogs. You can twin your pet with one of its wild cousins or simply befriend a wild animal. If you have some spare time you could hold a claw (nail) painting party or even organise a sponsored dog walk at night – Bark at the Moon.

Kiki the cat has been twinned with a leopard, as shown by her tag.             © Frankie Lees

For more information please visit www.savingcatsanddogs.org.

Thank you.

 Hannah Stockwell, PTES Fundraising Officer

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Did you know that your very own backyard is a valuable scientific research environment? Well, from February 15-18^th , it can be if you take part in this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count. A joint project of Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon, the Great Backyard Bird Count, or GBBC for short, invites everyone to participate in this landmark citizen science event to create a real-time snapshot of birds all over the world.

All you need is your backyard (or any green space really), 15 minutes (or longer if you like!) and either a piece of paper or your phone or tablet PC to capture your avian sightings. At the conclusion of your observations, log onto the GBBC website to record your sightings with people from around the globe doing the exact same thing.

Since many of us participating in the GBBC probably live in residential areas, the ARKive team has put together a helpful checklist of some of the more common and widespread bird species you might spot this weekend along with the defining features to look for:

Northern cardinal

Unmistakable with its deep rouge coloring, the northern cardinal’s plump round shape is also a dead giveaway for the species. Add it’s distinctive circular, black face mask and you can check this one off the list.

Lesser black-backed gull

Gulls are a class of birds with a considerably large distribution around the world. True to its namesake, the lesser black-backed gull can be identified by its dark coloration on its back and wings. If you’re still not sure, use binoculars to try to spot its red-tipped beak, a sure sign you’re observing this species.

Common pigeon

A frequent sight in cities around the world, the common pigeon can be identified by its speckled coloration and shimmery jeweled shading on its neck. Then again, if all else fails, the signature head-bobbing walk of the pigeon is distinctive enough.

Ruby-throated hummingbird

Always a treat when spotted, the ruby-throated hummingbird is the most widespread of all hummingbird species. As its name suggests, keep an eye out for its brightly colored and iridescent red throat but be aware, only the males of the species possess this.

American robin

Arguably the most recognizable bird in the United States (and a welcomed harbinger of spring), the bright orange chest and long dark tail feathers identify the American robin from all others.

Canada goose

Although it is often times heard before seen, the water-loving Canada goose’s dark, black neck contrasted by white cheek patches distinguishes it among all other goose species.

Mallard

Another avian fond of the aquatic lifestyle, the mallard’s striking metallic green head and white collar along with its bright orange legs are all positive identifiers of the species.

Barn owl

Despite being so elusive, the barn owl is one of the most wide-ranging birds, occupying every continent except Antarctica. If you’re lucky enough to spot one head on, look for its characteristic heart-shaped face and general ghost-white coloration.

Mourning dove

If the gentle cooing of this species doesn’t give it away, the mourning dove’s plump, gray chest, allover taupe color and delicate-looking black bill will.

We’d love to hear how your observations go this weekend so be sure to stop back in and share your findings in the comments below or on ARKive’s Facebook and Twitter feeds. Snap any pics during your observations? You can enter them into the Great Backyard Bird Count’s photo contest and also upload them to ARKive’s Flickr page. Tagged correctly, you may see your own photos appear on ARKive in the “Users’ photos” section of the species pages.

Happy bird watching this weekend!

Liana Vitali, ARKive Education & Outreach Manager, Wildscreen USA

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