Polish minister sparks outrage with bid to eat rare animals

By Adam Easton BBC News, Warsaw

7 June 2019

Polish agriculture minister Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski has provoked widespread incredulity and criticism in Poland after he proposed removing legal protection for European bison and beaver and adding them to a list of "edible animals".

During an agriculture conference at the Polish parliament late last month, Mr Ardanowski spoke about the need to regulate beaver numbers due to the damage he said they cause to agricultural land. He lamented that even though local authorities grant permission to kill thousands of beavers each year there's very little demand from hunters to hunt them.

In Poland, unlike many European countries, beavers are only partially protected and may be killed between October and March under certain circumstances. The hunter is not allowed to eat the dead animal.

"I will decide to recognise beaver and bison as edible animals," he said, adding that beaver tail was an aphrodisiac. "It may turn out that the beaver problem will end soon," he added.

Continued

Planned wild boar cull in Poland angers conservationists

Mikołaj Golachowski describes plan as ‘evil’ and warns of environmental consequences

Shaun WalkerCentral and eastern Europe correspondent

Fri 11 Jan 2019 07.00 GMTLast modified on Fri 11 Jan 2019 07.04 GMT

Conservationists have branded plans by the Polish government to cull almost the entire wild boar population of the country as “pointless, counterproductive and evil”.

In a move to tackle an epidemic of African swine fever, the Polish government has ordered a series of hunts, beginning this weekend, with the aim of killing the vast majority of the country’s population of around 200,000 wild boar.

Last year, the country’s veterinary officials approved a plan to kill 185,000 wild boars this season, and the country’s PZL hunting union said it had already killed 168,000 since last April. The government has recently decided to speed up the process by calling all licensed hunters to go out seeking wild boars, including pregnant females, over weekends this month.

Opponents of the cull said it is not only cruel but pointless, or possibly even counterproductive.

“The massacre of wild boar in large-scale hunts will not stop [African swine fever], it will only help the spread of the virus to western Poland,” said an appeal by environmental organisations to the government to abandon the plan.

Read on 

An 18-Foot Fugitive Python Is on the Loose in Poland

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | August 29, 2018 03:17pm ET

For nearly two months, a slippery fugitive has evaded capture in the Polish countryside. Nicknamed Bertha, she followed a serpentine path to escape her seekers' best efforts.

You might say that she slithered right through her would-be captors' hands.

Bertha is a rogue Indian python (Python molurus molurus), though few of those looking for her have actually seen her. Animal Rescue Poland (ARP) received reports on July 7 of shed snakeskin found near the Vistula River south of Warsaw that measured nearly 7 feet (2 meters). When ARP investigated the high grass closer to the river, they found a second piece of molted skin measuring about 16 feet (5 m), suggesting that the snake could be as long as 20 feet (6 m) from nose to tail tip, according to an ARP blog post. [Photos: Giant Pythons Invade Everglades]

Continued  

Monster slugs are attacking birds in Europe

Slugs aren't usually considered predators.

BRYAN NELSON

August 29, 2016, 5:28 p.m.

An orange slug from the Arion genus. (Photo: Guillaume Brocker/Wiki Commons)

Death by slug: It's not a good way to go, but that's exactly what's happening to baby birds in Poland. Researchers there have witnessed a surprising pattern of large slugs of the Arion genus crawling into the nests of birds and eating the hatchlings alive, reports New Scientist.

A trail of slime is the only evidence remaining from such attacks. The behavior is so unusual that the birds' parents don't even try to defend them, possibly because they don't see the slugs as a threat until it's too late. One parent bird was even witnessed incubating a slug feeding on its dead chicks.

“The actual moment of slugs predating on nestlings isn’t easy to observe,” explained Katarzyna Turzańska from the University of Wroclaw in Poland, one of the researchers in the study. "You are more likely to come across the traces of the ‘tragedy’: dead or alive nestlings with heavy injuries, covered in slime – and often slugs’ droppings found nearby."

The researchers' work appeared in the Journal of Avian Biology.

Turzańska and colleague Justyna Chachulska have been researching this behavior since they observed it for the first time while studying whitethroat birds near Wroclaw, in Poland. Although predation by slugs has been recorded before across Europe, almost all of these reports pertain to bird species that nest close to the ground. That giant slugs would seek out treetop-nesting birds as food is a surprise, however. It appears unprecedented.

Slugs in the Arion genus can grow quite large, and they'll eat almost anything. While most slugs spend their time dining on leaves and rotting plants, they have been known to devour earthworms and other smaller slugs. Decomposing animals are certainly on the menu as well. And, apparently, now they've expanded their appetite to include live chicks.

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New home needed for Europe’s largest land animal - bison, say Polish wildlife experts

Bison numbers are expected to keep rising after the land animal's numbers soared from zero to 1,500 since 1951

By Matthew Day, Warsaw

9:20AM GMT 08 Dec 2015

Wildlife experts in Poland are looking for a new home for the European bison, Europe’s largest land animal, owing to its burgeoning population.

Once hunted to extinction in the wild, and still confined to only a few pockets of forests in Poland and other European countries, the mammoth beast is enjoying something of a renaissance.

Since its re-introduction into the wild in 1951 the number of bison in Poland has soared from zero to over 1,500, and the country is now home to the majority of Europe's 2,700 free-roaming bison.

Having no natural predator and with their hunting prohibited, bison numbers are expected to keep on growing, but their success at reproduction has spawned problems.

"The herd populations are already too large and the locations of the herds no longer have the resources to meet their needs," Professor Wanda Olech-Piasecka, from Warsaw’s School of Life Sciences, told the Polish News Agency.

Food in their natural habitat of forest and meadow has started to become scarce forcing the bison to stray into farmland in their hunt for fodder. There is also a need to disperse the population to stop the spread of disease and limit in-breeding.

"We actually have no other choice," said Krzysztof Oniszczuk, director of state forests around the eastern city of Bialystok. "We have to come up with a good solution before the herds become too big."

Read on ...

Wolves return to Poland more than 50 years after being wiped out

National park outside Warsaw says several of the animals seem to have settled there again after government cull in the 1960s

Agence France-Presse in Warsaw

Wednesday 25 November 2015 18.51 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 25 November 201519.53 GMT

Wolves have returned to a large national park on the outskirts of Warsaw, decades after they were wiped out there under a hunt launched by the communist authorities.

“We’re really happy,” said Magdalena Kamińska, spokeswoman for the 150sq mile (385sq km) Kampinos national park, Poland’s second largest. “The fact that wolves have returned to our park, from which they completely disappeared in the 1960s, means that nature is in good health and is renewing itself.”

Park employees spotted a first wolf in 2013, but the animal was just passing through. Now there are several and they appear to have settled in for the long haul, Kamińska said.

A young male wolf was caught on a hidden camera just a few days ago, and in September another was spotted drinking at a watering hole.

Poland’s communist regime organised a vast wolf cull in the 60s in response to their perceived danger, paying residents for every animal shot dead. The park’s last wolf pack was killed in 1964.

Continued ...

What is the meaning of the 'vampire graves' unearthed in Poland?

The world's media have been getting their teeth into the story of a "vampire grave" uncovered last week by archaeologists at a roadside construction site in the town of Gliwice in southern Poland. When four skeletons were found with their skulls placed between their legs, speculation followed that these were suspected vampires that had been prevented from rising from the grave through the once-ritualistic local practice of decapitation.

"It's very difficult to tell when these burials were carried out," Dr Jacek Pierzak, the lead archaeologist, told the Dziennik Zachodni newspaper. Early indications, he said, suggested the grave could be dated to the 16th century. Other clues possibly suggesting a vampire burial included the skeleton's lack of any personal items, such as jewellery. Meanwhile,other local newspaper reports noted that an alternative theory suggested they were not vampires, but victims of an execution at a known nearby gallows.

Whatever the truth – the Guardian adopts a firmly sceptical position on the undead – the discovery of so-called vampire graves is not uncommon across eastern Europe. Last year, archaeologists in Bulgaria found two medieval skeletons with iron rods driven through their chest. According to Bozhidar Dimitrov, who runs the National History Museum in Sofia, about 100 such skeletons have been uncovered in Bulgaria, with the gruesome practice known across the Balkans, where fear of vampires has been at its strongest over the centuries.

Read on

Polish vandals scare two giraffes to death

Two female giraffes have died of heart attack and stress caused by a night rampage by a group of vandals in a Polish zoo. The zoo is now struggling to find a mate for the only survivor, six-year-old Tofik from the endangered Rothschild subspecies.

The staff discovered the dead body of one female giraffe early in the morning amid the havoc that several unidentified vandals had left after their malicious hooliganism. The gang broke into the zoo in the city of Lodz on Saturday. They overturned benches and signs and threw garbage cans into the cages, stressing the animals. 

A post-mortem showed that the three-year-old giraffe died almost immediately after the incident. 

The second female giraffe died on Monday. Though it was being treated for an infestation of parasites, zoo officials believe that stress contributed much to the death.

"These are wild animals and very skittish," said zoo Director Ryszard Topola, adding that the incident was an irrevocable loss.

The zoo in the city of Lodz, one of Poland’s 20 zoos, had only three giraffes from the endangered Rothschild giraffe subspecies. Now, after two females tragically died, the zoo’s breeding section is struggling to find a companion giraffe for the male Tofik in other European zoos.

Police have opened an investigation into the act of vandalism, but the fact that the zoo is not equipped with security cameras is hampering the search.

Meanwhile, the Polish national Animal Guard, together with city authorities, has offered a $1,500 reward for any help in finding the culprits, who face prison sentences of up to five years for this crime.

http://rt.com/news/poland-zoo-giraffes-heart-attack-397/

Angry squirrel attacks park officials

Park officials planning to chop down woodlands thought they were going nutty - when they were attacked by an angry squirrel.

The Town Hall experts in Bialystok, Poland, were discussing which trees to fell in the public park when the furry-ous beast leapt into their office through an open window and destroyed all their plans and paperwork.

"The squirrel jumped onto the table and went berserk, tearing all our papers to shreds.

"If I didn't know it was impossible, I'd think he'd overheard us planning to cut his trees down," said one official.

Wildlife experts eventually trapped the squirrel and took him back to the nearby woods.

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Angry_squirrel_attacks_park_officials

Poles turn to Internet to circumvent new pet breeding laws

Poles have turned to cyberspace to circumvent a new animal rights law in Poland forbidding the sale of dogs and cats without a breeding licence, which had been intended to stamp out cruelty to animals.

The law, which came into force on January 1, was intended to tackle the appalling conditions in which some unlicensed breeders kept their animals.

It allows only breeders licenced by national professional organizations to breed dogs and cats for commercial purposes.

And in another measure designed to shut out casual, unregulated trade, it also prohibits the purchase and sale of pets at outdoor markets.

"Animals from illegal breeders have a horrible life, worse than stray dogs," said Izabela Dzialak, director of a shelter in Celestynow, near Warsaw.

"They are often starving and crammed in cages filled with their own excrement," she added.

Volunteers at animal shelters are already struggling to care for the strays and dogs abandoned by breeders after the new legislation came into effect.

But Dzialak saw that as a temporary headache.

"We might have a hard time with the large number of dogs coming in from illegal breeders for now, but in two years the problem will be solved," she said.

Already however, some breeders are trying to find ways around the ban.

"Selling a leash for 400 zlotys (95 euros, $129), will throw in a German Shepherd puppy for free" says one ad among thousands posted on popular Polish Internet shopping sites.

For Tomasz Justyniarski, spokesman for Poland's Guard (SdZ) animal rights association, the intention is clear.

"It's an obvious attempt to circumvent the new law banning all trade and husbandry of animals without a licence," he said.

"Since January, we receive one alert on average per day on illegal breeders in the Warsaw area," selling over the Internet, said Justyniarski.

When animals were seized from illegal breeders, the SdZ group did its best to find them new homes, he added.

But as long as there is money to be made in the trade, the less scrupulous breeders will continue, say animal welfare groups.

"The breeding and trade of unregistered pets is a widespread phenomenon in Poland and it isn't subject to any tax regulations," said Cezary Wyszynski, of the "Viva!" animal rights foundation.

In addition, many illegal breeders in Poland targeted the lucrative German and Austrian markets: over there, dogs can fetch a higher price, he explained.

One illegal breeder in Warsaw, who spoke on condition of anonymity, made it clear he would not let the new crackdown stop him.

"I've been selling dogs for five years. The income supplements my pension," he told AFP.

He kept two dogs, a German shepherd and a Saint Bernard, at his house in a Warsaw suburb, earning about 14,000 zlotys (3,300 euros, $4,507) each year from the sales of their puppies, he said.

"The new law will certainly complicate my life, but I won't stop so long as I need the money," he insisted.

And, he added: "There are many others like me."

If he did have a licence, he would be able to ask, on average, 60 percent more than the current price at which he was selling the puppies, he said.

But all the paperwork -- and the strict rules about breeding -- made it more trouble than it was worth.

Grzegorz Kurkowski, chief state veterinarian in Otwock near Warsaw, welcomed the new law but two additional measures were needed, he said.

"We still need to develop a coherent system of electronic tagging for animals and a sterilisation programme," he argued.

"This would solve the problem permanently."

http://news.yahoo.com/poles-turn-internet-circumvent-pet-breeding-laws-083849914.html;_ylt=AoJ61JesMbQKo012cYkGvW94hMgF;_ylu=X3oDMTRidGtka2thBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBTY2llbmNlU0YgQW5pbWFsUGV0c1NTRgRwa2cDZmJiYzdhMTktYWExOC0zYjdlLWI4NDctYmFkNGJiYzVhNTg4BHBvcwMxMARzZWMDdG9wX3N0b3J5BHZlcgMxYWI2ZmEwYy02MTJjLTExZTEtOWUzZi1lYzkyZWE1YzNmMDk-;_ylg=X3oDMTI5ZXFsbjJlBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANzY2llbmNlfGFuaW1hbCAtIHBldHMEcHQDc2VjdGlvbnMEdGVzdAM-;_ylv=3

Vets take action to save Poland's lynx

Eurasian lynx kitten. File picture

Image by: Bernard Landgraf / Wikimedia commons

Growling furiously, Benek the lynx cub looks up with baleful eyes as a veterinarian squats by his cage and takes aim with a tranquiliser gun.

"It'll take a half hour to knock him out," says Jakub Kotowicz, vice-president of the Rehabilitation Centre for Protected Animals in Przemysl, southeastern Poland.

The feline snarls as the dart strikes its haunch, but minutes later is toying kitten-like with another pink, fluffy-tailed missile which went off target.

"If he was a bear, we'd need a whole night to get him under," jokes the centre's head Radoslaw Fedaczynski.

Eradicated from much of Europe 150 years ago, lynx still roam the continent's forested north and east.

Europe's population of Eurasian lynx is estimated at 7,500 to 8,000 -- excluding those in Russia -- with the bulk found in Romania, Scandinavia and the Baltic states.

An estimated 200 of the solitary wildcats live in Poland, mostly clustered near the northeastern borders with Belarus, Lithuania and Russia's Kaliningrad territory and in the southern Carpathian Mountains, Benek's home turf.

The Eurasian lynx is in far better shape than its critically-endangered Spanish and Portuguese cousin the Iberian lynx, about 100 of which remain in the wild.

But life isn't easy and Benek -- Polish for "Benny" -- is lucky.

After becoming separated from his mother, and too young to hunt game properly, he emerged from the forest.

Locals called the care centre after finding him just before Christmas in Bircza, a village 27 kilometres (17 miles) from Przemysl.

"He was trying to catch chickens from the region's farms but got chased up a tree by some dogs. When we found him, he was starving, exhausted and needed our help," said Andrzej Fedaczynski, 52, who with his son Radoslaw runs the regular veterinary practice doubling as a voluntary care centre for wild animals.

Benek has been getting the best care possible: shots, glucose and medication to boost his metabolism.

He's the fifth lynx to have passed through in three years.

"We don't want to be a lynx sanctuary. Our goal is to get them back to the wild," said Radoslaw. "They have an excellent instinct for self-preservation."

The tranquilised Benek is carried limp-limbed from the isolated cage where he is being kept to stop him getting used to humans, past a domestic cat about to be seen by a vet. It freezes in its owners lap.

"He weighed much less than he should, so we can't use his weight to determine his age. But size and external appearance tell us he's between six and 12 months old," said Kotowicz.

"It's hard to say when we'll be able to let him go. For now he's too weak. We only have 200 lynx in Poland, so each one is very valuable for the local ecosystem. We have to be 100 percent sure he'll cope in the wild," he added.

Benek is regaining his appetite for a normal lynx diet of deer and smaller game.

But if he reaches his third birthday -- and sexual maturity -- he will be an exception.

"Only one in four lynx actually make it to sexual maturity," according to Urs Breitenmoser of the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature.

"It's a balance between different odds," he told AFP in a telephone interview.

Hunted, often by the ruling elite, until the fall of Poland's communist regime in 1989, lynx have since enjoyed legal protection.

But Krzysztof Schmidt of Poland's Mammal Research Institute insists the threats are still manifold here.

Shrinking forests have restricted their territory, and the thinning of woodlands makes it harder for lynx to stalk or hide out to rest, he said.

"Then there's the development of road networks in terms of further habitat fragmentation, roadkills to a lesser extent, and poaching, although that's not very significant," he added.

"Overall, I don't think it's a paradise for lynx. However, they're still lucky here," he said.

Schmidt contrasted Poland with the Baltic state of Estonia, home to around 800 lynx, between 80 and 180 of which are hunted annually for fur and skull trophies under a legal quota.

There is good news for some of those felines: plans are underway to use up to 40 Estonian lynx to repopulate the forest wilderness of northeast Poland's Mazuria region.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2012/01/31/vets-take-action-to-save-poland-s-lynx

Suffolk kingfisher migrated from Poland

Record breaking kingfisher found in Suffolk
October 2011. A kingfisher found at the National Trust's Orford Ness Nature Reserve on the Suffolk coast looks likely to have broken the UK record for furthest migration of the species.

The kingfisher was caught and released by members of Landguard Bird Observatory as part of their routine bird ringing studies at the site and is thought to have travelled in excess of 1,000km from Poland.

This breaks the previous record set by a British kingfisher which was ringed in Marloes, Pembrokeshire, and found in Irun, Spain, having travelled around 970km. It is also the most easterly discovery in the UK, with other foreign recoveries coming from France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany.

Mike Marsh, Volunteer Ringer for the Landguard Bird Observatory, said: "We catch a small number of kingfishers each year at Orford Ness, usually in the autumn, and previously assumed that these had been dispersing juveniles of fairly local origin.

"This will be one of the longest migrations among the kingfishers in the ringing database and we can't wait to get confirmation of the record from the British Trust for Ornithology and hear about the Polish ringing scheme."

A few migrate
Kingfishers are a resident breeding species in the UK but each year a small number migrate here from the continent, probably moving away from places with prolonged freezing conditions in the winter.

The last kingfisher ringed from abroad and found in the UK was on 29 October 2008 and had travelled 819km from Aken in Germany.

Grant Lohoar, Orford Ness site manager for the National Trust, said: "This is a great record for us, but something we wouldn't have known about if this bird hadn't been ringed, thanks to our expert volunteers. This highlights the importance of ringing as a tool for conservation which allows us to identify birds as individuals. Orford Ness is a really important stop-over site for many migrating birds, as they can refuel and rest on the marshes, in the reedbeds or on the many lagoons we have here."

Kingfishers are generally found near still or slow flowing water on perches from where they hunt, commonly swooping down to the water to catch small fish such as minnow and stickleback.

The longest lived kingfisher according to ringing recoveries is four years, six months and 13 days, which was set in 1969.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/kingfisher-migration.html

Kidnapped dog finds its way home

A Polish woman could not believe her eyes when her pet dog found its way home - after being dognapped 30 miles away.

Edyta Kowalska, 44, from Sochaczew, had gone to the capital Warsaw for the day with her two-year-old Dachshund, Cherry.

But as they walked down the road a car suddenly pulled up and three masked men jumped out. The trio bundled the dog inside a car and sped off.

"It was terrifying. They leapt out of their car and ran over towards me. I thought they were going to attack me, but instead they grabbed Cherry, jumped back in the car and drove off," said Edyta.

"I went to the police and filed a report, but I don't think they took it very seriously.

"But I was beside myself with grief, and just couldn't understand why they had taken Cherry and what they would do to her."

For five days, Edyta fretted until she looked out of her kitchen window to see Cherry trotting up the garden path.

"I couldn't believe it. She was a bit thin and bedraggled, but she had made it home," she said.

"I'll never know what happened and why they took her, but now she's back and that's all that matters."

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Kidnapped_dog_finds_its_way_home

Thief demands £1m ransom for boy's cat

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Thief_demands_1m_ransom_for_boys_cat

A cat burglar who broke into a home and stole a schoolboy's pet cat has demanded a £1 million ransom for its safe return. Caesar is a rare Mekong Bobtail cat but its owner - 12-year-old Dawid Kisielewski - says the pet is not worth more than £500.

Caesar was nabbed last month from the youngster's home in Myslowice, Poland. Dawid had almost given up hope after putting up posters all over town, when the family suddenly got the mysterious ransom phone call.

"He has been beside himself with worry - he loved Caesar," said mum Jolanta, 40.

The family said it had received a phone call from a man saying he had the cat and would return it safely for £1m. Jolanta added: "He must be a raving madman. We don't have that sort of money - and besides, the cat is only worth £500. We have no idea what to do as we can't afford to pay it, but if we don't Dawid will be broken hearted."

Now police say they will do all they can to find the cat-napper.

"Someone who demands a ransom for the misappropriation of property belonging to another can get three years imprisonment," said police spokesman Ryszard Padua. "We will find this ridiculous man and make sure he gets the full sentence."

Six foot long snake discovered in toilet in Poland

A 73-year-old Polish pensioner was shocked to find a 6.5-foot-long anaconda peering up out of her toilet bowl on Monday in her flat in Wroclaw, south-west Poland, local police said.

Published: 9:23PM BST 20 Sep 2010

"After she raised the lid of the toilet seat, the lady saw a huge snake that wanted to slither out of the toilet bowl.

"She immediately slammed down the toilet lid and called us," Pawel Petrykowski, a Wroclaw police spokesman, told AFP.

"She was certainly very frightened but managed to keep her wits about her," he said.

After arriving on the scene, police and an employee from the local zoo managed to catch the reptile, which is native to South America.

"It must have somehow got into the toilet bowl via the plumbing pipes," Mr Petrykowski said.

While the anaconda was taken to the zoo, police launched an investigation aimed at identifying its owner.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8014470/Six-foot-long-snake-discovered-in-toilet-in-Poland.html

Beavers responsible for Poland's flooding

Beavers are partly to blame for the devastating floods that have swept Poland killing 15 people because the animals tunnel through vital defences protecting the cities, the interior minister has said.

The greatest enemy of the flood defences is an animal called the beaver. They live everywhere along the levees on the Vistula (river) and cause a lot of damage to them," Jerzy Miller said.


An estimated 50,000 of the large, mostly nocturnal, semi-aquatic rodents live in Poland where they enjoy a degree of protection, animal welfare services say.

However, local authorities have upped hunting quotas for the animals in the wake of the floods.


"Beavers dig tunnels in the flood defences, weakening them from inside. But they are not alone, there are also water voles," Pawel Fratczak, Poland's national fire brigade spokesman said.

Torrential rain in Poland's mountainous south have caused rivers, including the Vistula, Poland's largest, swell to levels unseen in more than a century.

Flood defences have already given way near the southeastern town of Sandomierz and in Plock, central Poland, causing flooding in several locations in those regions.

Thousands have been evacuated across the country, but according to Mr Fratczak thousands more have refused to leave their homes regardless of the risk posed by rising flood waters.

Forecasters predicted intermittent rain and storms across Poland until the middle of the week as the flood crest moves north on the Vistula and the Oder among others.

Poland's government has pledged two billion zloty (£412 million) in aid for people who lost their homes to rising waters.

Last week, Tusk said the cost of the flood damage could reach 10 billion zloty.

In 1997, Poland suffered its worst flooding in centuries which killed 54 people, caused billions of dollars in damage and forced the evacuation of over 150,000 people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/