How Slovenia is helping its ‘baby dragons’

The eyeless subterranean salamanders that live in the watery depths of Postojna Cave are under threat – but there’s hope in sight

Robin McKie

Sunday 27 August 2017 10.30 BST

Postojna Cave in Slovenia is one of Europe’s longest cave networks and one of the world’s most spectacular subterranean tourist sites. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come here every year to gaze at its wonders: its huge stalactites and stalagmites, its curtains of coloured rock and bridges that have been carved out of the local limestone by the river Pivka over millions of years.

Given such glories, it is not surprising that few tourists take note of the two concrete huts draped with black polythene that have been erected in a shadowy alcove in one obscure part of the 24km-long labyrinth. But the huts contain wonders of their own. In racks of trays of water, scientists have placed specimens of one of the world’s strangest creatures: the blind aquatic salamander Proteus anguinus – or olm, as it is known locally. It constitutes a project that could have profound implications for the future of these remarkable creatures.

Slovenia is extremely proud of its remarkable little blind salamander which featured on the country’s pre-Euro coins

“We now have 21 baby olms flourishing in our trays,” said Primoz Gnezda, a biologist working in Postojna Cave. “For the first time we have witnessed the hatching of proteus larvae – and, after one year, they are all healthy. And that gives us hope we can save our olms for the future.”

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Balkan wildlife faces extinction threat from border fence to control migrants

Controversial razor-wire fence put up by Slovenia along its border with Croatia could wipe out local bear, lynx and wolf populations, say researchers

Arthur Neslen in Llubljana, the Upper Kolpa valley and Zagreb

Thursday 11 August 201610.58 BSTLast modified on Thursday 11 August 201610.59 BST

The death toll of animals killed by a razor wire fence designed to stop migrants crossing into Europe is mounting, amid warnings that bears, lynx and wolves could become locally extinct if the barrier is completed and consolidated.

The rising tally of dead roe and red deer is still mercifully small, but contested by local people who claim that it is being systematically under-counted.

Slovenia began erecting the barrier across 180km of its river border with Croatia last winter, as a temporary measure to staunch the flow of asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Inadvertently, it has also created a huge obstacle to animals freely moving across the border in a wildlife rich corner of Europe.

But even though the human migration crisis has dramatically eased, Slovenia’s interior ministry is seeking a change in the law to prevent environmental factors from slowing the barrier’s extension.

A government spokesperson said that while refugee numbers were falling, “there are still more than 57,000 migrants in Greece. The situation in Turkey remains very uncertain after the military coup. There is a political crisis in Macedonia, and an increasing number of migrants are gathering in Serbia, which lacks sufficient accommodation capacities. Also, the number of people travelling the migrant route across the Mediterranean to Italy has increased again.”

While the fence is supposed to be a temporary measure, fears that the crisis could be prolonged were heightened when the government signalled its intent to fence its entire 670km border with Croatia in December.

Researchers from the University of Ljubljana report of several tonnes of razor wire being stockpiled in the open at military barracks near the Croatian border, ready to be unfurled at short notice.

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Olm eggs: First two Slovenian 'dragons' emerge

By Jonathan Webb Science reporter, BBC News

4 hours ago

After a four-month wait, the eggs laid by a peculiar salamander in a Slovenian cave have started to hatch.

Ghostly pale and totally blind, olms - fondly known by locals as "baby dragons" - only reproduce every 5-10 years and are thought to live to 100.

This clutch of eggs started to appear in January in an aquarium in Postojna Cave, a tourist destination where the creatures have lived for millennia.

Observing baby olms develop and hatch is a rare opportunity for science.

The first of 23 developed eggs hatched on 30 May; a second baby olm (pictured below) was slowly wriggling out of its egg on Wednesday night.

"It is the end of one part of the story and the beginning of a whole new chapter: feeding and living without the egg," said Saso Weldt, who looks after and studies the olms at Postojna Cave.

He told BBC News nobody witnessed the first egg hatching, but the moment was captured thanks to an infrared camera.

"I was in the cave doing some other biological work. Since we have all the eggs on an IR camera, we saw that one was missing. Then you rewind and suddenly you realise, something has happened."

Mr Weldt and his colleagues hope to see a full count of 23 healthy hatchlings within a few weeks.

The staff at Postojna have been consulting amphibian experts to help them care for the fragile eggs, including a French team that has studied the olms in an underground mountain lab since the 1950s.

That laboratory is the only other place where these animals have ever been observed emerging from their eggs.

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International Whaling Commission to meet in Slovenia on 15 September

The 65th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) will begin on 15 September in Portoroz, Slovenia.

Pro-conservation countries and organisations are once again preparing to take on Japan and other pro-whaling nations.

The fight will be over the integrity of the global commercial whaling moratorium that has spared tens of thousands of whales from the harpoon since 1982.

Top priorities for organisations such the Humane Society International (HIS) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) include urging whale-friendly governments to increase pressure for stronger protection for whales and turn back efforts to dilute the worldwide commercial whaling moratorium.

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