Wildlife

Solar Strandings

A string of powerful solar storms interacting with Earth’s geomagnetic field may have been the cause of 29 beachings of sperm whales around the North Sea last year, scientists say.

Researchers from Germany’s University of Kiel found that the solar storms distorted the planet’s magnetic field by hundreds of miles, interfering with the whales’ sense of orientation.

Klaus Heinrich Vanselow and colleagues conclude that the whales would have been confused by the magnetic shifts because they grew up in the eastern Atlantic where such solar disruptions are typically much weaker.

Wildlife Conflicts

Animal rights groups expressed outrage at the Romanian government’s move to kill or relocate 140 bears and 97 wolves following a number of attacks on humans.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) strongly denounced the measure and blamed the attacks on deforestation. “The authorities should first address the problems that have prompted bears to get closer and closer to human settlements in the search for food,” Cristian Papp, the head of WWF’s Romanian branch, told Agence France-Presse.

About 6,000 brown bears roam in and around the country’s Carpathian Mountains.