BBC News report:
Four rare gorillas are being flown from South Africa to Cameroon, five years after they were illegally smuggled to Taiping Zoo in Malaysia.
The Malaysian authorities returned the four Western Lowland gorillas to South Africa in 2004 and they have since been kept at Pretoria Zoo.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare said the “Taiping Four” will now be taken to a wildlife sanctuary.
The male and three females were sedated before being put into giant crates.
Full story here
Around 300 deer are to be culled by landowners on the Quantock hills in Somerset. The League Against Cruel Sports has condemned the cull organised by the Deer Management and Conservation Group.
Full story: BBC News
From The Cumberland News:
Wildlife experts say crime is a continuing threat to Britain’s most vulnerable birds – especially birds of prey.
During 2006, 72 egg collecting incidents were recorded, including robberies from 16 nests of birds on Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
In the 25th year of the Wildlife and Countryside Act gaining Royal Assent, a report on bird-related crimes across the UK in 2006, published by the RSPB, shows that wildlife crime is still a significant hazard to some of our most threatened birds.
The Society’s latest Birdcrime report shows 1,109 reported incidents relating to wild birds in 2006, more than a 50 per cent increase on the previous year (726 incidents).
Read full story here
The public, charities, and wildlife experts have all condemned the decision by Newquay Zoo to put down two macaque monkeys. The animals were killed as they were considered too aggressive. Stewart Muir, director of the zoo said that re-homing wasn’t an option, ‘It would not have been possible to rehouse them anywhere that could promise us they would not be placed in isolation’.
The Monkey Sanctuary in Cornwall said that they could have found homes for the monkeys if they were asked.
As there is now just one Macaque left, the zoo is considering acquiring more females to start a breeding programme.
Here are some responses  from The Times Online :
How on earth can a facility that’s proven itself appallingly incapable of housing the macaques it’s already got possibly justify acquiring more?
….I will be very concerned if they get any more animals after this..and certainly not the females they requested for. This is human driven artificial selection
Where are the RSPCA in all this, also, who was the vet who agreed to do this? They thoroughly disgust me.
 From Channel 4
 Madonna is facing the wrath of animal activists after a flock of sheep were dipped in dye on her country estate.
The sheep were died pink, blue, yellow and green as part of a Vogue photoshoot but the singer has defended the stunt saying that the dye was only temporary.
“Why is it necessary and what are they trying to prove?” said an RSPCA official.
“It is an irresponsible publicity stunt. It sends out the wrong message about how to use animals.”
The photoshoot was said to be in homage to legendary photographer Cecil Beaton, who worked for Vogue and lived on Madonna’s Wiltshire estate in the 1930s and 40s.
BMI has been accused of leaving a customers golden retriever out in the scorching midday Caribbean sun. Graeme Davidson says, during the 8 hour flight to Antigua his three dogs were given neither food nor water.
Graeme who works as a magician said, “It would have been better if they had put a gun to his head and shot him, rather than leaving him to suffer a slow, agonising death.”
Full story in The Mirror
The House of Lords has dismissed appeals by the Countryside Alliance (CA) and other supporters of hunting which claimed the acts banning hunting with hounds in England, Wales and Scotland breached human rights and free trade laws.
John Rolls, of the RSPCA, said: ‘We are glad to see that the Law Lords have unanimously decided to dismiss these appeals.’
The CA are now taking their case to the European Court Of Human Rights.
Full story: Horse and Hounds
Deforestation isn’t the only threat to the Orangutan. A reduction of food supply due to climate change will have a devastating affect on Indonesia’s Orangutan population.
Full story: Reuters
Extract from the BBC News:
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Britain’s native toads are at risk from a deadly infection that has driven many of the world’s amphibians to extinction, say UK scientists.
The fungal disease is currently confined to Kent, where it was brought in by imported frogs.
But if it spread further it could, in theory, completely wipe out the British toad population, according to research published in a Royal Society journal
Full story here