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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Friday, April 17, 2009

THE LAST CORNISH RED SQUIRREL

This is another specimen from Truro Museum, and is the only bona fide Cornish specimen of the red squirrel that I have been able to find. In 1966, S.C. Madge wrote that the species was almost extinct in South-eastern Cornwall, although ‘there still might have been a few at Mount Edgecombe’.

Two years later, Dr. D.W. Turk wrote that:

“Although local the species is still widespread in the county and may indeed be spreading into new areas”.

In 1979, Manning noted that:

“It seems likely that the Red Squirrel has vanished from this part of England”.

although he expressed a faint hope that some might still survive in the far western tip of Cornwall. There are a few other Cornish records in the archives of the Institute for Cornish Studies, but after the mid-1970s even these peter out.

Officially, the status of the species is even less certain. Harry Pepper from the Forestry Commission Research Centre, says that the most recent Westcountry sightings that he is prepared to substantiate are from the edges of Bodmin Moor in 1965. (We believe that this roadkilled specimen was that animal). His most recent records from Devonshire are a decade earlier than that!

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