Over the last 12 months, I have been collating evidence, stories and witness reports from residents and visitors to Cannock Chase, and have nearly finished writing a book detailing my findings. When the publication is complete I will post a link on here, but until then, I think a little taster is in order........
Saturday, April 27, 2013
PARANORMAL CANNOCK
For well over 2000 years, the beautiful and tranquil Cannock Chase Forest in Staffordshire, England, has been home to the most intense concentration of unusual phenomena ever to manifest in the British Isles. From heavily documented UFO sightings and ghostly apparitions, to disturbing tales of animal/human hybrids and top secret military activity, the Chase (as it is known locally) exhibits all the standard traits, often attributed to a paranormal portal, which, to me, makes the area endlessly fascinating.
TODAY'S BIG CAT NEWS ROUNDUP
The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. In September 2012 Emma Osborne decided that the Mystery Cat Study Group really deserved a blog of its own within the CFZ Blog Network.
SIGHTINGS USA: Bobcat sighting reported in Sorrent...
NEWSLINK: Ranthambore tiger strides 220km to MP
NEWSLINK: Cheetahs could disappear from the wild b...
NEWSLINK: No violations found at wild cat park whe...
FALLOUT FROM MAX AND DARREN'S PAPER
RICHARD FREEMAN'S RHINO NEWS SPECIAL
When people paid to help save the rhino, did they really imagine it was so that the rhino’s head
could one day hang on someone’s wall?
How Do You Save Endangered Rhinos?
For the first time in 33 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has granted a permit to an American hunter to import a black rhino trophy from Africa.
The move certainly set a precedent for importing endangered species trophies (it’s the first time any endangered species trophy has been allowed into the states) and has stirred up controversy about whether or not killing an endangered species can help save them.
Rhino horn madness: over two rhinos killed a day in South Africa
Read more at Rhino poachers have killed 232 rhinos during 2013 so far in South Africa, reportsAnnamiticus, which averages out to 2.1 a day. The country has become a flashpoint for rhino poaching as it holds more rhinos than any other country on Earth. Rhinos are being slaughter for their horns, which are believed to be a curative in Chinese traditional medicine, although there is no evidence this is so. Last year, South Africa lost 668 rhinos to poachers, according to the Department of Environmental Affairs. Most of the rhinos killed are white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum), which are currently listed by the IUCN Red List as Near Threatened. The other four rhino species are more endangered: the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) is listed as Vulnerable, while the black, Javan, and Sumatran are all listed as Critically Endangered. The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is down to just 100 individuals, while the Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus) is down to about 60.
Sumatran rhino population plunges, down to 100 animals
Less than 100 Sumatran rhinos survive in the world today, according to a bleak new population estimate by experts. The last survey in 2008 estimated that around 250 Sumatran rhinos survived, but that estimate now appears optimistic and has been slashed by 60 percent. However conservationists are responding with a major new agreement between the Indonesian and Malaysian governments at a recent summit by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC). The Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) is found in small, fragmented populations on the islands of Sumatra (Indonesia) and Borneo (Malaysia), as well as a recently identified individual or group in Indonesian Borneo. The world's smallest and hairiest rhino, the Sumatran is believed to be possibly related to the extinct woolly rhinoceros, having been around for around for 20 million years. Has WWF just condemned the last rhino in Kalimantan? WWF-Indonesia recently caught the attention of the global media with their announcement that the Sumatran rhinoceros still exists in Indonesian Borneo, some 40 years after being declared extinct there. This sounds like great news for biodiversity conservation. But is it really? Sumatran rhinos were once wide-spread in South-East Asia, but poaching for their horn decimated populations. In Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, there had been no reliable records of the species since the 1970s, although there were rumors of their continued existence at least until the mid-1990s (Meijaard, 1996). |
FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES
In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out of place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna has taken the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.
DALE DRINNON: Pumas, Frontiers of Anthropology, Benny's Blogs
New at the Frontiers of Zoology:
New at the Frontiers of Anthropology:
New at Benny's Blog for Thelma Todd:
Brest Wishes, Dale D.
THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN IS KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER
My life gets stranger. As I have written
elsewhere, I went to see Adam Ant with his rather swish new band, playing a set
of punky favourites from the early days and the best bits of his rather nifty
(in parts) new album. He was excellent. Corinna went with me, but for various
reasons (explained elsewhere) so did my 83 year old Mother-in-Law, and a
massively eccentric composer friend of mine. Add to that the fact that I had no
sleep on Thursday night, then you will understand why I am running a little late
this weekend.
The pond is now fully functional and
various goldfish and newts that were made homeless when it was removed from its
previous home, have now been rehomed. Jessica and Matthew have done a brilliant
job and are presently removing years of detritus from my conservatory prior to
some major building work by Graham (needed to stop it falling down). Hey
Ho!
Our daily visit to the world of Thom the World
Poet
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_27.html
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_27.html
Today's Gonzo Track of the Day is from Al
Stewart
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/gonzo-track-of-day-al-stewart-zero-she.html
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/gonzo-track-of-day-al-stewart-zero-she.html
An exclusive interview with René van Commenée, the
man behind the rather wonderful Mr Averell
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-real-exclusive-interview-with-rene.html
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-real-exclusive-interview-with-rene.html
Mother vs Adam Ant
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-mother-in-law-queen-of-wild-frontier.html
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-mother-in-law-queen-of-wild-frontier.html
Interview with Badfinger's Joey Molland
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/joey-molland-interview-legacy-of.html
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/joey-molland-interview-legacy-of.html
A new song from Michael Des Barres
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/new-music-from-michael-des-barres.html
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/new-music-from-michael-des-barres.html
* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If
you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk.
If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello
please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk.
Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as
possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is
viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun,
spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining.
See you tomorrow...
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
* We should probably mention here, that
some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we
think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in
other people's websites. Honest guv!
* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 53 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and a not very small orange kitten (who isn't) puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cats?
* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 53 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and a not very small orange kitten (who isn't) puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cats?
OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today
Yesterday’s News Today
On this
day in 1922 Jack Klugman was born. Klugman played the title roll in Quincy M.E.
and stared in 4 episodes of the Twilight Zone and as a copyright evading version
of Quincy in an episode of the 4th season of Diagnosis
Murder.
And now
the news:
You
know a few days ago when I said the opening credits of Ironside were among the
best ever created, well so was Quincy's: