#483: Safari... so good...

One from the Google Alert that I set up for 'GCSE Natural History'.

Intrigued by this story.

Cottar's, Africa's oldest family-run safari company, has launched an innovative five-day educational experience for teenagers, specifically designed around the UK's new Natural History GCSE curriculum. Olivia Palamountain reports

Cottar's Safaris will debut "Tracks for Tomorrow" in October 2025 at its 1920s Camp in Kenya's Olderkesi Conservancy in the Maasai Mara.

Targeting young people aged 14-18 with hands-on conservation learning, the programme represents a unique approach to educational travel, with activities specifically aligned to Natural History GCSE educational goals including observation, field studies, sustainability, and ecosystem awareness. Participants receive a certificate of completion, creating a lasting milestone in their conservation education.

The programme launches as the UK introduces its new Natural History GCSE, creating a timely educational tourism opportunity that bridges classroom learning with real-world conservation experience in one of Africa's most significant wildlife areas.

Intrigued because the curriculum for the new Natural History GCSE isn't yet confirmed, following an earlier draft consultation - which produced something which will inevitably change substantially following other consultation processes.

The trip sounds excellent to be fair... it includes:

Innovative programme elements include wild foraging for edible plants and insects, seedball reforestation projects, and a choice between deep-diving into cheetah conservation or raptor studies with daily updates on 500 monitored nests.

The programme blends traditional Maasai cultural education through "Warrior School" with modern conservation challenges, including sustainability tasks where teens design eco-friendly camps or develop ideas to reduce travel carbon footprints.

However, the price may put it out of the reach of most schools.

#260: Center Parcs and muntjac

I recently spent a weekend at Center Parcs in Elveden Forest. 

This is one of several pictures I took which featured the very common muntjac which prowl the site. They are Reeves Muntjac. They are very common in Norfolk and Suffolk.

They are native to China and Taiwan. The animals which we see today are related to animals which are thought to have escaped from Woburn Abbey and other locations in the early part of the 20th century, and have adapted well to the UK's landcape and climate. They don't really have predators (although I wiped one out with my car, which was written off in return). They also don't really compete with the native deer. They are common in SE of England and are heading north and west.

They are not too fussy about what the eat which means they can cause damage to woodlands, and eat rare plants. The loss of these plants affects insects and birds. 

The local 'KL Magazine' had a piece recently, which suggested that the loss of woodland ground cover is a key impact that they have. One suggestion has been to reintroduce the lynx - even the smell of a lynx is enough to keep muntjac from grazing an area.

Keep an eye out for them, but remember that their presence has an impact on woodlands.

Image: Muntjac, Alan Parkinson, and shared under CC license.

#213: Cave Paintings #2 - Cosquer Cave

Another reminder that you can join the dedicated Facebook group for GCSE Natural History here. We have over 750 members of the group now.

One element of the proposed specification is a look back at the early representations of wildlife found in caves and painted many thousands of years ago.

This delightful little red mammoth can be found in the Grottes d'Arcy-sur-Cure near Burgundy. It was created by an ice age artist just before the last glacial maximum #IceAgeFrance 🎨 pic.twitter.com/WFZFoLS4s3

— Prof Jamie Woodward (@Jamie_Woodward_) May 1, 2022

I've been reading Max Leonard's 'A Cold Spell', and he mentions the cave at Cosquer near Marseille.

There was a long human occupation of the Cosquer Cave, from 33,000 BP to 19,000 BP, consisting of two major, almost uninterrupted, phases of human occupation. These dates have been obtained from around sixty Carbon-14 dating tests performed on forty-one samples collected between 1992 and 2012.

The Upper Palaeolithic Period was a period in prehistory that began in Europe when the first Homo sapiens emerged, around 45,000 years ago. The period was characterised by an intensely cold climate, and the fauna and flora adapted to the cold temperatures. The Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers developed various tools, hunting techniques, and dwellings to adapt to this environment. Around 10,000 years ago, the climate became warmer, which marked the end of the Palaeolithic Period.

The Gravettian culture was one of the major cultures of the Upper Palaeolithic Period in Europe. The culture developed from around 34,000-33,000 years ago to 23,000-22,000 BP. It was characterised by its very specific lithic industry, vestiges of which include, in particular, the projectile tips found in the cave at La Gravette, and very specific forms of artistic expression 'Venus’ figurines and negative handprints. The Gravettian geographical distribution was very wide, extending from the Iberian Peninsula to the Dnieper River Basin.

The Cosquer Cave, which was decorated with art at a time when the sea was several kilometres away, is now partially submerged due to climate change. The cave became inaccessible on foot around 9,000 years ago. The site, which has been protected from human intrusion for thousands of years, and which is now recognised as an archaeological heritage site, is therefore destined to disappear.

As with Lascaux, a replica cave system has been built to help protect the original from the impacts of visitors.

Image: Hay Tor - Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license