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Hair cell

Hair cells are the sensory receptors of both the auditory system and the vestibular system in the ears of all vertebrates, and in the lateral line organ of fishes. Through mechanotransduction, hair cells detect movement in their environment.

In mammals, the auditory hair cells are located within the spiral organ of Corti on the thin basilar membrane in the cochlea of the inner ear. They derive their name from the tufts of stereocilia called hair bundles that protrude from the apical surface of the cell into the fluid-filled cochlear duct. The stereocilia number from fifty to a hundred in each cell while being tightly packed together and decrease in size the further away they are located from the kinocilium.

Mammalian cochlear hair cells are of two anatomically and functionally distinct types, known as outer, and inner hair cells. Damage to these hair cells results in decreased hearing sensitivity, and because the inner ear hair cells cannot regenerate, this damage is permanent. Damage to hair cells can cause damage to the vestibular system and therefore cause difficulties in balancing. However, other vertebrates, such as the frequently studied zebrafish, and birds have hair cells that can regenerate. The human cochlea contains on the order of 3,500 inner hair cells and 12,000 outer hair cells at birth.

The outer hair cells mechanically amplify low-level sound that enters the cochlea. The amplification may be powered by the movement of their hair bundles, or by an electrically driven motility of their cell bodies. This so-called somatic electromotility amplifies sound in all tetrapods. It is affected by the closing mechanism of the mechanical sensory ion channels at the tips of the hair bundles.

The inner hair cells transform the sound vibrations in the fluids of the cochlea into electrical signals that are then relayed via the auditory nerve to the auditory brainstem and to the auditory cortex.

Inner hair cells – from sound to nerve signal

The deflection of the hair-cell stereocilia opens mechanically gated ion channels that allow any small, positively charged ions (primarily potassium and calcium) to enter the cell. Unlike many other electrically active cells, the hair cell itself does not fire an action potential. Instead, the influx of positive ions from the endolymph in the scala media depolarizes the cell, resulting in a receptor potential. This receptor potential opens voltage gated calcium channels; calcium ions then enter the cell and trigger the release of neurotransmitters at the basal end of the cell. The neurotransmitters diffuse across the narrow space between the hair cell and a nerve terminal, where they then bind to receptors and thus trigger action potentials in the nerve. In this way, the mechanical sound signal is converted into an electrical nerve signal. Repolarization of hair cells is done in a special manner. The perilymph in the scala tympani has a very low concentration of positive ions. The electrochemical gradient makes the positive ions flow through channels to the perilymph.

Hair cells chronically leak Ca2+. This leakage causes a tonic release of neurotransmitter to the synapses. It is thought that this tonic release is what allows the hair cells to respond so quickly in response to mechanical stimuli. The quickness of the hair cell response may also be due to the fact that it can increase the amount of neurotransmitter release in response to a change of as little as 100 μV in membrane potential.

Hair cells are also able to distinguish tone frequencies through one of two methods. The first method, found only in non-mammals, uses electrical resonance in the basolateral membrane of the hair cell. The electrical resonance for this method appears as a damped oscillation of membrane potential responding to an applied current pulse. The second method uses tonotopic differences of the basilar membrane. This difference comes from the different locations of the hair cells. Hair cells that have high-frequency resonance are located at the basal end while hair cells that have significantly lower frequency resonance are found at the apical end of the epithelium.

Outer hair cells – acoustical pre-amplifiers
In mammalian outer hair cells, the varying receptor potential is converted to active vibrations of the cell body. This mechanical response to electrical signals is termed somatic electromotility; it drives variations in the cell's length, synchronized to the incoming sound signal, and provides mechanical amplification by feedback to the traveling wave.

Outer hair cells are found only in mammals. While hearing sensitivity of mammals is similar to that of other classes of vertebrates, without functioning outer hair cells, the sensitivity decreases by approximately 50 dB. Outer hair cells extend the hearing range to about 200 kHz in some marine mammals. They have also improved frequency selectivity (frequency discrimination), which is of particular benefit for humans, because it enabled sophisticated speech and music. Outer hair cells are functional even after cellular stores of ATP are depleted.

The effect of this system is to nonlinearly amplify quiet sounds more than large ones so that a wide range of sound pressures can be reduced to a much smaller range of hair displacements. This property of amplification is called the cochlear amplifier.

The molecular biology of hair cells has seen considerable progress in recent years, with the identification of the motor protein (prestin) that underlies somatic electromotility in the outer hair cells. Prestin's function has been shown to be dependent on chloride channel signaling and that it is compromised by the common marine pesticide tributyltin. Because this class of pollutant bioconcentrates up the food chain, the effect is pronounced in top marine predators such as orcas and toothed whales.

Hair cell signal adaptation
Calcium ion influx plays an important role for the hair cells to adapt to the amplification of the signal. This allows humans to ignore constant sounds that are no longer new and allow us to be acute to other changes in our surrounding. The key adaptation mechanism comes from a motor protein myosin-1c that allows slow adaptation, provides tension to sensitize transduction channels, and also participate in signal transduction apparatus. More recent research now shows that the calcium-sensitive binding of calmodulin to myosin-1c could actually modulate the interaction of the adaptation motor with other components of the transduction apparatus as well.

Fast Adaptation: During fast adaptation, Ca2+ ions that enter a stereocilium through an open MET channel bind rapidly to a site on or near the channel and induce channel closure. When channels close, tension increases in the tip link, pulling the bundle in the opposite direction. Fast adaptation is more prominent in sound and auditory detecting hair cells, rather in vestibular cells.

Slow Adaption: The dominating model suggests that slow adaptation occurs when myosin-1c slides down the stereocilium in response to elevated tension during bundle displacement. The resultant decreased tension in the tip link permits the bundle to move farther in the opposite direction. As tension decreases, channels close, producing the decline in transduction current. Slow adaptation is most prominent in vestibular hair cells that sense spatial movement and less in cochlear hair cells that detect auditory signals.

Neural connection
Neurons of the auditory or vestibulocochlear nerve (the eighth cranial nerve) innervate cochlear and vestibular hair cells. The neurotransmitter released by hair cells that stimulates the terminal neurites of peripheral axons of the afferent (towards the brain) neurons is thought to be glutamate. At the presynaptic juncture, there is a distinct presynaptic dense body or ribbon. This dense body is surrounded by synaptic vesicles and is thought to aid in the fast release of neurotransmitter.

Nerve fiber innervation is much denser for inner hair cells than for outer hair cells. A single inner hair cell is innervated by numerous nerve fibers, whereas a single nerve fiber innervates many outer hair cells. Inner hair cell nerve fibers are also very heavily myelinated, which is in contrast to the unmyelinated outer hair cell nerve fibers. The region of the basilar membrane supplying the inputs to a particular afferent nerve fibre can be considered to be its receptive field.

Efferent projections from the brain to the cochlea also play a role in the perception of sound. Efferent synapses occur on outer hair cells and on afferent axons under inner hair cells. The presynaptic terminal bouton is filled with vesicles containing acetylcholine and a neuropeptide called calcitonin gene-related peptide. The effects of these compounds vary; in some hair cells the acetylcholine hyperpolarizes the cell, which reduces the sensitivity of the cochlea locally.

Regrowth
Research on the regrowth of cochlear cells may lead to medical treatments that restore hearing. Unlike birds and fish, humans and other mammals are generally incapable of regrowing the cells of the inner ear that convert sound into neural signals when those cells are damaged by age or disease. Researchers are making progress in gene therapy and stem-cell therapy that may allow the damaged cells to be regenerated. Because hair cells of auditory and vestibular systems in birds and fish have been found to regenerate, their ability has been studied at length. In addition, lateral line hair cells, which have a mechanotransduction function and are found in anamniotes, have been shown to regrow in species such as the zebrafish.

Researchers have identified a mammalian gene that normally acts as a molecular switch to block the regrowth of cochlear hair cells in adults. The Rb1 gene encodes the retinoblastoma protein, which is a tumor suppressor. Rb stops cells from dividing by encouraging their exit from the cell cycle. Not only do hair cells in a culture dish regenerate when the Rb1 gene is deleted, but mice bred to be missing the gene grow more hair cells than control mice that have the gene. Additionally, the sonic hedgehog protein has been shown to block activity of the retinoblastoma protein, thereby inducing cell cycle re-entry and the regrowth of new cells.

Several Notch signaling pathway inhibitors, including the gamma secretase inhibitor LY3056480, are being studied for their potential ability to regenerate hair cells in the cochlea.

TBX2 (T-box transcription factor 2) has been shown to be a master regulator in the differentiation of inner and outer hair cells. This discovery has allowed researchers to direct hair cells to develop into either inner or outer hair cells, which could help in replacing hair cells that have died and prevent or reverse hearing loss.

The cell cycle inhibitor p27kip1 (CDKN1B) has also been found to encourage regrowth of cochlear hair cells in mice following genetic deletion or knock down with siRNA targeting p27. Research on hair cell regeneration may bring us closer to clinical treatment for human hearing loss caused by hair cell damage or death.

title: Hair cell


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Commercial Road

Commercial Road is a street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the East End of London. It is 1.9 mi long, running from Gardiner's Corner (previously the site of Gardiners department store, and now Aldgate East Underground station), through Stepney to the junction with Burdett Road in Limehouse at which point the route splits into the East India Dock Road and the West India Dock Road. It is an artery connecting the historic City of London with the more recently developed financial district at Canary Wharf, and part of the A13.

The road contains several listed buildings. These include the George Tavern, the Troxy cinema, the Limehouse Town Hall, the former Caird and Rayner Ltd works and the Albert Gardens estate.

Route
Commercial Road starts at a junction with Whitechapel High Street (the A11 close to Aldgate East tube station. It heads east, crossing the Limehouse Basin, the Regents Canal and the Limehouse Cut. At Burdett Road, the road forks in two, with East India Dock Road continuing to the left and West India Dock Road to the right.

London Buses routes 15, 115 and 135 run along Commercial Road.

History
Commercial Road was constructed in 1802–1806 as a direct route to link dock traffic between the West India Docks and East India Docks to the City of London. An Act of Parliament awarded construction to the Commercial Road Company, whose trustees were allowed to raise money and levy tolls. The road originally began at Back Church Lane and cut a straight line across fields north of the busy Ratcliffe Highway, taking advantage of land cleared by a major fire in 1794 that had destroyed a large part of the neighbourhood. By the 1830s it was almost entirely lined with houses all the way to Limehouse.

In 1828, the Commercial Road Company built a tramway from Aberdeen granite along the road, to alleviate traffic concerns. The London and Blackwall Railway was built parallel to Commercial Road; along with the numerous factories, this caused the street to become overcrowded and polluted.

In the 1860s Commercial Road became a public road, with ownership transferring to the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW), and road tolls were abolished. In 1870, the MBW extended the street westwards to Gardiner's Corner, where it met Whitechapel High Street and Commercial Street. This junction remained in place until Gardner's was destroyed in a fire in the early 1970s.

In 1943, Commercial Road was marked for improvement in the County of London Plan, after much of the surrounding area had been destroyed by bombing. Numerous side streets south of the road towards Ratcliffe Highway were cleared of slums and replaced with modern housing. The Commercial Road Conservation Area was established by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in 1989. It is focused on numerous listed buildings around Nos. 300–334 about halfway along the road.

Buildings
The George Tavern is at No. 373. It was built around 1820–25 on the site of an earlier pub, the Halfway House, which had been established since at least 1654. It became Grade II listed in 1973.

Albert Gardens lies to the south of Commercial Road. It was laid out in the early 19th century, originally named Albert Square Garden, and has largely survived intact into the 21st century. The square consists of three sides of three-storey residential buildings constructed in the 1840s, overlooking a railed garden. The other side faces onto Commercial Road. The land was brought by the London County Council in 1899 to prevent development on the fourth side, and opened the land to the public in 1906. It was given its current name in 1937.

Nos. 440–450 are all Grade II listed. They were built in the early 19th century as a terrace, and all span four storeys with parapets roofs, round arched entrances and panelled doors.

The Troxy Cinema at No. 490 was opened by George Coles and Arthur Roberts in 1933 on a former brewery site. It cost £250,000 to develop and could house over 3,000 people. The main theatre housed a revolving stage Wurlitzer organ which could be raised from the orchestra pit to provide interval music; these have survived intact. It closed in 1960, reopening in 1963 as a training school for the Covent Garden Opera. It subsequently became a bingo hall. It was grade II listed in 1991.

Limehouse Town Hall is at No. 646, constructed in 1879 by A. and C. Harston. It was badly damaged in World War II and rebuilt as council offices. It has subsequently served as the National Museum of Labour History, a homeless shelter, and an arts centre. The Passmore Edwards Sailors Palace at No. 680 was built in 1901 in a Neo Tudor style. It has been Grade II listed since 1983.

The Grade II listed former premises of Caird and Rayner Ltd at No. 777–783 was constructed in 1869. It contained a timber frame enclosed by a brick exterior. In 2010, it caught fire which destroyed most of the roof. Urgent repairs took place in 2010 in light of its listed status.

The Star of the East, at No. 805 was built in the early 19th century, and Grade II listed in 1973. It was constructed from red brick with a slate roof. In 2019, urgent repairs were made to the premises in order for it to retain its listed status.

The Church of St Mary and St Michael is at No. 340. It was designed by William Wardell and constructed between 1852 and 1856. A sloping roof was built over the entrance in the 1920s. It became Grade II listed in June 2001. The Congregation of Jacob Synagogue is at Nos. 351–353. It was founded in 1903 as Britain's first Mizrachi synagogues, and moved into the present building in 1920. The premises had been originally constructed by Lewis Solomon and Son. London's first mosque, the East London Mosque, opened on Commercial Road in 1941 and remained there until it was relocated to Whitechapel in 1975.

A K2 phone box outside No. 48 Commercial Road was Grade II listed in 1987. It was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and installed in 1927.

Traffic
As the main route between the City and the traditional East End, Commercial Road is the busiest road in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. There is continuous heavy traffic along the road, with limited opportunities for pedestrians crossing.

Nearby roads

 * Alie Street
 * Cable Street
 * Narrow Street

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Commercial Road


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Cottage Grove

Cottage Grove may refer to a number of places in the United States:

 * Cottage Grove, Illinois
 * Cottage Grove, Indiana
 * Cottage Grove, Minnesota
 * Cottage Grove, Oregon
 * Cottage Grove, Tennessee
 * Cottage Grove, Wisconsin
 * Cottage Grove (town), Wisconsin
 * Cottage Grove Township, Allen County, Kansas
 * Cottage Grove, Houston, a community in Houston, Texas

title: Cottage Grove


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Eurasian beaver

The Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) or European beaver is a species of beaver widespread across Eurasia, with a rapidly increasing population of at least 1.5 million in 2020. The Eurasian beaver was hunted to near-extinction for both its fur and castoreum, with only about 1,200 beavers in eight relict populations from France to Mongolia in the early 20th century. It has since been reintroduced to much of its former range, and now lives from China and Mongolia through Russia, Scandinavia and Eastern,  Central,  Southern and  Western Europe, with about half the population in Russia. It is listed as least concern on the IUCN Red List.

Taxonomy
Castor fiber was the scientific name used by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, who described the beaver in his work Systema Naturae. Between 1792 and 1997, several Eurasian beaver zoological specimens were described and proposed as subspecies, including: These descriptions were largely based on very small differences in fur colour and cranial morphology, none of which warrant a subspecific distinction. In 2005, analysis of mitochondrial DNA of Eurasian beaver samples showed that only two evolutionarily significant units exist: a western phylogroup in Western and Central Europe, and an eastern phylogroup in the region east of the Oder and Vistula rivers. The eastern phylogroup is genetically more diverse, but still at a degree below thresholds considered sufficient for subspecific differentiation.
 * C. f. albus and C. f. solitarius by Robert Kerr in 1792
 * C. f. fulvus and C. f. variegatus by Johann Matthäus Bechstein in 1801
 * C. f. galliae by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1803
 * C. f. flavus, C. f. varius and C. f. niger by Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest in 1822
 * C. f. gallicus Johann Baptist Fischer in 1829
 * C. f. proprius by Gustaf Johan Billberg in 1833
 * C. f. albicus, C. f. balticus and C. f. vistulanus by Paul Matschie in 1907
 * C. f. birulai and C. f. pohlei by Serebrennikov in 1929
 * C. f. tuvinicus by Lavrov in 1969
 * C. f. belarusicus and C. f. osteuropaeus by Lavrov in 1974
 * C. f. belorussicus and C. f. orientoeuropaeus by Lavrov in 1981
 * C. f. bielorussieus by Lavrov in 1983
 * C. f. introductus by Saveljev in 1997

Description
The Eurasian beaver's fur colour varies between regions. Light, chestnut-rust is the dominant colour in Belarus. In Russia's Sozh River basin, it is predominantly blackish brown, while in the Voronezh Nature Reserve beavers are both brown and blackish-brown.

The Eurasian beaver is one of the largest living rodent species and the largest rodent native to Eurasia. Its head-to-body length is 80 - 100 cm with a 25 - 50 cm long tail length. It weighs around 11 - 30 kg. By the average weights known, it appears to be the world's second heaviest rodent after the capybara, and is slightly larger and heavier than the North American beaver. One exceptionally large recorded specimen weighed 31.7 kg, but it is reportedly possible for the species to exceptionally exceed 40 kg.

Differences from North American beaver
Although the Eurasian beaver appears superficially similar to the North American beaver, there are several important differences, chief among these being that the North American beaver has 40 chromosomes, while the Eurasian beaver has 48. The two species are not genetically compatible: the result of over 27 attempts in Russia to hybridise the two species was just one stillborn kit, bred from the pairing of a male North American beaver and a female Eurasian beaver. The difference in chromosome count makes interspecific breeding unlikely in areas where the two species' ranges overlap.

Fur
The guard hairs of the Eurasian beaver have longer hollow medullae at their tips. There is also a difference in the frequency of fur colours: 66% of Eurasian beavers overall have beige or pale brown fur, 20% have reddish brown, nearly 8% are brown, and only 4% have blackish coats; among North American beavers, 50% have pale brown fur, 25% are reddish brown, 20% are brown, and 6% are blackish.

Head
The Eurasian beaver has a larger, less rounded head; a longer, narrower muzzle. The Eurasian beaver also has longer nasal bones, with the widest point being at the end of the snout; in the case of the North American beaver, the widest point is at the middle of the snout. The Eurasian beaver has a triangular nasal opening, unlike those of the North American beavers, which are square. Furthermore, the foramen magnum is rounded in the Eurasian beaver, but triangular in the North American beaver.

Body
The Eurasian beaver has shorter shin bones than the North American species and a narrower, less oval-shaped tail, making it less capable of bipedal locomotion. The anal glands of the Eurasian beaver are larger, and thin-walled, with a large internal volume, relative to that of the North American beaver.

Behaviour and ecology
The Eurasian beaver is a keystone species, as it helps to support the ecosystem which it inhabits. It creates wetlands, which provide habitat for European water vole, Eurasian otter and Eurasian water shrew. By coppicing waterside trees and shrubs it facilitates their regrowth as dense shrubs, thus providing cover for birds and other animals. Beavers build dams that trap sediment, improve water quality, recharge groundwater tables and increase cover and forage for trout and salmon. Also, abundance and diversity of vespertilionid bats increase, apparently because of gaps created in forests, making it easier for bats to navigate.

Reproduction
Eurasian beavers have one litter per year, coming into oestrus for only 12 to 24 hours, between late December and May, but peaking in January. Unlike most other rodents, beaver pairs are monogamous, staying together for multiple breeding seasons. Gestation averages 107 days and they average three kits per litter with a range of two to six kits. Most beavers do not reproduce until they are three years of age, but about 20% of two-year-old females reproduce.

Diet
European beavers are herbivorous, eating "water and river bank plants", including tubers, "rootstocks of myrtles, cattails, water lilies", and also trees, including softwood tree bark. Their long appendices and the microorganisms within make possible the digestion of bark cellulose. Their daily food intake is approximately 20% of their body weight.

Distribution and habitat
The Eurasian beaver is recovering from near extinction, after depredation by humans for its fur and for castoreum, a secretion of its scent gland believed to have medicinal properties. The estimated population was only 1,200 by the early 20th century. In many European nations, the Eurasian beaver became extinct, but reintroduction and protection programmes led to gradual recovery so that by 2020, the population was at least 1.5 million. It likely survived east of the Ural Mountains from a 19th-century population as low as 300 animals. Factors contributing to their survival include their ability to maintain sufficient genetic diversity to recover from a population as low as three individuals, and that beavers are monogamous and select mates that are genetically different from themselves. About 83% of Eurasian beavers live in the former Soviet Union due to reintroductions.

Continental Europe
The Eurasian beaver lives in almost all countries in Continental Europe, from Spain, France and the United Kingdom in the West, to Russia and Moldova in the East, and Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria in the South-East. In 2022, beaver signs were found in Portugal, near the border with Spain. The only significant areas where it has no known population are the Southern Balkans: Albania, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Greece and European Turkey. It is also not known to be present in the microstates of Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City.

In Spain, the beaver was extirpated in the 17th century. In 2003, 18 beavers were unofficially released. Current range includes the Ebro river in La Rioja, Navarre, and province of Zaragoza; the Zadorra river up to Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Arga river up to Pamplona, the Huerva river up to Mezalocha, and the Jalón river into the province of Soria. In November 2021, a young beaver was photographed for the first time outside the Ebro basin, in the upper Douro river in Soria. In 2020, the population was estimated to be more than 1,000.

In Portugal, the beaver was distributed mostly in the main river basins north of the Tagus River, until it was extirpated around 1450. In 2023, signs of beaver activity were found on the Douro river about 5 km from the Spanish border.

In France, the Eurasian beaver was almost extirpated by the late 19th century, with only a small population of about 100 individuals surviving in the lower Rhône valley. Following protection measures in 1968 and 26 reintroduction projects, it re-colonised the Rhône river and its tributaries, including the Saône, and other river systems such as Loire, Moselle, Tarn and Seine. In 2011, the French beaver population was estimated at 14,000 individuals living along 10500 km of watercourses. In 2022, its range was estimated to have increased to 17000 km of watercourses.

In Germany, around 200 Eurasian beavers survived at the end of the 19th century in the Elbe river system in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg. Official reintroduction programs, in particular in Bavaria, resulted in major population growth and beavers are now found throughout most of eastern and southern Germany, with strongly established disjunct populations in the west. By 2019, beavers numbered above 40,000, and appear in many urban areas.

In the Netherlands, beavers were completely extirpated by 1826. Due to official reintroductions since 1988, beavers are now found in most parts of the country, in particular the south, centre and north-west. The population was around 3500 in 2019.

In Belgium the beaver was extirpated in 1848. Current populations are descendants of animals released in the Ardennes in 1998–2000 and in Flanders in 2003. Some beavers also arrived in Flanders from the Netherlands in 2003. In 2018, the population was 2,200–2,400, with Flanders having around 400 beavers and Wallonia 1,800–2,000 beavers.

In Switzerland, the Eurasian beaver was hunted to extirpation in the early 19th century. Between 1956 and 1977, 141 individuals from France, Russia and Norway were reintroduced to 30 sites in the Rhône and Rhine catchment areas. As of 2019, Switzerland had an estimated 3,500 beavers (a sharp increase from 1,600 beavers in 2008), with permanent beaver presence along most larger rivers of the Swiss plateau and the Swiss Alps (with the exception of Ticino).

In Poland, as of 2014, the beaver population had grown to 100,000 individuals.

In Romania, beavers became extinct in 1824, but were reintroduced in 1998 along the Olt River, spreading to other rivers in Covasna County. In 2014, the animals were confirmed to have reached the Danube Delta.

In Russia, by 1917, beaver populations remained in four isolated territories: in the Dnieper basin; in the Don basin; in the northern Urals and in the upper reaches of the Yenisei along the Azas river. The total number of beavers did not exceed 900 heads. Beaver hunting was banned in 1922. In 1923, a hunting reserve was organised in the Voronezh region along the Usman river, which in 1927 was transformed into the Voronezh State Reserve. At the same time, two more such reserves were created: Berezinsky and Kondo-Sosvinsky. 1927 also the first attempts to reintroduce beavers in other areas. As a result, by the end of the 1960s, the beaver's range in the Soviet Union was almost as large as in the 17th century. The beavers’ growing numbers made commercial capture possible again. In 2016, there were an estimated 661,000 beavers in Russia; in 2019, the estimate was 774,600.

In the lands that made up the Soviet Union, almost 17,000 beavers were translocated from 1927 to 2004. Some 5,000 of these went to Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and Kazakhstan. In Greece, the Eurasian beaver was present in the Last Glacial Period; remains have been found in Epirus. Beaver remains from the Neolithic have been found in coastal Evros and Argura; from the Neolithic to Bronze Age transition period in the Ptolemaida basin and in Sitagroi; and beaver remains from the Early Helladic II have been found in northeastern Peloponnese. In the 4th century BC, Aristotle described this species under the name λάταξ/ (latax). He wrote that it is wider than the otter, with strong teeth, and at night it often uses these teeth to cut down trees on riverbanks. Ιt's not clear when beavers vanished from Kastoria (which may have been named after the beaver – κάστορας in Greek), but as late as the 18th century they were still hunted for fur. Buffon wrote that they were very rare in Greece at that time. In the 19th century, beavers could still be found in the Alfeios river and in Mesolongi.

In Bulgaria, fossil, subfossil and subrecent remains have been found in 43 localities along 28 lowland rivers, from Struma and Maritsa in the south till the Danube in the north, while the last finds from Nicopolis ad Istrum date to the 1750–1850 period. In 2021, the Eurasian beaver was confirmed to have returned to Bulgaria.

In Serbia, beavers were mostly extinct by the 1870s, with the last specimens being seen around 1900–1902. In 2004, 31 beavers were reintroduced in the Zasavica reserve by the Biology Faculty of the Belgrade University in collaboration with the Bavarian Science Society, and 45 beavers were released in the Obedska bara reserve. They spread quickly. By 2020, they had spread 150 km north, west and east, inhabiting rivers in the Sava-Danube system (Drina, Jadar, Great Morava, Tamnava, Tisza, Bega, Timiș, the canal system in Vojvodina), they were found in the capital Belgrade, and had spread to neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In Italy, beavers returned in 2018 after an absence of almost 500 years, when they were spotted in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region.

The beaver resurgence in Eurasia has brought an increase in human-beaver encounters. In May 2013, a Belarusian fisherman who "tried to grab" a beaver died after it bit him several times, severing an artery in his leg, which caused him to bleed to death.

The Nordics
In Denmark, the beaver appears to have gone extinct 2,000–2,500 years ago, though a small population might have survived into the 1st millennium AD. In 1999, 18 beavers were reintroduced to the river Flynder in Klosterhede Plantage state forest in west-central Jutland, brought from the Elbe river in Germany. At Arresø in northern Zealand, 23 beavers were reintroduced between 2009 and 2011. By 2019, it was estimated that the Jutland population had increased to 240–270 individuals, and had spread far, from Hanstholm in the north to Varde and Kolding in the south. The population in northern Zealand, which had yet to significantly expand its geographic range, had increased to 50–60 individuals in 2019.

In Norway, there was still a beaver population in the early 1900s, one of the few surviving in Europe at that time. Following protection, the Norwegian range of the species has expanded. The surviving population was in southern Norway; beavers were reintroduced to central Norway's Ingdalselva River watershed on the Agdenes peninsula in Sør-Trøndelag in 1968–1969. The area is hilly to mountainous, with many small watersheds. Rivers are often too steep for beavers, so their habitat is scattered, and there's often only room for one territory in a habitat patch. The beavers spread slowly from watershed to watershed in the hilly terrain. Some spread could only be plausibly explained by assuming travel through sheltered sea water in fjords.

In Sweden, the Eurasian beaver had been hunted to extinction around 1870. Between 1922 and 1939, some 80 individuals were imported from Norway and introduced to 19 sites in Sweden. In 1995, the Swedish beaver population was estimated at 100,000.

In Finland, there are some Eurasian beavers that have been re-introduced or spread from Sweden, but most of the Finnish population is a released North American beaver population. This population is controlled to prevent it from spreading into areas inhabited by the Eurasian beaver.

British Isles
The Eurasian beaver was well-established in Great Britain, but was driven extinct there by humans in the 16th century, with the last known historical reference in England in 1526. It is unclear whether beavers ever existed in Ireland. In the early 21st century, the beaver became the first mammal to be successfully reintroduced in the United Kingdom, after unofficial and official reintroductions to Scotland and England.

In Scotland, free-living beaver populations occur around the River Tay and Knapdale areas. The Knapdale population, sourced from Norway, was released by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, while the other populations are of unknown origin. Sixteen beavers were released between 2009 and 2014 in Knapdale forest, Argyll. A 2009 release of three beaver families of 11 individuals was the start of the Scottish Beaver Trial, a five-year research project to assess the effects of beaver reintroduction. Over the course of the trial, 16 individual beavers were released in total, with the goal of establishing four breeding pairs. 14 beaver kits were born; by the end of the trial in 2014, eight of the reintroduced beavers had survived and one or two of the wild-born beavers were estimated to be alive in the Knapdale area. In 2016, the Scottish government declared that the beaver populations in Knapdale and Tayside could remain and naturally expand. Beaver translocations now occur throughout many catchments in Scotland.

In England, a population of unknown origin has been present on the River Otter, Devon since 2008. An additional pair was released to increase genetic diversity in 2016. As part of a scientific study, a pair of Eurasian beaver was released in 2011 into a three-hectare fenced enclosure near Dartmoor in southern Devon. The 13 beaver ponds now in place impacted flooding to the extent of releasing precipitation over days to weeks instead of hours. In 2019, a beaver pair was reintroduced in East Anglia for the first time. A four-hectare beaver enclosure on a farm in North Essex is part of a flood risk reduction project designed to reduce property flooding. The impact on flooding, wildlife and rural tourism is monitored by a private landowner. In 2022, beavers were legally protected in England, "making it illegal to capture, kill, injure or disturb them."

Asia
Fossils of C. fiber have been discovered in the famous Denisova Cave. In Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, subfossil evidence of beavers extends down to the floodplains of the Tigris-Euphrates basin, and a carved stone stela dating between 1,000 and 800 BC in the Tell Halaf archaeological site along the Khabur River in northeastern Syria depicts a beaver. Although accounts of 19th-century European visitors to the Middle East appear to confuse beavers with otters, a 20th-century report of beavers by Hans Kummerlöwe in the Ceyhan River drainage of southern Turkey includes the diagnostic red incisor teeth, flat, scaly tail, and presence of gnawed willow stems.

According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, early Iranian Avestan and Pahlavi, and later Islamic literature, all had different words for otter and beaver, and castoreum was highly valued in the region. Johannes Ludwijk Schlimmer, a noted Dutch physician in 19th-century Iran, reported small numbers of beavers below the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, along the bank of the Shatt al-Arab in the provinces of Shushtar and Dezful. Austen Layard reported finding beavers during his visit to the Kabur River in Syria in the 1850s, but noted they were being rapidly hunted for said castoreum to extirpation. Beavers were specifically sacred to Zoroastrianism (which also revered otters), and there were laws against killing these animals.

In China, a few hundred beavers live in the basin of the Ulungur River near the international border with Mongolia. The Bulgan Beaver Nature Reserve (46.2°N, 90.75°W) was established in 1980 to protect the creatures.

Fossil record
Fossils found in the Spanish region around Atapuerca show that the Eurasian beaver was present in the Early Pleistocene but not in the Middle Pleistocene despite apparently favourable environmental conditions. It reappeared in the region during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene.

Conservation
The Eurasian beaver Castor fiber was once widespread in Europe and Asia but by the beginning of the 20th century both the numbers and range of the species had been drastically diminished, mainly due to hunting. At this time, the global population was estimated to be around 1,200 individuals, living in eight separate sub-populations. Conservation of the Eurasian Beaver began in 1923 in the USSR, with the establishment of the Voronezh Nature Reserve. From 1934 to 1977, approximately 3,000 Eurasian Beavers from Voronezh were reintroduced to 52 regions of the USSR, from Poland to Mongolia. In 2008, the IUCN granted the Eurasian Beaver a status of least concern, with the justification that the species had recovered sufficiently with the help of global conservation programmes. Currently the largest numbers can be found across Europe, where reintroductions have been successful in 25 countries and conservation efforts are ongoing. However, populations in Asia remain small and fragmented, and are under considerable threat.

title: Eurasian beaver


text:
User talk:Walden

Critical Theory
Hi Walden,

So *exactly* what you're saying is that there is no "critical theory" outside "social philosophy" (you don't seem like, say, an engineer to me)?

You did not answer to the remark about "science studies" being a subcategory to "critical theory"...

Neither *exactly* postmodern theory (or Marxist theory, or psychoanalitic theory,...) fits well under the hood of "critical theory" when it is limited to "social philosophy" in my eyes.

If you could give some verifiability at least that "critical theory" is a generally accepted name to cover the topics in connection to which this expression is used here (e.g. in comparison: like for the "Enlightenment" it is generally accepted this is not about Edison inventing the light bulb).

So, my general behaviour towards "critical theory" as a category name: please explain why "critical theory" should be used in this meaning, and how this category is to be applied correctly...

Thanks!

--Francis Schonken 06:46, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I'll ignore your critical (read: ignorant) "engineer" remark and respond. First of all this category does not belong directly under the culture cat. I think you can agree with that. I moved it to the closest category that existed, but agree that it does not fit completely, since you can be critical towards other things in life than our society. So, my suggestion to you is to move it to a sub-category under Philosophy if you (and other people) think that makes more sense for this category. regards, Walden 10:05, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

 * Hi Walden,
 * "Engineer" remark: I was thinking about relativity theory, which was, when Einstein wrote it, a very Critical theory towards the Newton laws of mechanics, with which engineers had been working for centuries.
 * So, in my view, it is better not to use something that has a general meaning like critical theory - in many fields of human knowledge - as a category name, when in the category definition it is said that this category will be from now on in Wikipedia only applicable to social topics.
 * But I see you take this the wrong way. I invite you (and as well all the people of the critical theory wikiproject) to come up with a workable category definition. I'm not going to let myself be seduced in discussion about side-aspects. If there is no workable definition for a category with the name "critical theory" than the category has to go (note you that I already gave alternative propositions for a name of this category, but even then it would help me greatly if I would understand myself what the initiators of this category intended to be grouped in it). Also, if it would be so that in the English speaking world, "critical theory" is generally associated with what the initiators of this category intended, it can not be all that difficult to give some form of verifiability to the widespread use of the expression "critical theory" in that definite sense.
 * No, with the present category definition (which is a reference to the "Critical theory" article), and with the present subcategories to this category, the category can, in my eyes, not be a subcategory to "social philosophy". Hey, I changed the categorisation, what led you to think I would disagree with my own recategorisation (especially as I see little content-wise answer to my questions)?
 * On the other hand I've been looking around on the "Critical Theory" wikiproject page (and the discussion page). To the note I added there I would like to add:
 * 1. I think, as a second thought probably many would agree to, it was not such ideal decision to abandon the "series box" approach for grouping the "critical theory" related articles in favour of categorisation, without re-thinking the organisation & naming of categories (e.g. I found Queer theory as a subcategory to feminism - which I suppose to have been a remnant of a series approach, but not defendable as categorisation structure. I changed that).
 * 2. Anyway I see less or even not at all a problem to use "Critical theory" as name for a series grouping the topics proposed in that wikiproject.
 * --Francis Schonken 20:44, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

category fix?
How'd you fix the "category:1854 books" in Walden? Was it just the horizontal line before it that somehow messed things up? - DavidWBrooks 14:58, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * It was an unclosed link in the reference section before the category text. I just added a "]" there. regards, Walden 15:10, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

Hi Walden,
I enjoyed our talk about "Critical theory" and "categorisation of art(s)/culture" yesterday at the Rotterdam Symposium quite a lot! Sorry that I wasn't able to give any clear-cut answers to the art(s)/culture categorisation topic you asked me about. Today, at noon, the thing became even more complicated, since there was a radio-program about one of the liberal arts on my favourite radio station. Well in fact it was about rhetoric, which according to Medieval concepts was one of the "artes liberales". Here is the link to trigger the "streaming" audio-file of that radio-program of about 50 min.: http://www.vrt.be/wm/klara/KL041128GRON_HI.asx - If you don't have broadband or Media player, go to http://www.klara.be/ - select "Audio" from the left menu, and go to Rondas - Zo 28-11-2004 to trigger one of the other choices of audio file; or select "programma's" and navigate with the arrows on top of the page to 28/11/2004. Clicking "12:05 Rondas" will show a text of introduction to the program.

After listening to that program I browsed English wikipedia for a while and saw that at the level of encyclopedia articles there was even more confusion I ever thought possible (even if leaving out the fun like marital arts - just click the link and you'll see what I mean with "fun"): There's no beginning of agreement of how arts would need to be classified for a usable scheme in wikipedia, e.g. see differences between articles like muse, art, arts, liberal arts, fine arts, visual arts, etc..., etc... At one page visual arts are not a part of fine arts, on another page they are, etc..., etc...

So I think we just hit the top of the iceberg yesterday. Well this looks like a fine challenge to me. I don't have the time at the moment to pursue this to the end however, I'm afraid. But don't let that stop you from jiggling the nuts and bolts of English Wikipedia to improve the categorisation scheme relating to art/arts/culture. I'll try to be there whenever there's a question, or you have a feeling of getting stuck. Note that there are several active WikiProjects on Art(s) too. Didn't look into that in detail yet, but I suppose there are to be found some people for help there too.

See ya again!

--Francis Schonken 14:26, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Francis! I had a fun time too for sure. About the categorization of art/arts; I agree that there isn't a clear-cut strategy, since nearly anything can be considered an art form if it becomes 'special' and 'entertaining' enough to the performer and the audience. However, I'm not too concerned about the current Arts structure, since I believe that the natural evolution of this major category (which still needs lots of articles) will have people restructuring it all the time. Walden 10:28, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

Firefox
Hi Walden, just wanted to let you know that I use Firefox now and I'm very satisfied about it. Good luck here on en.wiki. Hope to see you on nl.wiki!! CE 22:48, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

All edits minor?
I noticed that all of your recent contributions are marked minor. Some of them undoubtably are, but adding, removing or changing anything substantially shouldn't be marked minor. I'm thinking you may have "Mark all edits minor by default" accidentally checked. If you don't realize it, you should go to My preferences, Editing, uncheck "Mark all edits minor by default". It's better to leave a minor edit (typo, grammar, wikilinking... see WP:MINOR) unmarked than the reverse. Just friendly advice. TransUtopian 23:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, fixed it.

Proposed deletion of Atos Origin

The article Atos Origin has been proposed for deletion  because of the following concern:
 * no evidence of notability

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License tagging for File:Bill Gaede.jpg
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ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Deletion discussion about Sacred Lotus
Hello, Walden,

I wanted to let you know that there's a discussion about whether Sacred Lotus should be deleted. Your comments are welcome at Articles for deletion/Sacred Lotus.

If you're new to the process, articles for deletion is a group discussion (not a vote!) that usually lasts seven days. If you need it, there is a guide on how to contribute. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.

Thanks, CapitalSasha ~ talk 08:11, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Pishgaman Oman Iran moved to draftspace
An article you recently created, Pishgaman Oman Iran, does not have enough sources and citations as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of " " before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Britishfinance (talk) 16:38, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Arctic Fibre moved to draftspace
An article you recently created, Arctic Fibre, does not have enough sources and citations as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of " " before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Britishfinance (talk) 16:39, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

ROTACS moved to draftspace
An article you recently created, ROTACS, does not have enough sources and citations as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of " " before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Britishfinance (talk) 16:39, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Draft:Pishgaman Oman Iran

Hello, Walden. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or draft page you started, Draft:Pishgaman Oman Iran.

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it. — JJMC89  (T·C) 03:20, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Draft:Arctic Fibre

Hello, Walden. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or draft page you started, Draft:Arctic Fibre.

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it. — JJMC89  (T·C) 03:20, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Draft:ROTACS

Hello, Walden. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or draft page you started, Draft:ROTACS.

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it. — JJMC89  (T·C) 03:20, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

title: User talk:Walden


text:
Talk:List of extinct animals of Britain

A note
Just began this page. There is a similar page for the USA, but not one that I could see for the British Isles (Great Britain, Ireland, other minor islands). I don't have a great deal of knowledge here, so anyone wishing to edit please do! Grunners 13:34, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Dates
Has someone deleted extinction dates? Could have sworn I'd put them in! Grunners 14:53, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Not that I know off, and I can't see anything about that in the history. Anyway, I've updated the Lynx extinction date from 200 AD to 450 AD. As the latest findings, sponsored by the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority were on bones from two caves near Settle, one of which was dated to c1842bp and the other to c1550bp (400 AD). bp = Before Present = Before 1950. Pmaas 16:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Source: Hetherington, D. A., Lord, T. C. and Jacobi, R. M. 2005. New evidence for the occurrence of Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) in medieval Britain. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 21 pp. 3-8. ISSN 0267-8179. Pmaas 16:47, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Leopards and Wallabies.
I'm removing Leopards and Wallibies from the list because I have no sources that Leopards were ever in Britain and I'm fairly sure Wallabies still are around in Scotland. However if anyone has any sources that mension them as extinct in Britain I would like to see it.
 * Leopards inhabited Southern England during the last glaciation.--Menah the Great 11:02, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * But where is the reference for this?--GRM 16:22, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Separation date
" Only species extinct since the British Isles were separated from mainland Europe are included." I think I have read somewhere that the date of separation is 9000BC. If this is the case then there are too many mammals in the list. Does anyone know a reliable source for the separation date?Phoenixis 13:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Barnacle Goose
I am not at all convinced that "recolonized" is appropriate for this species. Yes, it does "again" breed in the UK, but that from escaped stock. It is not what the birding fraternity call a Category A breeding species in the UK. The winter visitors are what the birders might call "genuine" and therefore Category A birds, but these do not (to the best of my knowledge) stay on to breed--GRM 16:22, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Wild Horse
I have changed the link for 'Wild Horse' so that it denotes the actual article it relates to eg 'Tarpan' I've done this because there are still populations of wild horses in the UK, for instance in both Exmoor and the New Forest (they are Pony populations but the definition of a Pony is a horse smaller than 14.2 hands) JonEastham 23:21, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Eskimo Curlew
I don't wish to seem pedantic (on Wiki, perish the thought lol), but how come this is listed as extinct in the UK, but also that it's never been resident in the first place. Surely by that definition kangeroos are extinct in the British Isles? I'm most confused about this. VonBlade 20:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

British Isles
Hi. A question. Am I wrong in thinking that Britain and Ireland have quite different histories in terms of animal populations? i.e. Britain has a number of animals that Ireland never had at all? Is a page on extinctions in the "British Isles" a bit strange, when the two main islands have quite different animal populations in the first place e.g. no moles, snakes, etc, etc, etc, in Ireland at all.Hughsheehy 10:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect Listings of Extinct Animals
I was reading through this section, and I decided to read more about the Arctic Fox (listed as extinct c.10000(?)). Something about this seemed very wrong. I went to the actual article (which referred to the fox as the "Farting box"), and I also did some additional research on that fox. I confirmed that the Arctic Fox is most definitely not extinct. I made the proper adjustments to both the subject and the dates listing.

That stoked my curiousity - I checked out a few more animals listed. Again, some of them were not extinct. I am also curious if the species of a extinct animal was not specified. I just wanted someone to know. Thanks.

tenshiyuna 17:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Move to "List of Extinct Animals of Great Britain"
This article is incorrectly using the term "British Isles". The references used are from sources of the United Kingdom, and cite examples for Great Britain. --Bardcom (talk) 19:14, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Some of these animals were found in Ireland. The source of the references is irrelevant. If you want to move the page I suggest you look at each entry and split out the Irish ones, and then verify that the remaining list does indeed refer wholly to those animals that are extinct only in Great Britain (don't forget about IoM and other islands). Perhaps it's better to leave it as British Isles. That usage does seem to be extensive in published material on this subject. CarterBar (talk) 20:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks CarterBar - some of the animals were found in Ireland only in the same way that they may also have been found in France, etc. The references and published sources also indicate "Britain" in nearly all cases. --Bardcom (talk) 20:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair point, but if they're extinct in the British Isles I guess they should be included here. I don't know if there's an equivalent article for France. CarterBar (talk) 21:07, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
 * But how can it be confirmed that they are extinct in the British Isles? There's no references for Ireland.  All we can reference is that they're extinct in Britain (which is what all the references refer to)....  --Bardcom (talk) 09:35, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Agree to move - no mention of Ireland. If necessary create a separate article for Ireland.--Vintagekits (talk) 08:25, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

 * We need a note to explain what we mean by Britain. It could mean Great Britain (which is only a part of the United Kingdom).  It could mean the UK (which includes some but not all of the island of Ireland).  It could mean the British Isles.  Or it could mean different things in different references.  Our list should not just be a collection of references that happen to use the word "Britain" without necessarily explaining what they mean by "Britain".  See also Terminology of the British Isles. --  JackofOz (talk) 19:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

At least one error
A digger wasp Mellinus crabroneus is listed as extinct since c1950, I assume this is based on the JNCC page, which has the information. However I have recently being doing searches for biodiversity data using the National Biodiversity Network (searnnbn.net)and there is at least one record made in 2000. This is from ordnance survey Grid Square NT08 and was made on 7/7/2000 by Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.72.54.34 (talk) 12:32, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was no consensus. —harej (T) 07:08, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

List of extinct animals of Britain → List of extinct animals of the British Isles — A recent politically motivated move has resulted in scientifically incorrect information being present. Request to move back to original, stable, title. I'm unable to move over the current redirect. LevenBoy (talk) 20:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

 * I'm for reversion of an undiscussed move if it was controversial but what scientifically incorrect information is now present because of it? —   AjaxSmack   05:36, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I may have made a mistake here. I was thinking of the Irish Elk but it turns out this animal was found on the island of Great Britain as well. Nevertheless, "British Isles" is a clearly defined area whereas the alternatives aren't, so from a scientific perspective it would be a more accurate term. LevenBoy (talk) 10:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

 * I would tend to agree, both with the reasoning and with the question. Regardless, the geographically associated term "British Isles" (which is (supposed to be) a geographic term dating back to antiquity, for which there is amble coverage regarding the name dispute.) seems more correct then using a political name, when the object of the article is (supposed to be) a list organized by geographical location. If this were to be refactored into a list according to (current) political boundries then there could be List of extinct animals of Scotland, List of extinct animals of Wales, List of extinct animals of Ireland, etc... I think we can all agree that such constructs would quickly get out of hand, and they really add nothing to the topic. — V = I * R  (talk) 10:57, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose - If you want to move it - "List of extinct animals of the United Kingdom" or "List of extinct animals of Britain and Ireland". Izzedine   (talk) 23:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I just now noticed that the category titles use "of Great Britain and Ireland", so it certainly couldn't hurt to keep that pattern (which would mean using List of extinct animals of Great Britain and Ireland). — V = I * R  (talk) 04:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Izzedine  (talk) 07:22, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Alternative names don't include the IoM or Channel Islands or the large number of other islands in the British Isles. The controversial move to the current name was made without discussion. "British Isles" is definitive and well referenced. The alternatives (Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom, etc) are either ambiguous or of a political nature. LevenBoy (talk) 10:52, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * List of extinct animals of Britain and Ireland covers all the islands, see British Islands. Izzedine (talk) 02:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Good enough...

 * ...Support reversion of undiscussed move (i.e., support a move to List of extinct animals of the British Isles) but urge a continued discussion of the best location. —   AjaxSmack   18:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Alternative suggestion: Several other faunal lists that were once listed as "British" were moved/changed to "Great Britain". It seems there is some preference for geographic "Great Britain" and "Ireland" over the political "United Kingdom" and "Irish Republic"—just a comment for the discussion really!—GRM (talk) 19:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It should be List of extinct animals of Great Britain if it doesn't cover any part of the island of Ireland
I haven't researched the list to see if there are any Irish (Republic of) or Irish (Northern Irish) animals in this list, but it seems from the latest bout of moving, the assertion is that this article only covers Great Britain, yet it is still poorly titled as List of extinct animals of Britain, because Britain can also mean the UK and is not a strictly Geographic term. If it is supposed to mean the geographic term 'the island of Great Britain', it should be at List of extinct animals of Great Britain, which is a redirect here. Accordingly, I've requested the housekeeping deletion of that redirect, so if and when that happens, somebody should move this article to the correct title (or, provide evidence that this article contains Irish species and the current title should be British Isles or Britain and Ireland or land of the flying unicorns, instead of Great Britain). MickMacNee (talk) 11:22, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The information in the article covers the whole of the British Isles; given that there are no animals (or, at least, none listed) extinct in Great Britain and not in Ireland, it also covers the UK, the island of Great Britain or any similar unit. Warofdreams talk 12:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The Houting (coregonus oxyrhynchus) is one such example, as is the Greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) (also listed) and the Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx) (also listed).  They only existed in (and are now extinct from) Great Britain  --HighKing (talk) 15:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear - there are no animals listed which have had a sustainable breeding population in Great Britain or Ireland which can now be found in Ireland and not Great Britain. This list was formerly named "list of extinct animals of the British Isles", and that title was equally accurate.  It clearly isn't a list of extinct animals of Ireland, which is what you describe. Warofdreams talk 15:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Both islands have very different histories as regards fauna, and it doesn't make much sense discussing both islands together. In fact, given the criteria you've set above, it would make much more sense discussing Great Britain in the context of Europe.  Great Britain had a land bridge with Europe for a considerably longer period of time, which is why the fauna (and flora) of Great Britain is much more diverse than Ireland's and has much more in common with Europe (hence the reasons for the Houting, Eurasian Lynx, etc, above).  --HighKing (talk) 17:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Several of the animals had a range that included Ireland (how about the irish Elk for example?). The orginal name was absolutely accurate and unambiguous but was changed as part of the campaign against the British Isles usage in Wikipedia. I tried to reverse the move but couldn't, hence some inappropriate redirects. A discussion above came to the conclusion that the title should not be changed back to the more accurate version. Perhaps the discussion should be re-opened. LevenBoy (talk) 17:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, the British Isles conspiracy theory again. Try making an argument based on the content please...  BTW, your argument that several of the animals had a range that included Ireland can be extended to say that *all* of those animals would also have a range that included Europe (see other response above).  --HighKing (talk) 17:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * "Try making an argument based on the content please... BTW, your argument that several of the animals had a range that included Ireland etc. etc.". Do I detect a slight contradiction here? LevenBoy (talk) 20:15, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

 * HighKing, a question - are you an expert or a specialist in this subject? Maybe you are, but let's assume that you're not. If, like me, you aren't, why are you making changes to the content which could result in the introduction of misleading information? Take this reference, for example. It clearly states that some of the animals listed in the article are now extinct in Ireland. I haven't bothered looking for a reference that says they are extinct in Britain but I bet it wouldn't take long to find one. This means that British Isles is correct. To try and alter this by adjusting the title as a precursor to adjusting the contents to better reflect the new title is just gaming the system. This seems to be what's happening here, and it's not the first time this technique has been used to remove the British Isles term. I note your attempt last year under a different user name to rename this article. There was no consensus to do so. More recently User:Vintagekits took it upon himself to move it "out of context" as the saying goes. There is no doubt - the contents of the article would be better served by reference to the British Isles rather than just Britain. LevenBoy (talk) 20:48, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not an expert. But I'm not a novice either.  The article you've pointed out does indeed list animals that are extinct in Ireland.  But since you haven't bothered following through on your point, I fail to see the significance.  Are you trying to make any specific point (based on content)?  I also note that since you couldn't make a point based on content, you couldn't resist falling back on your usual method of commenting on editors though...  If you could only find some factual basis for your last sentence, we'd actually have something worthwhile to discuss.  As it is, I'm (finally) out of patience with your constant personal comments...  --HighKing (talk) 21:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the original request is irrelevant now for the time being, the housekeeping deletion has been declined seemingly because of the above dispute. MickMacNee (talk) 13:33, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Could someone insert a definition of Britain?
I understand this has been very much under discussion, but it would be helpful if someone would go ahead and define Britain in the intro, otherwise it is hard for readers to be sure what this article includes. Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 01:12, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the title is highly misleading, and the article covers the entire British Isles. Warofdreams talk 09:29, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Problems with Ice Age animals on the list
The Mainland of Britain was connected to the European continental mainland by an ice bridge as recently as c. 6000 BC during the Devensian Ice age :

Source - http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/lambeck_k/pdf/164.pdf

I would argue that the extension of the normal range of the various arctic animals to the British mainland during that Ice Age does not make them true native animals of the British Isles thus they shouldnt appear on the list.

The other problem for many of these entries is that they have extinction dates that are earlier than the last Ice age which is not in accord with the definition of the list of extinctions since the last Ice age.

What do other people think? 90.203.108.165 (talk) 20:53, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Reintroductions do not refute or invalidate previous extinctions
Surely the historic extinctions of the wild boar & of the beaver should be listed - simply because these have been reintroduced does not mean that they have never been exterminated. Also, the claimed shooting of the last wolf in Scotland in ~1740 is considered doubtful by many sources. Barney Bruchstein (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:21, 18 June 2011 (UTC).

Northern Hawk Owl
I can find no mention anywhere of the northern hawk owl as being found in Great Britain, certainly not as recently as 1860. Neither the RSPB or the World Owl Trust mention it as being an absent British species. I'm therefore removing it temporarily till someone can find good evidence for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex.cranston (talk • contribs) 10:51, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of extinct animals of Britain


text:
Edward Dannreuther

Edward George Dannreuther (4 November 1844, in Strasbourg – 12 February 1905, in Hastings) was a pianist and writer on music, resident from 1863 in England. His father had crossed the Atlantic, moving to Cincinnati, and there established a piano manufacturing business. Young Edward, under pressure from his father to enter banking as a career, a prospect he found uncongenial, escaped to Leipzig in 1859.

He trained as a musician at the Leipzig Conservatoire, where he was a pupil of Ignaz Moscheles. A youthful champion of Wagner, he founded the London Wagner Society in 1872. In 1863 he had been recruited by Henry Chorley to play the piano in London at the Crystal Palace Concerts. His performances of Chopin and Beethoven were well received; after his marriage in 1871 he decided to settle permanently in England. His two-volume work Musical Ornamentation was for many years the standard text, and an important influence on the evolving trend of performance practice.

Dannreuther became a professor of piano at the Royal College of Music in 1895, a position he held until his death. An enthusiast for new music, he was an important influence on the composer Hubert Parry, who was his pupil. A memorial plaque on his former home at 12 Orme Square, Westminster, London was unveiled on 26 July 2005.

His son Hubert Edward Dannreuther (1880–1977) was a British admiral and one of six survivors of the sinking of HMS Invincible. Another son Tristan Dannreuther (1872–1963) also served as an officer in the Royal Navy, and was an Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence after World War I.

title: Edward Dannreuther


text:
Dominion Bureau of Statistics

The Dominion Bureau of Statistics was a Canadian government organization responsible for conducting censuses. It was formed in 1918 by the Statistics Act, but was replaced by Statistics Canada in 1971.

title: Dominion Bureau of Statistics


text:
John A. Eddy

John Allen "Jack" Eddy (March 25, 1931 – June 10, 2009) was an American astronomer. He studied historical sunspot records, and popularised the name Maunder Minimum for the sunspot minimum which occurred in the late 17th century.

Childhood and education
John Eddy was born and raised in Pawnee City, Nebraska. His brother Robert was two years his senior and his sister Lucille was two years his younger. His father managed a cooperative farm store where John worked until he started high school. John's mother had attained college for one year and was a county schoolteacher until she married his father. The Eddy family were of limited economic means and were concerned that they could not afford a college education for John. As it turned out, he was the only member of the family to graduate from college. In 1948, he attended Doane College in Crete, Nebraska for one year, a distance of some 80 mi from his home. In 1949 he was appointed by Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, who also resided in Pawnee City, to the U.S. Naval Academy. At Annapolis, there were few science courses but Eddy attended a course in celestial navigation, which gave him a love of the sky. So great was his interest in the night sky that once after Taps, he crawled out on the roof of Bancroft Hall to look for the Constellation Draco and was caught by an officer who gave him five hours of extra duty for not being in bed.

Upon graduation in 1953 from the United States Naval Academy, Eddy served for four years at sea as a line officer on aircraft carriers during the Korean War and later in the Persian Gulf as navigator and operations officer on a destroyer in the Atlantic Fleet. In 1957 he left active service in the Navy to continue his education. He was discharged and accepted into the graduate school at the University of Colorado's mathematics program, but switched departments before the start of the Fall 1957 semester, upon discovering the University's observatory and a program in astro-geophysics that had just been started, becoming the program's first student. Later he joined the High Altitude Observatory at the University of Colorado.

Academic career
As a protege of Gordon Newkirk, Eddy worked with Princeton Professor Martin Schwarzschild in studying the solar corona with coronagraphs mounted on stratospheric balloons at altitudes of 80000 ft. Eddy completed his PhD Thesis at the University of Colorado at Boulder in December 1961 titled "The Stratospheric Solar Aureole". After obtaining his PhD, Eddy went into teaching, while maintaining an active research schedule to maintain his credentials. He studied spectral lines and worked on infrared spectroscopy.

Interdisciplinary work
Eddy received much criticism from within the astronomy community for his interdisciplinary work on Native American medicine wheels, which showed how they were used as calendars and observatories. It also earned him criticism from archaeologists at first, although his work was eventually accepted, and later documented in National Geographic and as a guest on TV and radio programs.

As a teacher, he frequently used historical examples to show his students that not so long ago nobody knew more than they did about solar physics. This led him to do a lot of research in the history of his own field, particularly covering records of past eclipses and sunspot counts, whereupon he discovered the records of Edward Maunder and others demonstrating that there was indeed long term variability in solar activity. Eugene Parker of the University of Chicago, when promoting his theory of the existence of a solar wind, exposed Eddy to Maunder's work on sunspot records.

Solar minimum paper
In 1976 Eddy published a paper in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum" where, using the nineteenth century works of Edward W. Maunder and Gustav Spörer, he identified a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 in which solar activity was extremely low. In making the case for the anomaly, he gathered and interpreted data from a wide variety of sources, including first-hand accounts from extant historical observations of the Sun going back to the telescopic observations of Galileo and other contemporary scientists of the 17th and early 18th centuries; from historical reports of the aurora borealis observed in past centuries in Europe and the New World; from visual observations of sunspots seen with the unaided eye at sunrise and sunset in dynastic records from the Orient; from existing descriptions of the eclipsed Sun; and from measurements of carbon-14 in dated tree-rings. In the last of these, which can be used as a proxy indicator of solar activity, he found evidence of other similar periods of solar quiescence in the distant past, the most recent an even longer 90-year span, from about 1460 until 1550, which he named the Spörer Minimum.

Both the Maunder and Spörer minima fell during the coldest parts of the Little Ice Age, which suggested a connection between the longer term behavior of the Sun and of the Earth's mean surface temperature. In advancing the theory that the Sun is a variable star, Eddy wrote that "It has long been thought that the Sun is a constant star of regular and repeatable behavior. Measurements of the radiative output, or solar constant, seem to justify the first assumption, and the record of periodicity in sunspot numbers is taken as evidence of the second. Both records, however, sample only the most recent history of the Sun."

Post-academia
Eddy was laid off from the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 1973 due to budget cutbacks and the poor performance reviews he earned due to his interdisciplinary forays, which were frowned upon at the time. He then was hired by NASA to write a book, which enabled him to travel east to do research in the great astronomy libraries, particularly at Harvard and the Naval Observatory, which he used to also do research on the Maunder Minimum. His work on this was published in the journal Science as a cover story. After publication, his former employers at the HAO tried to hire him back. The interest resulting from "The Maunder Minimum" paper saw him giving over 50 talks a year around the world about his work and history.

In 1987 Eddy was awarded the Arctowski Medal by the National Academy of Sciences for studies in solar physics and solar-terrestrial relationships and specifically for "his demonstration of the existence and nature of solar variations of long term and the consequences of these changes for climate and for mankind."

Death
Eddy died of cancer at his home in Tucson, Arizona on June 10, 2009.

Honors

 * Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1988.
 * Arctowski Medal in Solar and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, National Academy of Sciences, 1987
 * Visiting Scientist, University of Durham, England, 1985, 1987.
 * James Arthur Prize Lecture in Solar and Solar Terrestrial Physics, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, 1983.
 * Research Fellow, National Geographic Society, 1975-1976.
 * NCAR Award for Outstanding Performance in New Technology, 1973.
 * Sigma Xi-RESA Boulder Scientist Award, 1965.
 * National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow, 1962-1963.

Books

 * The New Solar Physics (Editor) Westview Press. 1978, 214 pp, ISBN 0-89158-444-7.
 * A New Sun (The Solar Results from Skylab) NASA SP-402, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979. 198 pp.
 * The Ancient Sun (Co-Editor, with R.O. Pepin and R.B. Merrill) Pergamon Press, 1980, 581 pp, ISBN 0-08-026324-0.
 * Mapping the Sky (Co-Editor, with S. DeBarbat, H.K. Eichhom and A.R. Upgren) Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988, 512 pp, ISBN 90-277-2809-7.
 * Global Changes in the Perspective of the Past (Co-Editor, with H. Oeschger) John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1993, 383 pp., ISBN 0-471-93603-0.
 * The Sun, the Earth and Near-Earth Space: A Guide to the Sun-Earth System; NASA NP-2009-1-066-GSFC, U.S., 2009, 311 pp, ISBN 0160838088.

title: John A. Eddy


text:
Statistics Act

The Statistics Act (Loi sur la statistique) is an Act of the Parliament of Canada passed in 1918 which created the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, now called Statistics Canada since 1971.

The Statistics Act gives Statistics Canada the authority to "collect, compile, analyze, abstract, and publish information on the economic, social and general conditions of the country and its citizens."

To balance Statistics Canada's extensive powers to collect information, the Act establishes the legal requirement for the agency to protect the confidentiality of respondents to Statistics Canada surveys. The legislation makes a formal commitment to respondents that the information they provide will never be released to anyone in a form that will identify them without their authorization.

Legal requirement
Citizens who refuse to participate in providing information, or who provide false information, have committed an offence under the Act under c. S-19:

...information collected under the authority of the Statistics Act, R.S.C. 1985...and must be provided by law.

Refusal to provide information: ...are liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or/and to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months.

In the event of a voluntary survey, "the Minister may, by order, authorize the obtaining, for a particular purpose, of information, other than information for a census of population or agriculture, on a voluntary basis, but where such information is requested section 31 does not apply in respect of a refusal or neglect to furnish the information." 1980-81-82-83, c. 47, s. 41.

Other legislation relating to this act include:

 * Access to Information Act 1983
 * Privacy Act 1983

Consent to release future census records
After years of study by expert panels, discussion, debate (privacy vs the interests of genealogists and historians), and two earlier legislative attempts, Bill S-18 An Act to Amend the Statistics Act received Royal Assent on June 18, 2005. The 2005 Act creates section 18.1 of the Statistics Act which releases personal census records for censuses taken between 1911 and 2001, inclusive, 92 years after each census. In addition, starting with the 2006 Census, Canadians can consent to the public release of their personal census information after 92 years. (See Question 53 of Canada 2006 Census.) Census returns are in the custody of Statistics Canada and the records are closed until 92 years after the taking of a census, when those records may be opened for public use and transferred to Library and Archives Canada subject to individual consent where applicable.

2016 Amendments
In 2010, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper passed an Order in Council determining that only the short-form Census would be mandatory during the 2011 round of the Census. The mandatory long-form Census was transformed into an optional National Household Survey. This change to the Census was the subject of much controversy.

Following the election of the liberal government of Justin Trudeau, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development introduced in the House of Commons Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Statistics Act on 7 December 2016. The amendments were passed by Royal Assent on December 13, 2017. The Government of Canada press release stated that the amendments were made to the Statistics Act to "ensure that decisions on statistical matters are transparent and are based on professional considerations."

The amendments to the Act were intended to: The changes to the Act included empowering the Chief Statistician to "decide, based strictly on professional statistical standards that he or she considers appropriate, the methods and procedures for carrying out statistical programs regarding (i) the collection, compilation, analysis, abstraction and publication of statistical information that is produced or is to be produced by Statistics Canada".
 * strengthen the independence and powers of the Chief Statistician
 * ensure greater transparency regarding the directives issued to the Chief Statistician
 * establish the Canadian Statistics Advisory Council
 * protect personal information provided in response to Statistics Canada's requests
 * remove imprisonment as a penalty for individuals who refuse or neglect to respond to Statistics Canada's requests or who provide false information"

title: Statistics Act


text:
Cross Plains

There are a few places named Cross Plains in the United States:

 * Cross Plains, Alabama
 * Cross Plains, Indiana
 * Cross Plains, Kentucky
 * Cross Plains, Tennessee
 * Cross Plains, Texas
 * Cross Plains (town), Wisconsin, partially containing the village of Cross Plains
 * Cross Plains, Wisconsin, a village
 * Cross Plains Township, South Dakota

title: Cross Plains


text: File:Batman (Sega Genesis game).jpg

title: File:Batman (Sega Genesis game).jpg


text:
Myra Melford

Myra Melford (born January 5, 1957) is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."

Early life and education
Melford was born in Evanston, Illinois and was raised in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. At 3, she started playing the piano on her own, climbing onto the piano bench and improvising. She began taking lessons when she was in kindergarten. She developed a strong relationship with her teacher, Erwin Helfer, a classically trained boogie-woogie player. Helfer introduced her to classical composers such as Bach before moving on to contemporary composers, such as Bartók, and later taught her to play the blues. Melford attended blues festivals, and because of her relationship with Helfer, she was often invited backstage, where she encountered many of Chicago's most acclaimed performers. Independently, Melford also began to explore improvisation.

Pushed towards performing classical repertoire, Melford attended a Northwestern University extension program in junior high school. She described her experience as a classical piano student as "not right," and while she continued to play informally, she stopped her formal studies in high school.

Melford enrolled at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where she intended to study environmental science. Although she was not then listening to jazz, and had not grown up listening to it, she knew that it involved improvisation, and when she saw an advertisement for jazz piano lessons in a local restaurant, she began studying again. She recalled that, during the next few years, "There were two records... which were on constant repeat: Cecil Taylor's Air Above Mountains and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come." Shortly thereafter, she switched her major to music, and in 1980 attended Cornish College of the Arts and studied with Art Lande and Gary Peacock.

While living in Olympia, Melford met prominent avant-garde musicians including Oliver Lake, Anthony Braxton, Marty Ehrlich and Leroy Jenkins, whose performance with Amina Claudine Myers and Pheeroan akLaff inspired an "ecstatic feeling" which intensified her commitment to improvisation.

Career
Melford moved to New York City in 1984, where she studied composition with saxophonist Henry Threadgill, whom she would later cite as a major influence on her perception of organic composition. She also studied privately with pianists Jaki Byard and Don Pullen, whose percussive mannerisms she adapted.

After arriving in New York, Melford performed in the bands of Threadgill, Leroy Jenkins, and Butch Morris, among others. In the late 1980s she played and recorded with flutist Marion Brandis, and formed a trio with bassist Lindsey Horner and drummer Reggie Nicholson. Her career accelerated in the early 1990s, as she participated in the first Knitting Factory tour of Europe, and recorded three albums with Horner and Nicholson: Jump (1990), Now & Now (1991), and Alive in the House of Saints, a live album, in 1993.

Later in the 1990s, Melford moved toward larger groupings with diverse instrumentation, and added trumpeter Dave Douglas and reed player Marty Ehrlich to her trio lineup to create a quintet, the Myra Melford Extended Ensemble. She also formed a second five-piece, the Same River, Twice, featuring Douglas, cellist Erik Friedlander, reed player Chris Speed, and drummer Michael Sarin. Their self-titled debut album was released on Gramavision in 1996, followed by 1999's Above Blue on Arabesque. Melford also appeared as an improvisational collaborator on the 1996 Hatology release Eleven Ghosts, featuring duets performed with Dutch drummer Han Bennink; and Equal Interest, a 1999 Omnitone release by the trio of the same name, featuring Melford with Jenkins and Joseph Jarman of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. With Equal Interest, Melford performed on harmonium as well as piano. By the close of the decade, Melford had become one of the downtown jazz scene's most celebrated performers and composers, with the Seattle Times describing her in 1999 as an "explosive pianist who alternately caresses and pounds the keyboard and weaves brilliant swatches of composed material into free-form improvisation."

In 2000, Melford formed Crush, a trio in which she played piano and harmonium with Kenny Wollesen on drums and Stomu Takeishi on electric bass. Arabesque released the trio's Dance Beyond the Color later that year. In September, she traveled to Calcutta to study harmonium with Sohanlal Sharma as a Fulbright scholar. She spent several months with Sharma, focusing on raga and Hindustani classical music, and continued her studies with other musicians in Delhi and Rajistan. She additionally studied with Sudhir Nayak in Mumbai.

After returning to the United States, Melford lived at an upstate New York ashram. She subsequently formed an ensemble expressly to play music based on her studies in India, Myra Melford's Be Bread. Although it remained unreleased until 2006, Be Bread's debut album, The Image of Your Body (whose title was derived from a Rumi poem), was recorded in 2003, as was Where the Two Worlds Touch by Myra Melford's The Tent, released by Arabesque.

Melford relocated to Berkeley, California in 2004 to accept a position as Professor of contemporary improvisational music, University of California Berkeley. In 2006, along with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson, Melford formed Trio M, who released their debut album, The Big Picture, on Cryptogramophone in 2007. It was followed by The Guest House on Enja/Yellowbird in 2012.

Melford performs with clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg, who she met just after she moved to Berkeley, in the duo Dialogue. Melford formed a new quintet, Snowy Egret, featuring bassist Takeishi, guitarist Liberty Ellman, trumpeter Ron Miles, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey in 2012. In October, Melford won the 2012 Alpert Award for "her ascending and expansive trajectory, great, generous musical mind and her ability to take multiple musical traditions into another sphere."

Melford released her first solo album in October 2013. Titled Life Carries Me This Way, the album is a collection of work inspired by the paintings of the late visual artist Don Reich. That same year, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow and received both the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Performing Artist Award and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts for her efforts to re-imagine the jazz program at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; in November, Snowy Egret performed the music for Melford's multimedia project Language of Dreams, at the center.

At Berkeley, Melford has developed and taught a series of courses in contemporary jazz and improvisation-based music for performers and composers in addition to lecturing on innovations in jazz since the 1960s and other topics in contemporary improvised music.

Selected honors, fellowships, and awards

 * Guggenheim Fellowship (2013)
 * Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Performing Artist Award (2013)
 * Alpert Award in the Arts for Music (2012)
 * Jazz Journalists Association Pianist of the Year (2008, 2009)
 * Jazz Journalists Association Composer of the Year (2004)
 * Fulbright scholar (2000)
 * New York Foundation for the Arts Composition Fellowship (1998,2002, 2008)
 * Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Commissioning grant (2003)

As leader/co-leader
An asterisk indicates that the year is that of release.

As sidewoman
With Joseph Jarman and Leroy Jenkins With Allison Miller (drummer) With Scott Fields
 * Out of the Mist (Ocean, 1997)
 * Equal Interest (Omnitone, 1999)
 * Boom Tic Boom (2010)
 * Boom Tic Boom Live at Willisau (2012)
 * No Morphine, No Lilies (2013)
 * Otis Was A Polar Bear (2016)
 * Glitter Wolf (2019)
 * 96 Gestures (2001)

title: Myra Melford