Zoo News Digest 1st May 2017 (ZooNews 954)
The next elephants?
Peter Dickinson
elvinhow@gmail.com
Dear Colleague,
Perhaps it's age or something but the death of the elephants in Seville hurt me more than it should have done. I didn't know them, never saw them and knew little about them. Their loss however triggered memories of elephants I knew and loved. Most now dead and others I know not where they have gone. I really can relate to the loss, the grief, the keepers in Seville must feel right now.
Dear Colleague,
Perhaps it's age or something but the death of the elephants in Seville hurt me more than it should have done. I didn't know them, never saw them and knew little about them. Their loss however triggered memories of elephants I knew and loved. Most now dead and others I know not where they have gone. I really can relate to the loss, the grief, the keepers in Seville must feel right now.
Perhaps it's age or something but the death of the elephants in Seville hurt me more than it should have done. I didn't know them, never saw them and knew little about them. Their loss however triggered memories of elephants I knew and loved. Most now dead and others I know not where they have gone. I really can relate to the loss, the grief, the keepers in Seville must feel right now.
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If you are a subscriber to the email version then you probably knew this already. You would also know that ZooNews Digest pre-dates any of the others. It was there before FaceBook. It was there shortly after the internet became popular and was a 'Blog' before the word had been invented. ZooNews Digest reaches zoo people.
Did You Know?
ZooNews Digest has over 53,950 'Like's' on Facebook and has a weekly reach often exceeding over 350,000 people? That ZooNews Digest has subscribers in over 800 Zoos in 153+ countries? That the subscriber list for the mail out reads like a 'Zoos Who's Who?'
If you are a subscriber to the email version then you probably knew this already. You would also know that ZooNews Digest pre-dates any of the others. It was there before FaceBook. It was there shortly after the internet became popular and was a 'Blog' before the word had been invented. ZooNews Digest reaches zoo people.
Bali mynah
conservation project gets international support
Indonesia’s efforts
to conserve the Curik Bali (Rothschild’s mynah) by involving local communities
living in areas around the Bali Barat National Park (TNBB) have received
attention and support from international conservation bodies and zoo
associations.
Curik Bali
Conservation Association (APCB) chairman Tony Sumampau said that since 2004,
the association had striven to breed of the myna, which is on the brink of
extinction, by involving local communities in activities to conserve the
species.
These efforts were
strengthened with the issuance of a decree from the environment and forestry
minister, which permits local people, especially those who lived in areas
around the TNBB, to breed Curik Bali, he said.
The initiatives
conducted by the APCB to save the Curik Bali from extinction has drawn
attention from international conservation bodies and zoo associations from
Europe and Asia.
“They include the
International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Asian Species Partnership,
the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and EAZA Passerine TAG [Taxon
Advisory Group],” said Tony, who is also director of the Indonesia Safari Park,
recently.
He said there were
17 Curik Bali breede
A Huge Tragedy
Rumors have abounded
since Monday 24th April but as yet I am unaware of the tragic story appearing
the press anywhere.
Tragedy struck the
bachelor group of elephants at La Reserva del Castillo de las Guardas near
Seville in Spain. Six out of the seven animals has succumbed to some sort of
poisoning. The exact cause has yet to be confirmed but it is believed to be
botulism.
My sincere
condolences to the
Elephant kills
handler during feeding time at Bali park
A male Sumatran
elephant killed its keeper on Friday morning in Bali when the man entered its
enclosure to feed the animal.
I Nyoman Levi
Suwitha, 60, also known as Mangku Levi, had been the owner of Bakas Levi
Rafting, an elephant park and adventure tour company based in Bali’s Klungkung
regency. The company is known for offering elephant rides through the jungle,
along with rafting trips.
Levi had just
entered the elephant’s enclosure to feed it when the elephant suddenly wrapped
its trunk around his body and threw him as far as 12 meters, according to a
report by Detik.
Staff on duty
immediately moved to evacuate Levi. The man was rushed to Klungkung General
Hospital, but was pronounced dead upon arrival. His body was later sent to the
morgue at Sanglah
Delhi zoo quizzed on
smuggled animals replacing the dead
Accused of illegally
capturing wild animals, like the Indian civet, to replace dead ones to avoid an
enquiry, Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has sought explanation from the Delhi Zoo,
a document accessed by IANS revea;s.
"The Central
Zoo Authority had requested Director, National Zoological Park, New Delhi to
submit a factual report" on the "illegal capture of Small Indian
civet and other wild animals" within seven days. "However, it has
been 19 days but the factual status has not been submitted to this
office," CZA Member-Secretary D.N. Singh said in a letter dated April 19.
This was the second
reminder by the CZA seeking an explanation from the Delhi Zoo.
The allegations,
termed "quite serious" by the CZA, were made by green activist Ajay
Dubey.
A senior official of
the Delhi Zoological Pa
The other ivory
trade: Narwhal, walrus and... mammoth
They may not attract
the same headlines as African elephants, but there are several different
species traded on the international market today
Considered to be a
“sea unicorn” in the centuries before the Arctic was properly explored, the
“horn” of the narwhal was an object of fascination for Europeans, and
particularly monarchs, who paid for the tusks with many times their weight in
gold.
Queen Elizabeth I is
said to have spent £10,000 on a narwhal tusk, a fortune in Elizabethan England,
roughly equivalent to £1.5m today, and had it placed within the crown jewels
Couple to be charged
with illegally keeping lions after boy dies
Police have opened
an inquest into the death of a 12-year-old boy who was attacked by a lion in
Limpopo three weeks ago.
The child, Kristian
Prinsloo, died just one day after his 12th birthday, and had been in an induced
coma in the ICU at Muelmed Mediclinic in Pretoria since the April 8 attack.
It has also emerged
that the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has opened charges
against the couple who owned the lion.
Kristian was
visiting his grandmother, Marie Strydom, who lives on the luxury estate with
the lion’s owners Cor and Alet Vos, outside Lephalale, on the Mogol River bank,
when the attack happened.
Best Zoos in America
for Chimpanzees
Chimpanzees share
98% of the same DNA as humans but are in danger of extinction because of
deforestation and hunting. It would be a tragedy if these animals are lost
since they are so interesting, complex and similar to us. They communicate
through a sophisticated system of facial expressions, body postures, gestures
and vocalizations like we do, live in complex communities who all know each
other through large gatherings but feed, travel and sleep in much smaller
groups, have a pecking order that is complex, fluid, flexible and subject to
change and use tools like us. Their communities are so different from each
other in communication, diet, tool use and behavior they are sometimes
considered by researchers to amount to cultural difference. Here are some zoos
with outstanding exhibits for these great apes and work towards saving them.
Lawmakers in Mexico
approve reforms to ban captivity of marine life
After two failed
attempts, representatives of the political parties PVEM, PRI, Encuentro Social
and Nueva Alianza endorsed the reform of Article 60 of the General Wildlife Law
on marine mammals with 242 votes in favor and 190 against it.
Without debate or
abandonment of the meeting room by deputies of Morena, PAN, PRD, and of the
Citizen Movement, as happened at the sessions of April 6 and 20, the plenary
approved the reform to prohibit the use of marine mammals of any species, such
as whales, dolphins and manatees, in fixed or itinerant shows.
Conservation-oriented
research, carried out by higher education institutions and in accordance with
applicable regulations are exempt from the new reforms.
The approved reform
states that the owners of marine mammals in captivity will have a period of 30
calendar days to complete an inventory, w
Colorado Animal
Sanctuary Euthanizes All Its Animals After It’s Denied Permit To Move
Local officials say
other sanctuaries had offered to take in the lions, tigers and bears.
A Colorado community
is in shock after an animal sanctuary battling housing problems resorted to
euthanizing all 11 of its exotic animals, despite the county planning
commission claiming other facilities had offered to take them in.
Lion’s Gate Animal
Sanctuary in Agate announced in a statement last week that it had euthanized
five bears, three lions and three tigers. The statement blamed the deaths on
the Elbert County’s planning commission for refusing the sanctuary’s request to
move to another site because of flooding.
“The flooding and
resulting damage prevents us from reasonably continuing our operation and
caring for our animals safely,” the organization had said in an earlier online
petition for their move.
Facility owners
Peter Winney and Joan Laub reasoned in their statement last week that they
wouldn’t have had to euthanize the animals if the local government officials
had not denied their request to move. They identified the animals killed as
“Victims of Elbert County Commissioners.”
Government office
razed after ban on hunting, logging
Protesting efforts
to prevent them from hunting wildlife and felling trees, villagers in
Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district set fire to the local Environment Department
office on Saturday.
According to Acting
Department Director Thon Sokhon, nearly 200 villagers gathered around the
office around 9am to demand that he and other officials return wood they
confiscated from the villagers and stop preventing them from hunting and
clearing forests.
Sokhon said some
villagers came armed with machetes, stones and axes and proceeded to set the
office’s stairs on fire, along with some of the confiscated wood and a table.
Some of the villagers, said Sokhon, escaped with two phones as well as knives
and axes stolen from the office.
He said he and his
colleagues did not pursue the villagers and that his team is
In Missouri, Mexican
Wolf pup proves artificial insemination can help save species
An endangered
Mexican wolf gave birth this month to what conservationists say is the first
such pup born using previously frozen sperm and artificial insemination.
The wolf was born
April 2 at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, using semen collected last
year by St. Louis Zoo research and animal health staff and stored at the zoo’s
cryopreservation gene bank. A University of California-Davis professor and
veterinary doctor administered the insemination Jan. 27 with assistance from
zoo animal health staff.
Endangered Wolf
Center spokeswoman Regina Mossotti said the wolf pup received its first health
checkup Monday and was in good shape. The pup weighs about 5
Banded mongooses
target family members for eviction
Banded mongooses
target close female relatives when violently ejecting members from their social
groups, University of Exeter scientists have found.
Most animals are
less aggressive towards family members, but dominant members of banded mongoose
groups target relatives.
The reason for this
surprising behaviour is that unrelated mongooses are more likely to fight back
- making it more difficult to evict them.
Females are the
prime targets because the pups of dominant mongooses are less likely to survive
if there are too many females breeding in the group.
"Targeting
close relatives for eviction like this is the opposite of what we would expect
social animals to do," said lead author Dr Faye Thompson, of the Centre
for Ecology and Conservation
What Do College
Students Think of Blackfish?
Recently, I skyped
in to discuss Blackfish and SeaWorld’s care of orcas for a college class at the
University of Central Florida. From my understanding, the students were asked
to analyze the movie and conclude the reliability of the film. The first question
I asked the class was, “how many of you believe that the information in
Blackfish is true and SeaWorld is a terrible, evil corporation?” In a class of
I would estimate 50+ students, not one person raised their hand. Of course,
some students may have wanted to raise their hand but were too afraid to
considering I used to work at SeaWorld.
I answered their
questions, gave them my experience of working with the whales highlighted in
the film. Then, a few weeks later, the teacher sent me feedback from the
students. I was shocked. Not only did almost every student’s research conclude
that Blackfish was mostly untrue but I was surprised that so much of what I
shared was new information to them – primarily the fact that the whales found
water work with the trainers reinforcing.
With permission from
the teacher, I have published comments fr
Bear rips off a
nine-year-old boy's arm and EATS IT at West Bank zoo
A bear ripped off
the arm of a nine-year-old boy who tried to feed it during a school trip and
then ate it.
The incident
happened at Qalqilya zoo, in the Palestinian city of Qalqilya, on the western
edge of the West Bank.
A police spokesman
today said the boy approached the caged bear with food when the animal pounced,
severing the limb at the elbow.
The bear then ate
the arm. The boy is currently being treated at a local hospital.
The zoo, the only
one of its kind in the West Ban
Mysuru Zoo is on a
mission to breed animals in captivity
Homemaker from
Kerala, Shailaja Raj, has a special bond with Mysuru Zoo. A resident from
Kozhikode, she has been doing her bit for the conservation centre in taking
care of a wild animals. Thanks to a special initiative of the zoo, hundreds of
commoners share similar bond with it.
Sometime ago, the
homemaker was on a visit to the tourist hub with her family. While touring the
facility, she fell in love with it, while the family members came to know about
the animal-adoption scheme offered there. "While we elders were enlightened
about the scheme, my sister's children asked me to adopt a ring-tailed lemur.
We adopted the lemur for one year by paying Rs 5,000. It is a rare opportunity
to serve wildlife and I feel privileged," she told TOI.
While zoos across
India are educating people abo
Sri Lanka overturns
ban on adopting elephants
Sri Lanka said
Wednesday it was overturning a ban on adopting baby elephants, drawing sharp
criticism from the animal protection lobby.
Elephants are
revered as holy in the mainly Buddhist nation, where the high-maintenance
beasts have become a status symbol for the wealthy elite.
The animals are also
kept by temples for use in religious ceremonies, and the ban had led to worries
there would not be enough tame elephants for Buddhist pageants.
"Wildlife
conservation is good but we also need to conserve our cultural pageants,"
said government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne after the cabinet overturned the
ban on adoptions.
Senaratne said the
government decision had been motivated partly by overcrowding at Pinnawala, a
27 hectare (66-acre) coconut grove that was originally set up as an elephant
orphanage and now also runs a successful breeding programme.
He said strict
conditions would be put in place to ensure the animals' welfare. Individuals
would have to pay 10 million rupees ($66,000)for an elephant, although temples
would get them for free.
But Asian elephant
expert Jayantha Jayewa
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4447406/Sri-Lanka-overturns-ban-adopting-elephants.html
China's rare milu
deer return in victory for conservation
he newborn fawn
walks unsteadily among the trees that were once part of the Chinese emperor's
hunting grounds, where more than a century before its forebears died out in
their native China.
This April marks the
start of the birthing season for the milu deer, which has long been famed as
having the head of a horse, the hooves of a cow, the tail of a donkey and the
antlers of a deer. As the herds across China grow each spring, they mark a rare
conservation success story in a country suffering from pollution and other
environmental challenges.
"Our protection
of the milu is about protecting our living cultural heritage and natural
heritage," said Guo Geng, vice director of the Beijing Milu Ecological
Research Center, where they expect about 30 fawns this year. Known as Pere
David's Deer in the West, the milu's significance to Chinese culture is
embodied in its a
Should penguins be
an animal attraction?
A group of small
honking and flapping penguins gathers around an aloe vera plant in what seems
to be the wildlife equivalent of a chat at the water cooler. Others dive into a
nearby pool with a splash as some territorial neighbors - two ducks - defend their
patch.
The scene is
probably a common one in coastal Peru and Chile, the places these Humboldt
penguins traditionally call home. But it's the last thing a visitor to a sauna
in a small town in rural Brandenburg, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the
German capital Berlin, might expect to find.
Lübbenau, with its
network of canals, is known as the city of punts and pickles. In 2008, the
Spreewelten Bad added penguins to its list of attractions. The spa houses 18
Humboldt penguins in a small enclosure equipped with nests, rocks and a pool.
Visitors can even swim alongside the penguins - albeit separated by a large
pane of glass.
"Of course, the
people think the penguins are great," Laura Schäfer, one of the spa's
animal keepers, told DW. "Because when the penguins are swimming through
the tank behind me and the visitors come up to the glass, the penguins react
and play with the v
How Fiona and Namsai
told the world our story
On January 24, 2017
the history of Cincinnati Zoo would change forever. A premature calf, Fiona,
was born six weeks early. Being the first hippo born in Cincinnati in 75 years,
the birth of Fiona was big news in itself. But the fact that the calf was in a
critical condition made it go all around the world. We all saw the pictures and
videos of the mini-hippo in its keepers arms, and later on taking her first
steps, her first swim and at last her first meeting with mommy.
Its not the first
time a cute baby animal steal the hearts of millions. We have had them here in
Kolmården too. It started with Nelson in 1995, the first rhino to be born in
Sweden. He had a brain damage and did not survive more than a week. On the
floor in the locker room the zookeepers had placed him on blankets and with
veterinarians by his side TV could follow his every breathing. Eleven year
Death of a Rockstar
First bison calves
born in Banff National Park in 140 years
The first bison
calves to be born in 140 years in Canada's oldest national park are taking
their first steps.
Conservation staff
at Banff National Park in the western province of Alberta say they hope the
three calves will be joined by seven more in coming weeks.
A herd of 16 plains
bison, including 10 pregnant females, were successfully reintroduced to the
park in February.
There used to be
some 30 million bison in Canada until they were hunted almost to extinction in
the 1800s.
About a quarter of a
million remain on a sliver o
The Illegal Wildlife
Trade: Sample Retail Market Prices
In the illegal
wildlife trade, like all transnational crime, the majority of participants are
involved for financial gain. Retailers generally face little enforcement risk
while realizing strong profits, as the value of a particular commodity, be it a
wild African grey parrot or grams of bear bile, increases dramatically as it
makes its way from source to market country.
African grey parrots
are endemic to the rainforests of equatorial Africa, however rampant poaching,
deforestation, and habit loss, among other threats, have led to a sharp drop in
the size of wild populations. This species is one of the most traded birds in
the world and can retail for approximately US$2,000.
Slow lorises appear
cute and cuddly, but their illegal capture and treatment are anything but. An
undercover investigation by Freeland Foundation found slow lorises for sale for
approximately US$5,000 in Pattaya, Thailand. Asian elephants, particularly babies,
are popular in Southeast Asia’s tourist trade. Poachers will kill adult
elephants in order to capture and sell their babies, which can retail for
approximately US$7,000 in Thailand.
While more great
apes are killed for the bush meat trade, some are poached for the exotic pet,
animal park, and zoo trades. The United Nations Environment Programme reports
that traffickers who illegally sold gorillas
All mammals big or
small take about 12 seconds to defecate
Everyone poops, and
it takes them about the same amount of time. A new study of the hydrodynamics
of defecation finds that all mammals take 12 seconds on average to relieve
themselves, no matter how large or small the animal.
The research,
published in Soft Matter, reveals that the soft matter coming out of the hind
ends of elephants, pandas, warthogs and dogs slides out of the rectum on a
layer of mucus that keeps toilet time to a minimum.
“The smell of body
waste attracts predators, which is dangerous for animals. If they stay longer
doing their thing, they’re exposing themselves and risking being discovered,”
says Patricia Yang, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology
in Atlanta.
Yang and colleagues
filmed elephants, pandas and wartho
Opinion: Rhinos
should be conserved in Africa, not moved to Australia
Rhinos are one of
the most iconic symbols of the African savanna: grey behemoths with armour
plating and fearsome horns. And yet it is the horns that are leading to their
demise. Poaching is so prolific that zoos cannot even protect them.
Some people believe
rhino horns can cure several ailments; others see horns as status symbols.
Given horns are made of keratin, this is really about as effective as chewing
your finger nails. Nonetheless, a massive increase in poaching over the past
decade has led to rapid declines in some rhino species, and solutions are
urgently needed.
One proposal is to
take 80 rhinos from private game farms in South Africa and transport them to
captive facilities in Australia, at a cost of over US$4m. Though it cannot be
denied that this is a "novel" idea, I, and colleagues from around the
world, have serious concerns about the project, and we have now published a
paper looking into the problematic plan.
Conservation cost
The first issue is
whether the cost of moving the rhinos is unjustified. The $4m cost is almost
double the anti-poaching budget for South African National Parks ($2.2m), the
managers of the estate where most white rhinos currently reside in the country.
The money would be
better spent on anti-poaching activities i
Of course you can
learn from a mahout how to handle people
His current objects
of love are Radu and Madu, the beastly sisters from India. He has been with
them for just over six months. But their PDA is on full display. He hugs and
caresses them, feeds them, sweet-talks to them. His patience: their devotion;
his care: their trust - they make for poignant lessons for those willing to
learn.
"Taming an
elephant is exactly like wooing a woman. They will play hard to get. But you
win them over ultimately with loads of patience and care."
"Can you dare
touch a woman without first winning her trust? You invite her out on dates,
give her flowers, shower her with compliments and gifts, right? It is the same
with elephants. I have to woo them, romance them and train them to love me the
way I want them to."
Mudenda fell in love
17 years ago, and he is still going strong. It all began when he took up a job
with Wild Horizon, an elephant safari company in Zimbabwe in 2001. "I was
working with baby elephants who were orphans. Their mothers got killed by poachers
and in other accidents. I beca
Officials suspended
for dehorning rhinos
Two Mangaung Metro
officials from the Bloemfontein Zoo have been suspended for allegedly dehorning
two rhinos without permission.
Mangaung Metro
Municipality spokesperson, Qondile Khedama, said in a statement that the two
officials were suspended on Monday after it was discovered they had undertaken
the dehorning process of two rhinos without the official authorisation from the
city manager, Tankiso Mea.
He says the city
manager has to be informed of the process of dehorning before it is done and
Shaving Manatees—for
Science!
Manatees are not
beautiful or buff, but they have something no other mammal does: body hair with
super powers. Body hair is a defining feature of all mammals. We all have it,
some more than others, but no mammal is known to use it quite like the manatee.
Scientists have been
curious about the manatee’s fuzz for a while now. Unlike seals, with their
thick, warm pelts, or dolphins and whales, which are sleek and bare, manatees
have a scraggly sprinkling of individual hairs here and there. What’s more,
under a manatee’s skin, beneath each hair, is another oddity—a blood sinus.
“Pumping blood to
the surface to supply 3,000-plus hairs across the body? That’s an expensive
endeavor,” says Joseph Gaspard, director of science and conservation at the
Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium and lead author of a new study on manatee hair.
So Gaspard and his colleagues set out to see wha
Vancouver Aquarium
pushes back on cetacean ban
The Vancouver
Aquarium is making a last ditch effort to thwart a park board bylaw amendment
which would ban the importation and display of cetaceans, like dolphins and
belugas.
Aquarium officials
hope a campaign to drum up public support will sway park board commissioners,
who in March, voted unanimously in favour of making a change to the bylaws.
Randy Pratt,
incoming board chair at the aquarium, argued on Thursday the ban would put the
Marine Mammal Rescue program at risk — a program responsible for helping more
than 100 animals in distress in B.C. each year, though the vast majority aren't
cetaceans.
Vietnam's national
Elephant Conservation Centre gets one step closer
This week we
finalised the layout of Vietnam's Elephant Conservation Centre based just
outside Yok Don National Park in Dak Lak province. This has been two years in
the making and has involved working alongside the Elephant Conservation Centre,
Animals Asia Foundation, Wild Welfare and local architects; IDIC.
As well as
supporting the conservation of the country's remaining wild elephants, the
centre's unique design has been formulated to provide a home for Vietnam's last
tourist elephants and any injured or orphaned wild elephants that cannot be
returned to the wild.
Based on my own
research into the needs and welfare of elephants in captivity, as well as
fifteen year
How Social Media
Saved One of the World’s Last Sumatran Rhinos
Millions of people
around the world rely on social media platforms like Twitter to receive
minute-to-minute updates on news breaking globally. It isn’t every day though
that a single tweet can cause a domino effect that led to the rescue of a
severely endangered Sumatran Rhino named Puntung.
A few weeks ago,
South Africa-based environmental journalist Adam Welz clicked on a link to an
article about one of the last two female Sumatran rhinos in Malaysia, and the
facial abscess that threatened to take her life.
Only Captivity Will
Save the Vaquita, Experts Say
It was not the first
time Robert L. Brownell Jr. had seen a dead vaquita, the rare and endangered
porpoise that was lying on the stainless-steel necropsy table inside the
Tijuana Zoo on Monday. But it might well be one of the last.
Mr. Brownell, a
senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had in
effect discovered the porpoise, finding the first full, dead specimen in 1966.
The world’s smallest member of the cetacean grouping, which
Elephant
tranquilliser: The new, deadlier trend in the raging opioid epidemic
Law enforcement
agencies across the country are raising alarms about the increasing trend of
finding heroin laced with an extremely lethal elephant tranquilizer called
carfentanil, The Washington Post reports.
The drug is 10,000
times stronger than morphine and 100 times stronger than fentanyl, just two
milligrams of which is lethal—that’s about one toss of a salt shaker.
Carfentanil can be absorbed through the skin, and just a puff from re-sealing a
plastic bag can be lethal, raising risks for first-responders. Just a whiff can
kill a drug-sniffing dog.
Though authorities
are struggling to identify it in overdose cases—and sometimes not trying due to
the health risks—carfentanil has been linked to dramatic increases in
overdoses, which were already at alarming levels amid the nationwide opioid
epidemic.
Penguins in the
Byculla Zoo: Why not?
Mast! It’s rare to
hear that classic Marathi word expressing appreciation in Mumbai’s Veermata
Jijabai Bhosale Udyan, also called the Byculla zoo, where the happiest mammals
invariably look like the fruit bats that hang lazily from the vast canopies of
rain trees. You can hardly blame the 64-year-old elephant for not competing.
But these days the word echoes in the area where the zoo’s newest inhabitants,
seven Humboldt penguins, are housed.
There were eight but
Dory died after she contracted a bacterial infection. When the city imported
the birds from South Korea, Mumbai’s globalized elite was aghast. It’s okay to
go skiing at a snow park in Dubai or spend time with the Polar bear at the Singapore
Zoo
The litigon
rediscovered
On 18 January 2017,
two litigon cubs were unveiled for public display at a safari zoo in Haikou,
China1. The cubs represent an important biological phenomenon, being born of a
fertile tigon (a tiger-lion hybrid) and an African lion. They also raise important
questions on the biological species concept and the fertility of hybrid
individuals.
Earlier, in July
2016, scouring through the archives of the National Library in Kolkata, India,
an information scientist* and a librarian** laid their hands upon a rare
photograph published in 1980 in the daily newspaper The Statesman2. The
photograph, procured and reproduced here (Figure 1) was that of a male litigon.
It was described in an accompanying news report as a hybrid of a male Asiatic
lion Panthera leo persica and a female tigon (hybrid of a male tiger Panthera
tigris and a female African lion P. leo of unknown subspecies) from the Alipore
Zoological Gardens in Calcutta (now Kolkata)2. The litigon was named Cubanacan
by Jose Lopez Sanchez, the erstwhile Cuban Ambassador to India, and
photographed on the cub’s first day of public viewing in the zoo.
The litigon grew up
to be one of the world’s largest big cats of the time, weighing around 363 kg,
a record 3.5 m long and 1.32 m wide at the shoulders3. However, this
second-generation hybrid was forgotten in subsequent literature, although
sporadic discussions of tigons and ligers (hybrids of male lions and female
tigers) continued in popular media.
Cubanacan was born
after 15 years of hybridisation attempts that started in 1964 at the Alipore
Zoo4. The zoo reportedly produced its first hybrid cat, a tigon called Rudrani,
on 13 October 1972 in the sixth litter of a female African lion Munni and a male
tig
Meet the visionary
who restored 5,500 acres of wrecked Texas land to paradise
Fifty years ago, the
wildly inspiring David Bamberger bought the worst land he could find with the
aim of bringing it back to thriving life.
Although David
Bamberger was born into poverty, he went on to become an immensely successful
fast food tycoon before cashing in his chips and assuming the role of Totally
Inspiring Steward Of The Land. It's not the storyline one might expect from
somebody who started a fried chicken empire – but it's a beautiful story.
After selling his
company, Bamberger took to the hills to begin his work. "My objective was
to take the worst piece of land I could possible find in the Hill Country of
Texas and begin the process of restoration," he says in the short film
Selah: Water from Stone. He settled upon a wasteland of 5,500 overgrazed acres
of "wall-to-wall brush, there wasn't any grass, there wasn't any water,
nobody wanted it," he says – and thus, Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve was
born. By "working with Mother Nature instead of against her," he
says, he was able to bring it
Half of All Species
Are on the Move—And We're Feeling It
The shrubs probably
responded first. In the 19th century, alder and flowering willows in the
Alaskan Arctic stood no taller than a small child—just a little over three
feet. But as temperatures warmed with fossil fuel emissions, and growing
seasons lengthened, the shrubs multiplied and prospered. Today many stand over
six feet.
Bigger shrubs drew
moose, which rarely crossed the Brooks Range before the 20th century. Now these
spindly-legged beasts lumber along Arctic river corridors, wherever the
vegetation is tall enough to poke through the deep snow. They were followed by
snowshoe hares, which also browse on shrubs.
Today moose and
hares have become part of the subsistence diet for indigenous hunters in
northern Alaska, as meltin
El Salvador zoo:
Prosecutors investigate 'suspicious deaths'
Prosecutors in El
Salvador have opened an inquiry following the suspicious deaths this week of a
puma and a young monkey at the National Zoo.
Prosecutors suspect
the animals became ill through neglect.
The investigation
will also look into the death of a zebra at the same location earlier this
month.
Those deaths follow
that of a hippo called Gustavito at the National Zoo in February, which caused
outrage in El Salvador and beyond.
Fake allegations
Staff initially said
that the hippo had been stabbed and beaten by unknown assailants.
Following the death,
zoo director Vladlen Hernandez said he did not believe employees were involved
in any attack and a
Kristian dies a day
after his 12th birthday following attack by lion
Kristian Prinsloo
has died a day after his 12th birthday.
He was attacked by a
so-called tame fully grown lion outside Lephalale nearly three weeks ago,
Netwerk24 reports.
Kristian has been in
an induced coma in the ICU at Muelmed Mediclinic in Pretoria since the attack
on April 8. He was in a critical condition and connected to a respiratory
device the entire time.
Bleeding stopped
After undergoing
both a MRI and a CT scan, his parents, Herman and Adri were told about two
weeks ago that the doctors couldn’t pick up any brain activity. Two of his neck
vertebrae were damaged during the attack and doctors were unable to perform any
operation because of swelling on his bra
Opinion: Rhinos
should be conserved in Africa, not moved to Australia
Rhinos are one of
the most iconic symbols of the African savanna: grey behemoths with armour
plating and fearsome horns. And yet it is the horns that are leading to their
demise. Poaching is so prolific that zoos cannot even protect them.
Some people believe
rhino horns can cure several ailments; others see horns as status symbols.
Given horns are made of keratin, this is really about as effective as chewing
your finger nails. Nonetheless, a massive increase in poaching over the past
decade has led to rapid declines in some rhino species, and solutions are
urgently needed.
One proposal is to
take 80 rhinos from private game farms in South Africa and transport them to
captive facilities in Australia, at a cost of over US$4m. Though it cannot be
denied that this is a "novel" idea, I, and colleagues from around the
world, have serious concerns about the project, and we have now published a
paper looking into the problematic plan.
Conservation cost
The first issue is
whether the cost of moving the rhinos is unjustified. The $4m cost is almost
double the anti-poaching budget for South African National Parks ($2.2m), the
managers of the estate where most white rhinos currently reside in the country.
The money would be
better spent on anti-poaching activities in South Africa to increase local
capacity. Or, from an Australian perspective, given the country's abysmal
record
New population of
rare cat species discovered
Researchers working
in Borneo have found a new population of a secretive wild cat.
Scientists carrying
out wildlife surveys in the Rungan Landscape in Central Kalimantan, Indonesian
Borneo, have captured footage of a bay cat.
This camera trap
video was recorded 64 km south-east of the species' known distribution range.
New details emerge
about elephant deaths at Fellsmere center | Video, digital extras
For the first time
since The National Elephant Center closed last August, longtime supporters of
the shuttered site are learning new details about how three pachyderms and a
baby, during delivery, died over a two-year span.
The 225-acre
compound just outside Fellsmere near the Brevard County line remains dormant,
but Craig Piper, the director of city zoos at the Wildlife Conservation Society
in New York City, recently said it’s possible that zoo animals may return
someday. Piper served as vice chairman of the center’s board of directors.
“The Fellsmere
facility remains a wonderful site that could be mobilized when a need is
determined to house elephants or a number of other species,” Piper said in an
email about the former citrus grove property.
The $2.5 million
complex, a collaborative effort of zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos
and Aquariums, opened in 2012 and began housing elephants the next year. It was touted as a place for aging and
transient elephants and was designed to provide a home for males and females
whose original zoos could no longer keep them.
Four African
elephants — brothers Tufani and Tsavo, their pregnant mother Moyo and Thandi,
an unrelated female — came to the center tog
Study finds bonobos
may be better representation of the last common ancestor with humans than
common chimpanzees
A new study
examining the muscular system of bonobos provides firsthand evidence that the
rare great ape species may be more closely linked, anatomically, to human
ancestors than common chimpanzees. Previous research suggested this theory at
the molecular level, but this is the first study to compare in detail the
anatomy of the three species.
Threatened Species?
Science to the (Genetic) Rescue!
This
still-controversial conservation technique will never be a species’ panacea.
But it might provide a crucial stop-gap
ike the doomed
passenger pigeon in 1914, the pink pigeon of Mauritius is standing on the edge
of a precipice. After watching all of its other pigeon cousins on this remote
island go extinct—including the dodo, its infamous island-mate last seen in
1662—this rosy-hued bird is now looking down the dark gullet of extinction
itself.
After yo-yo’ing down
to a population of just around nine individuals in the 1990s, the studly birds
are back up to a population of about 400 today. But that number is still small
enough to leave them dangerously vulnerable. The pink pigeon’s lack of genetic
diversity has left it increasingly susceptible to a parasite-causing disease
called trichomonosis, which kills more than half of its chicks and limits
population growth.
Why this zoo is
putting gigantic, slimy ‘snot otters’ back in streams
Herpetologist Don
Boyer inevitably drew attention when he drove into town. People would notice
his truck, with “Bronx Zoo” emblazoned across the side, and want to know what
he was doing in their corner of western New York.
“Releasing
hellbenders,” he told them.
“People were like,
'Hellbenders? Why are you releasing them?' " Boyer recalled Friday.
One glance at the
creatures was unlikely to assuage nervous onlookers. The Eastern hellbender,
the largest salamander in the Western Hemisphere, looks as though someone
yanked out a giant's esophagus, gave it legs and taught it to swim. The
two-foot-long amphibian has slime-covered skin, beady eyes and a paddle-like
tail. Its ruffled torso resembles the edge of a lasagna noodle, inspiring one
of the creature's many colorful nicknames, “old lasagna sides.” Other monik
Why this British
woman is fighting to save African lions from extinction
Africa’s lion
population is agonisingly low. In
Tanzania, Amy Dickman, a Devon-born conservation biologist, is working to help
local tribes live in harmony with these wild beasts, and to save them from
all-too-possible extinction.
Amy Dickman has
always been fascinated by big cats, and as a student, on her first project in
Tanzania, she felt she had arrived. She had been working with cheetahs in
Namibia for six years, and now she would be working with lions. Pitching up at
the camp on the edge of the Great Ruaha River, she was impressed with the
accommodation: spacious canvas tents built securely on wooden platforms.
She was less dazzled
when she was shown her own quarters – a small two-man ‘pup tent’ of the type
that people take to Glastonbury and throw away afterwards – and even less
impressed when she noticed tracks in the mud indicating that the tent was
parked directly on a hippo trail from the river. So she moved it off the hippo trail and went
to bed.
But, she says, on
such a project, in the daytime you are 95 per cent trained biologist and five
per cent terrified human. At night it’s the other way round. Darkness fell,
acco
PANDAS, PANGOLINS,
AND CHINA’S FITFUL ATTEMPTS AT WILDLIFE CONSERVATION
In late February, a
three-and-a-half-year-old cub clambered into a crate marked “Contents one
panda” to begin a sixteen-hour, one-way flight to China. Bao Bao was born at
the National Zoo, in Washington, D.C., and this was her first trip overseas.
Her parents have lived in the American capital since 2000, but they, like all
giant pandas, remain the property of the Chinese state, which lends the animals
to foreign zoos for around a million dollars per year. Any products of overseas
panda unions also belong to the Chinese motherland.
Initially, Bao Bao
had trouble adjusting to life in her ancestral homeland. The local dialect
(Sichuanese) and diet (supplementary steamed buns, rather than biscuits)
bedeviled her. Nevertheless, by the time the American-born panda ended her
quarantine last month at the Dujiangyan Panda Base, in the hills of Sichuan
province, she was, as David Wildt, a senior scientist and the head of the
Center for Species Survival at the National Zoo, described to me, “doing really
great.” Indeed, species-wide, giant-panda news is positive. China’s
captive-breeding program, into which Bao Bao will be seconded once she reaches
sexual maturity, has produced a bumper crop of piebald babies. More important,
the giant panda was taken off the endangered-species list last September
because China’s efforts to safeguard its mountainous habitat have allowed the
population to grow. The International Union for Conservation of Nature
(I.U.C.N.) now classifies the animal as merely “vulnerable.” In Beijing,
considerable political will is dedicated to protecting the panda. After all, it
would be awkward should China’s furry ambassador to foreign governments end up
extinct.
The panda may be
protected, but other animals are not so fortunate. China’s craving for bits of
other beasts—elephant tusks, rhino horns, pangolin scales, bear bile, tiger
bones, sea-horse skeletons, donkey hides—has decimated fauna populations
worldwide. In addition to an ancient fascination with decorative ivory, Chinese
demand is tied to traditional Chinese medicine, which has for centuries claimed
efficacy in dubious ingredients. Rhino horn, to take one example, is considered
helpful in treating blood disorders and even cancer, despite being largely
composed of keratin, the ingestion of which is not much different from chewing
one’s fing
******************************************************
Bali mynah
conservation project gets international support
Indonesia’s efforts
to conserve the Curik Bali (Rothschild’s mynah) by involving local communities
living in areas around the Bali Barat National Park (TNBB) have received
attention and support from international conservation bodies and zoo
associations.
Curik Bali
Conservation Association (APCB) chairman Tony Sumampau said that since 2004,
the association had striven to breed of the myna, which is on the brink of
extinction, by involving local communities in activities to conserve the
species.
These efforts were
strengthened with the issuance of a decree from the environment and forestry
minister, which permits local people, especially those who lived in areas
around the TNBB, to breed Curik Bali, he said.
The initiatives
conducted by the APCB to save the Curik Bali from extinction has drawn
attention from international conservation bodies and zoo associations from
Europe and Asia.
“They include the
International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Asian Species Partnership,
the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and EAZA Passerine TAG [Taxon
Advisory Group],” said Tony, who is also director of the Indonesia Safari Park,
recently.
He said there were
17 Curik Bali breede
A Huge Tragedy
Rumors have abounded
since Monday 24th April but as yet I am unaware of the tragic story appearing
the press anywhere.
Tragedy struck the
bachelor group of elephants at La Reserva del Castillo de las Guardas near
Seville in Spain. Six out of the seven animals has succumbed to some sort of
poisoning. The exact cause has yet to be confirmed but it is believed to be
botulism.
My sincere
condolences to the
Elephant kills
handler during feeding time at Bali park
A male Sumatran
elephant killed its keeper on Friday morning in Bali when the man entered its
enclosure to feed the animal.
I Nyoman Levi
Suwitha, 60, also known as Mangku Levi, had been the owner of Bakas Levi
Rafting, an elephant park and adventure tour company based in Bali’s Klungkung
regency. The company is known for offering elephant rides through the jungle,
along with rafting trips.
Levi had just
entered the elephant’s enclosure to feed it when the elephant suddenly wrapped
its trunk around his body and threw him as far as 12 meters, according to a
report by Detik.
Staff on duty
immediately moved to evacuate Levi. The man was rushed to Klungkung General
Hospital, but was pronounced dead upon arrival. His body was later sent to the
morgue at Sanglah
Delhi zoo quizzed on
smuggled animals replacing the dead
Accused of illegally
capturing wild animals, like the Indian civet, to replace dead ones to avoid an
enquiry, Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has sought explanation from the Delhi Zoo,
a document accessed by IANS revea;s.
"The Central
Zoo Authority had requested Director, National Zoological Park, New Delhi to
submit a factual report" on the "illegal capture of Small Indian
civet and other wild animals" within seven days. "However, it has
been 19 days but the factual status has not been submitted to this
office," CZA Member-Secretary D.N. Singh said in a letter dated April 19.
This was the second
reminder by the CZA seeking an explanation from the Delhi Zoo.
The allegations,
termed "quite serious" by the CZA, were made by green activist Ajay
Dubey.
A senior official of
the Delhi Zoological Pa
The other ivory
trade: Narwhal, walrus and... mammoth
They may not attract
the same headlines as African elephants, but there are several different
species traded on the international market today
Considered to be a
“sea unicorn” in the centuries before the Arctic was properly explored, the
“horn” of the narwhal was an object of fascination for Europeans, and
particularly monarchs, who paid for the tusks with many times their weight in
gold.
Queen Elizabeth I is
said to have spent £10,000 on a narwhal tusk, a fortune in Elizabethan England,
roughly equivalent to £1.5m today, and had it placed within the crown jewels
Couple to be charged
with illegally keeping lions after boy dies
Police have opened
an inquest into the death of a 12-year-old boy who was attacked by a lion in
Limpopo three weeks ago.
The child, Kristian
Prinsloo, died just one day after his 12th birthday, and had been in an induced
coma in the ICU at Muelmed Mediclinic in Pretoria since the April 8 attack.
It has also emerged
that the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has opened charges
against the couple who owned the lion.
Kristian was
visiting his grandmother, Marie Strydom, who lives on the luxury estate with
the lion’s owners Cor and Alet Vos, outside Lephalale, on the Mogol River bank,
when the attack happened.
Best Zoos in America
for Chimpanzees
Chimpanzees share
98% of the same DNA as humans but are in danger of extinction because of
deforestation and hunting. It would be a tragedy if these animals are lost
since they are so interesting, complex and similar to us. They communicate
through a sophisticated system of facial expressions, body postures, gestures
and vocalizations like we do, live in complex communities who all know each
other through large gatherings but feed, travel and sleep in much smaller
groups, have a pecking order that is complex, fluid, flexible and subject to
change and use tools like us. Their communities are so different from each
other in communication, diet, tool use and behavior they are sometimes
considered by researchers to amount to cultural difference. Here are some zoos
with outstanding exhibits for these great apes and work towards saving them.
Lawmakers in Mexico
approve reforms to ban captivity of marine life
After two failed
attempts, representatives of the political parties PVEM, PRI, Encuentro Social
and Nueva Alianza endorsed the reform of Article 60 of the General Wildlife Law
on marine mammals with 242 votes in favor and 190 against it.
Without debate or
abandonment of the meeting room by deputies of Morena, PAN, PRD, and of the
Citizen Movement, as happened at the sessions of April 6 and 20, the plenary
approved the reform to prohibit the use of marine mammals of any species, such
as whales, dolphins and manatees, in fixed or itinerant shows.
Conservation-oriented
research, carried out by higher education institutions and in accordance with
applicable regulations are exempt from the new reforms.
The approved reform
states that the owners of marine mammals in captivity will have a period of 30
calendar days to complete an inventory, w
Colorado Animal
Sanctuary Euthanizes All Its Animals After It’s Denied Permit To Move
Local officials say
other sanctuaries had offered to take in the lions, tigers and bears.
A Colorado community
is in shock after an animal sanctuary battling housing problems resorted to
euthanizing all 11 of its exotic animals, despite the county planning
commission claiming other facilities had offered to take them in.
Lion’s Gate Animal
Sanctuary in Agate announced in a statement last week that it had euthanized
five bears, three lions and three tigers. The statement blamed the deaths on
the Elbert County’s planning commission for refusing the sanctuary’s request to
move to another site because of flooding.
“The flooding and
resulting damage prevents us from reasonably continuing our operation and
caring for our animals safely,” the organization had said in an earlier online
petition for their move.
Facility owners
Peter Winney and Joan Laub reasoned in their statement last week that they
wouldn’t have had to euthanize the animals if the local government officials
had not denied their request to move. They identified the animals killed as
“Victims of Elbert County Commissioners.”
Government office
razed after ban on hunting, logging
Protesting efforts
to prevent them from hunting wildlife and felling trees, villagers in
Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district set fire to the local Environment Department
office on Saturday.
According to Acting
Department Director Thon Sokhon, nearly 200 villagers gathered around the
office around 9am to demand that he and other officials return wood they
confiscated from the villagers and stop preventing them from hunting and
clearing forests.
Sokhon said some
villagers came armed with machetes, stones and axes and proceeded to set the
office’s stairs on fire, along with some of the confiscated wood and a table.
Some of the villagers, said Sokhon, escaped with two phones as well as knives
and axes stolen from the office.
He said he and his
colleagues did not pursue the villagers and that his team is
In Missouri, Mexican
Wolf pup proves artificial insemination can help save species
An endangered
Mexican wolf gave birth this month to what conservationists say is the first
such pup born using previously frozen sperm and artificial insemination.
The wolf was born
April 2 at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, using semen collected last
year by St. Louis Zoo research and animal health staff and stored at the zoo’s
cryopreservation gene bank. A University of California-Davis professor and
veterinary doctor administered the insemination Jan. 27 with assistance from
zoo animal health staff.
Endangered Wolf
Center spokeswoman Regina Mossotti said the wolf pup received its first health
checkup Monday and was in good shape. The pup weighs about 5
Banded mongooses
target family members for eviction
Banded mongooses
target close female relatives when violently ejecting members from their social
groups, University of Exeter scientists have found.
Most animals are
less aggressive towards family members, but dominant members of banded mongoose
groups target relatives.
The reason for this
surprising behaviour is that unrelated mongooses are more likely to fight back
- making it more difficult to evict them.
Females are the
prime targets because the pups of dominant mongooses are less likely to survive
if there are too many females breeding in the group.
"Targeting
close relatives for eviction like this is the opposite of what we would expect
social animals to do," said lead author Dr Faye Thompson, of the Centre
for Ecology and Conservation
What Do College
Students Think of Blackfish?
Recently, I skyped
in to discuss Blackfish and SeaWorld’s care of orcas for a college class at the
University of Central Florida. From my understanding, the students were asked
to analyze the movie and conclude the reliability of the film. The first question
I asked the class was, “how many of you believe that the information in
Blackfish is true and SeaWorld is a terrible, evil corporation?” In a class of
I would estimate 50+ students, not one person raised their hand. Of course,
some students may have wanted to raise their hand but were too afraid to
considering I used to work at SeaWorld.
I answered their
questions, gave them my experience of working with the whales highlighted in
the film. Then, a few weeks later, the teacher sent me feedback from the
students. I was shocked. Not only did almost every student’s research conclude
that Blackfish was mostly untrue but I was surprised that so much of what I
shared was new information to them – primarily the fact that the whales found
water work with the trainers reinforcing.
With permission from
the teacher, I have published comments fr
Bear rips off a
nine-year-old boy's arm and EATS IT at West Bank zoo
A bear ripped off
the arm of a nine-year-old boy who tried to feed it during a school trip and
then ate it.
The incident
happened at Qalqilya zoo, in the Palestinian city of Qalqilya, on the western
edge of the West Bank.
A police spokesman
today said the boy approached the caged bear with food when the animal pounced,
severing the limb at the elbow.
The bear then ate
the arm. The boy is currently being treated at a local hospital.
The zoo, the only
one of its kind in the West Ban
Mysuru Zoo is on a
mission to breed animals in captivity
Homemaker from
Kerala, Shailaja Raj, has a special bond with Mysuru Zoo. A resident from
Kozhikode, she has been doing her bit for the conservation centre in taking
care of a wild animals. Thanks to a special initiative of the zoo, hundreds of
commoners share similar bond with it.
Sometime ago, the
homemaker was on a visit to the tourist hub with her family. While touring the
facility, she fell in love with it, while the family members came to know about
the animal-adoption scheme offered there. "While we elders were enlightened
about the scheme, my sister's children asked me to adopt a ring-tailed lemur.
We adopted the lemur for one year by paying Rs 5,000. It is a rare opportunity
to serve wildlife and I feel privileged," she told TOI.
While zoos across
India are educating people abo
Sri Lanka overturns
ban on adopting elephants
Sri Lanka said
Wednesday it was overturning a ban on adopting baby elephants, drawing sharp
criticism from the animal protection lobby.
Elephants are
revered as holy in the mainly Buddhist nation, where the high-maintenance
beasts have become a status symbol for the wealthy elite.
The animals are also
kept by temples for use in religious ceremonies, and the ban had led to worries
there would not be enough tame elephants for Buddhist pageants.
"Wildlife
conservation is good but we also need to conserve our cultural pageants,"
said government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne after the cabinet overturned the
ban on adoptions.
Senaratne said the
government decision had been motivated partly by overcrowding at Pinnawala, a
27 hectare (66-acre) coconut grove that was originally set up as an elephant
orphanage and now also runs a successful breeding programme.
He said strict
conditions would be put in place to ensure the animals' welfare. Individuals
would have to pay 10 million rupees ($66,000)for an elephant, although temples
would get them for free.
But Asian elephant
expert Jayantha Jayewa
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4447406/Sri-Lanka-overturns-ban-adopting-elephants.html
China's rare milu
deer return in victory for conservation
he newborn fawn
walks unsteadily among the trees that were once part of the Chinese emperor's
hunting grounds, where more than a century before its forebears died out in
their native China.
This April marks the
start of the birthing season for the milu deer, which has long been famed as
having the head of a horse, the hooves of a cow, the tail of a donkey and the
antlers of a deer. As the herds across China grow each spring, they mark a rare
conservation success story in a country suffering from pollution and other
environmental challenges.
"Our protection
of the milu is about protecting our living cultural heritage and natural
heritage," said Guo Geng, vice director of the Beijing Milu Ecological
Research Center, where they expect about 30 fawns this year. Known as Pere
David's Deer in the West, the milu's significance to Chinese culture is
embodied in its a
Should penguins be
an animal attraction?
A group of small
honking and flapping penguins gathers around an aloe vera plant in what seems
to be the wildlife equivalent of a chat at the water cooler. Others dive into a
nearby pool with a splash as some territorial neighbors - two ducks - defend their
patch.
The scene is
probably a common one in coastal Peru and Chile, the places these Humboldt
penguins traditionally call home. But it's the last thing a visitor to a sauna
in a small town in rural Brandenburg, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the
German capital Berlin, might expect to find.
Lübbenau, with its
network of canals, is known as the city of punts and pickles. In 2008, the
Spreewelten Bad added penguins to its list of attractions. The spa houses 18
Humboldt penguins in a small enclosure equipped with nests, rocks and a pool.
Visitors can even swim alongside the penguins - albeit separated by a large
pane of glass.
"Of course, the
people think the penguins are great," Laura Schäfer, one of the spa's
animal keepers, told DW. "Because when the penguins are swimming through
the tank behind me and the visitors come up to the glass, the penguins react
and play with the v
How Fiona and Namsai
told the world our story
On January 24, 2017
the history of Cincinnati Zoo would change forever. A premature calf, Fiona,
was born six weeks early. Being the first hippo born in Cincinnati in 75 years,
the birth of Fiona was big news in itself. But the fact that the calf was in a
critical condition made it go all around the world. We all saw the pictures and
videos of the mini-hippo in its keepers arms, and later on taking her first
steps, her first swim and at last her first meeting with mommy.
Its not the first
time a cute baby animal steal the hearts of millions. We have had them here in
Kolmården too. It started with Nelson in 1995, the first rhino to be born in
Sweden. He had a brain damage and did not survive more than a week. On the
floor in the locker room the zookeepers had placed him on blankets and with
veterinarians by his side TV could follow his every breathing. Eleven year
Death of a Rockstar
First bison calves
born in Banff National Park in 140 years
The first bison
calves to be born in 140 years in Canada's oldest national park are taking
their first steps.
Conservation staff
at Banff National Park in the western province of Alberta say they hope the
three calves will be joined by seven more in coming weeks.
A herd of 16 plains
bison, including 10 pregnant females, were successfully reintroduced to the
park in February.
There used to be
some 30 million bison in Canada until they were hunted almost to extinction in
the 1800s.
About a quarter of a
million remain on a sliver o
The Illegal Wildlife
Trade: Sample Retail Market Prices
In the illegal
wildlife trade, like all transnational crime, the majority of participants are
involved for financial gain. Retailers generally face little enforcement risk
while realizing strong profits, as the value of a particular commodity, be it a
wild African grey parrot or grams of bear bile, increases dramatically as it
makes its way from source to market country.
African grey parrots
are endemic to the rainforests of equatorial Africa, however rampant poaching,
deforestation, and habit loss, among other threats, have led to a sharp drop in
the size of wild populations. This species is one of the most traded birds in
the world and can retail for approximately US$2,000.
Slow lorises appear
cute and cuddly, but their illegal capture and treatment are anything but. An
undercover investigation by Freeland Foundation found slow lorises for sale for
approximately US$5,000 in Pattaya, Thailand. Asian elephants, particularly babies,
are popular in Southeast Asia’s tourist trade. Poachers will kill adult
elephants in order to capture and sell their babies, which can retail for
approximately US$7,000 in Thailand.
While more great
apes are killed for the bush meat trade, some are poached for the exotic pet,
animal park, and zoo trades. The United Nations Environment Programme reports
that traffickers who illegally sold gorillas
All mammals big or
small take about 12 seconds to defecate
Everyone poops, and
it takes them about the same amount of time. A new study of the hydrodynamics
of defecation finds that all mammals take 12 seconds on average to relieve
themselves, no matter how large or small the animal.
The research,
published in Soft Matter, reveals that the soft matter coming out of the hind
ends of elephants, pandas, warthogs and dogs slides out of the rectum on a
layer of mucus that keeps toilet time to a minimum.
“The smell of body
waste attracts predators, which is dangerous for animals. If they stay longer
doing their thing, they’re exposing themselves and risking being discovered,”
says Patricia Yang, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology
in Atlanta.
Yang and colleagues
filmed elephants, pandas and wartho
Opinion: Rhinos
should be conserved in Africa, not moved to Australia
Rhinos are one of
the most iconic symbols of the African savanna: grey behemoths with armour
plating and fearsome horns. And yet it is the horns that are leading to their
demise. Poaching is so prolific that zoos cannot even protect them.
Some people believe
rhino horns can cure several ailments; others see horns as status symbols.
Given horns are made of keratin, this is really about as effective as chewing
your finger nails. Nonetheless, a massive increase in poaching over the past
decade has led to rapid declines in some rhino species, and solutions are
urgently needed.
One proposal is to
take 80 rhinos from private game farms in South Africa and transport them to
captive facilities in Australia, at a cost of over US$4m. Though it cannot be
denied that this is a "novel" idea, I, and colleagues from around the
world, have serious concerns about the project, and we have now published a
paper looking into the problematic plan.
Conservation cost
The first issue is
whether the cost of moving the rhinos is unjustified. The $4m cost is almost
double the anti-poaching budget for South African National Parks ($2.2m), the
managers of the estate where most white rhinos currently reside in the country.
The money would be
better spent on anti-poaching activities i
Of course you can
learn from a mahout how to handle people
His current objects
of love are Radu and Madu, the beastly sisters from India. He has been with
them for just over six months. But their PDA is on full display. He hugs and
caresses them, feeds them, sweet-talks to them. His patience: their devotion;
his care: their trust - they make for poignant lessons for those willing to
learn.
"Taming an
elephant is exactly like wooing a woman. They will play hard to get. But you
win them over ultimately with loads of patience and care."
"Can you dare
touch a woman without first winning her trust? You invite her out on dates,
give her flowers, shower her with compliments and gifts, right? It is the same
with elephants. I have to woo them, romance them and train them to love me the
way I want them to."
Mudenda fell in love
17 years ago, and he is still going strong. It all began when he took up a job
with Wild Horizon, an elephant safari company in Zimbabwe in 2001. "I was
working with baby elephants who were orphans. Their mothers got killed by poachers
and in other accidents. I beca
Officials suspended
for dehorning rhinos
Two Mangaung Metro
officials from the Bloemfontein Zoo have been suspended for allegedly dehorning
two rhinos without permission.
Mangaung Metro
Municipality spokesperson, Qondile Khedama, said in a statement that the two
officials were suspended on Monday after it was discovered they had undertaken
the dehorning process of two rhinos without the official authorisation from the
city manager, Tankiso Mea.
He says the city
manager has to be informed of the process of dehorning before it is done and
Shaving Manatees—for
Science!
Manatees are not
beautiful or buff, but they have something no other mammal does: body hair with
super powers. Body hair is a defining feature of all mammals. We all have it,
some more than others, but no mammal is known to use it quite like the manatee.
Scientists have been
curious about the manatee’s fuzz for a while now. Unlike seals, with their
thick, warm pelts, or dolphins and whales, which are sleek and bare, manatees
have a scraggly sprinkling of individual hairs here and there. What’s more,
under a manatee’s skin, beneath each hair, is another oddity—a blood sinus.
“Pumping blood to
the surface to supply 3,000-plus hairs across the body? That’s an expensive
endeavor,” says Joseph Gaspard, director of science and conservation at the
Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium and lead author of a new study on manatee hair.
So Gaspard and his colleagues set out to see wha
Vancouver Aquarium
pushes back on cetacean ban
The Vancouver
Aquarium is making a last ditch effort to thwart a park board bylaw amendment
which would ban the importation and display of cetaceans, like dolphins and
belugas.
Aquarium officials
hope a campaign to drum up public support will sway park board commissioners,
who in March, voted unanimously in favour of making a change to the bylaws.
Randy Pratt,
incoming board chair at the aquarium, argued on Thursday the ban would put the
Marine Mammal Rescue program at risk — a program responsible for helping more
than 100 animals in distress in B.C. each year, though the vast majority aren't
cetaceans.
Vietnam's national
Elephant Conservation Centre gets one step closer
This week we
finalised the layout of Vietnam's Elephant Conservation Centre based just
outside Yok Don National Park in Dak Lak province. This has been two years in
the making and has involved working alongside the Elephant Conservation Centre,
Animals Asia Foundation, Wild Welfare and local architects; IDIC.
As well as
supporting the conservation of the country's remaining wild elephants, the
centre's unique design has been formulated to provide a home for Vietnam's last
tourist elephants and any injured or orphaned wild elephants that cannot be
returned to the wild.
Based on my own
research into the needs and welfare of elephants in captivity, as well as
fifteen year
How Social Media
Saved One of the World’s Last Sumatran Rhinos
Millions of people
around the world rely on social media platforms like Twitter to receive
minute-to-minute updates on news breaking globally. It isn’t every day though
that a single tweet can cause a domino effect that led to the rescue of a
severely endangered Sumatran Rhino named Puntung.
A few weeks ago,
South Africa-based environmental journalist Adam Welz clicked on a link to an
article about one of the last two female Sumatran rhinos in Malaysia, and the
facial abscess that threatened to take her life.
Only Captivity Will
Save the Vaquita, Experts Say
It was not the first
time Robert L. Brownell Jr. had seen a dead vaquita, the rare and endangered
porpoise that was lying on the stainless-steel necropsy table inside the
Tijuana Zoo on Monday. But it might well be one of the last.
Mr. Brownell, a
senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had in
effect discovered the porpoise, finding the first full, dead specimen in 1966.
The world’s smallest member of the cetacean grouping, which
Elephant
tranquilliser: The new, deadlier trend in the raging opioid epidemic
Law enforcement
agencies across the country are raising alarms about the increasing trend of
finding heroin laced with an extremely lethal elephant tranquilizer called
carfentanil, The Washington Post reports.
The drug is 10,000
times stronger than morphine and 100 times stronger than fentanyl, just two
milligrams of which is lethal—that’s about one toss of a salt shaker.
Carfentanil can be absorbed through the skin, and just a puff from re-sealing a
plastic bag can be lethal, raising risks for first-responders. Just a whiff can
kill a drug-sniffing dog.
Though authorities
are struggling to identify it in overdose cases—and sometimes not trying due to
the health risks—carfentanil has been linked to dramatic increases in
overdoses, which were already at alarming levels amid the nationwide opioid
epidemic.
Penguins in the
Byculla Zoo: Why not?
Mast! It’s rare to
hear that classic Marathi word expressing appreciation in Mumbai’s Veermata
Jijabai Bhosale Udyan, also called the Byculla zoo, where the happiest mammals
invariably look like the fruit bats that hang lazily from the vast canopies of
rain trees. You can hardly blame the 64-year-old elephant for not competing.
But these days the word echoes in the area where the zoo’s newest inhabitants,
seven Humboldt penguins, are housed.
There were eight but
Dory died after she contracted a bacterial infection. When the city imported
the birds from South Korea, Mumbai’s globalized elite was aghast. It’s okay to
go skiing at a snow park in Dubai or spend time with the Polar bear at the Singapore
Zoo
The litigon
rediscovered
On 18 January 2017,
two litigon cubs were unveiled for public display at a safari zoo in Haikou,
China1. The cubs represent an important biological phenomenon, being born of a
fertile tigon (a tiger-lion hybrid) and an African lion. They also raise important
questions on the biological species concept and the fertility of hybrid
individuals.
Earlier, in July
2016, scouring through the archives of the National Library in Kolkata, India,
an information scientist* and a librarian** laid their hands upon a rare
photograph published in 1980 in the daily newspaper The Statesman2. The
photograph, procured and reproduced here (Figure 1) was that of a male litigon.
It was described in an accompanying news report as a hybrid of a male Asiatic
lion Panthera leo persica and a female tigon (hybrid of a male tiger Panthera
tigris and a female African lion P. leo of unknown subspecies) from the Alipore
Zoological Gardens in Calcutta (now Kolkata)2. The litigon was named Cubanacan
by Jose Lopez Sanchez, the erstwhile Cuban Ambassador to India, and
photographed on the cub’s first day of public viewing in the zoo.
The litigon grew up
to be one of the world’s largest big cats of the time, weighing around 363 kg,
a record 3.5 m long and 1.32 m wide at the shoulders3. However, this
second-generation hybrid was forgotten in subsequent literature, although
sporadic discussions of tigons and ligers (hybrids of male lions and female
tigers) continued in popular media.
Cubanacan was born
after 15 years of hybridisation attempts that started in 1964 at the Alipore
Zoo4. The zoo reportedly produced its first hybrid cat, a tigon called Rudrani,
on 13 October 1972 in the sixth litter of a female African lion Munni and a male
tig
Meet the visionary
who restored 5,500 acres of wrecked Texas land to paradise
Fifty years ago, the
wildly inspiring David Bamberger bought the worst land he could find with the
aim of bringing it back to thriving life.
Although David
Bamberger was born into poverty, he went on to become an immensely successful
fast food tycoon before cashing in his chips and assuming the role of Totally
Inspiring Steward Of The Land. It's not the storyline one might expect from
somebody who started a fried chicken empire – but it's a beautiful story.
After selling his
company, Bamberger took to the hills to begin his work. "My objective was
to take the worst piece of land I could possible find in the Hill Country of
Texas and begin the process of restoration," he says in the short film
Selah: Water from Stone. He settled upon a wasteland of 5,500 overgrazed acres
of "wall-to-wall brush, there wasn't any grass, there wasn't any water,
nobody wanted it," he says – and thus, Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve was
born. By "working with Mother Nature instead of against her," he
says, he was able to bring it
Half of All Species
Are on the Move—And We're Feeling It
The shrubs probably
responded first. In the 19th century, alder and flowering willows in the
Alaskan Arctic stood no taller than a small child—just a little over three
feet. But as temperatures warmed with fossil fuel emissions, and growing
seasons lengthened, the shrubs multiplied and prospered. Today many stand over
six feet.
Bigger shrubs drew
moose, which rarely crossed the Brooks Range before the 20th century. Now these
spindly-legged beasts lumber along Arctic river corridors, wherever the
vegetation is tall enough to poke through the deep snow. They were followed by
snowshoe hares, which also browse on shrubs.
Today moose and
hares have become part of the subsistence diet for indigenous hunters in
northern Alaska, as meltin
El Salvador zoo:
Prosecutors investigate 'suspicious deaths'
Prosecutors in El
Salvador have opened an inquiry following the suspicious deaths this week of a
puma and a young monkey at the National Zoo.
Prosecutors suspect
the animals became ill through neglect.
The investigation
will also look into the death of a zebra at the same location earlier this
month.
Those deaths follow
that of a hippo called Gustavito at the National Zoo in February, which caused
outrage in El Salvador and beyond.
Fake allegations
Staff initially said
that the hippo had been stabbed and beaten by unknown assailants.
Following the death,
zoo director Vladlen Hernandez said he did not believe employees were involved
in any attack and a
Kristian dies a day
after his 12th birthday following attack by lion
Kristian Prinsloo
has died a day after his 12th birthday.
He was attacked by a
so-called tame fully grown lion outside Lephalale nearly three weeks ago,
Netwerk24 reports.
Kristian has been in
an induced coma in the ICU at Muelmed Mediclinic in Pretoria since the attack
on April 8. He was in a critical condition and connected to a respiratory
device the entire time.
Bleeding stopped
After undergoing
both a MRI and a CT scan, his parents, Herman and Adri were told about two
weeks ago that the doctors couldn’t pick up any brain activity. Two of his neck
vertebrae were damaged during the attack and doctors were unable to perform any
operation because of swelling on his bra
Opinion: Rhinos
should be conserved in Africa, not moved to Australia
Rhinos are one of
the most iconic symbols of the African savanna: grey behemoths with armour
plating and fearsome horns. And yet it is the horns that are leading to their
demise. Poaching is so prolific that zoos cannot even protect them.
Some people believe
rhino horns can cure several ailments; others see horns as status symbols.
Given horns are made of keratin, this is really about as effective as chewing
your finger nails. Nonetheless, a massive increase in poaching over the past
decade has led to rapid declines in some rhino species, and solutions are
urgently needed.
One proposal is to
take 80 rhinos from private game farms in South Africa and transport them to
captive facilities in Australia, at a cost of over US$4m. Though it cannot be
denied that this is a "novel" idea, I, and colleagues from around the
world, have serious concerns about the project, and we have now published a
paper looking into the problematic plan.
Conservation cost
The first issue is
whether the cost of moving the rhinos is unjustified. The $4m cost is almost
double the anti-poaching budget for South African National Parks ($2.2m), the
managers of the estate where most white rhinos currently reside in the country.
The money would be
better spent on anti-poaching activities in South Africa to increase local
capacity. Or, from an Australian perspective, given the country's abysmal
record
New population of
rare cat species discovered
Researchers working
in Borneo have found a new population of a secretive wild cat.
Scientists carrying
out wildlife surveys in the Rungan Landscape in Central Kalimantan, Indonesian
Borneo, have captured footage of a bay cat.
This camera trap
video was recorded 64 km south-east of the species' known distribution range.
New details emerge
about elephant deaths at Fellsmere center | Video, digital extras
For the first time
since The National Elephant Center closed last August, longtime supporters of
the shuttered site are learning new details about how three pachyderms and a
baby, during delivery, died over a two-year span.
The 225-acre
compound just outside Fellsmere near the Brevard County line remains dormant,
but Craig Piper, the director of city zoos at the Wildlife Conservation Society
in New York City, recently said it’s possible that zoo animals may return
someday. Piper served as vice chairman of the center’s board of directors.
“The Fellsmere
facility remains a wonderful site that could be mobilized when a need is
determined to house elephants or a number of other species,” Piper said in an
email about the former citrus grove property.
The $2.5 million
complex, a collaborative effort of zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos
and Aquariums, opened in 2012 and began housing elephants the next year. It was touted as a place for aging and
transient elephants and was designed to provide a home for males and females
whose original zoos could no longer keep them.
Four African
elephants — brothers Tufani and Tsavo, their pregnant mother Moyo and Thandi,
an unrelated female — came to the center tog
Study finds bonobos
may be better representation of the last common ancestor with humans than
common chimpanzees
A new study
examining the muscular system of bonobos provides firsthand evidence that the
rare great ape species may be more closely linked, anatomically, to human
ancestors than common chimpanzees. Previous research suggested this theory at
the molecular level, but this is the first study to compare in detail the
anatomy of the three species.
Threatened Species?
Science to the (Genetic) Rescue!
This
still-controversial conservation technique will never be a species’ panacea.
But it might provide a crucial stop-gap
ike the doomed
passenger pigeon in 1914, the pink pigeon of Mauritius is standing on the edge
of a precipice. After watching all of its other pigeon cousins on this remote
island go extinct—including the dodo, its infamous island-mate last seen in
1662—this rosy-hued bird is now looking down the dark gullet of extinction
itself.
After yo-yo’ing down
to a population of just around nine individuals in the 1990s, the studly birds
are back up to a population of about 400 today. But that number is still small
enough to leave them dangerously vulnerable. The pink pigeon’s lack of genetic
diversity has left it increasingly susceptible to a parasite-causing disease
called trichomonosis, which kills more than half of its chicks and limits
population growth.
Why this zoo is
putting gigantic, slimy ‘snot otters’ back in streams
Herpetologist Don
Boyer inevitably drew attention when he drove into town. People would notice
his truck, with “Bronx Zoo” emblazoned across the side, and want to know what
he was doing in their corner of western New York.
“Releasing
hellbenders,” he told them.
“People were like,
'Hellbenders? Why are you releasing them?' " Boyer recalled Friday.
One glance at the
creatures was unlikely to assuage nervous onlookers. The Eastern hellbender,
the largest salamander in the Western Hemisphere, looks as though someone
yanked out a giant's esophagus, gave it legs and taught it to swim. The
two-foot-long amphibian has slime-covered skin, beady eyes and a paddle-like
tail. Its ruffled torso resembles the edge of a lasagna noodle, inspiring one
of the creature's many colorful nicknames, “old lasagna sides.” Other monik
Why this British
woman is fighting to save African lions from extinction
Africa’s lion
population is agonisingly low. In
Tanzania, Amy Dickman, a Devon-born conservation biologist, is working to help
local tribes live in harmony with these wild beasts, and to save them from
all-too-possible extinction.
Amy Dickman has
always been fascinated by big cats, and as a student, on her first project in
Tanzania, she felt she had arrived. She had been working with cheetahs in
Namibia for six years, and now she would be working with lions. Pitching up at
the camp on the edge of the Great Ruaha River, she was impressed with the
accommodation: spacious canvas tents built securely on wooden platforms.
She was less dazzled
when she was shown her own quarters – a small two-man ‘pup tent’ of the type
that people take to Glastonbury and throw away afterwards – and even less
impressed when she noticed tracks in the mud indicating that the tent was
parked directly on a hippo trail from the river. So she moved it off the hippo trail and went
to bed.
But, she says, on
such a project, in the daytime you are 95 per cent trained biologist and five
per cent terrified human. At night it’s the other way round. Darkness fell,
acco
PANDAS, PANGOLINS,
AND CHINA’S FITFUL ATTEMPTS AT WILDLIFE CONSERVATION
In late February, a
three-and-a-half-year-old cub clambered into a crate marked “Contents one
panda” to begin a sixteen-hour, one-way flight to China. Bao Bao was born at
the National Zoo, in Washington, D.C., and this was her first trip overseas.
Her parents have lived in the American capital since 2000, but they, like all
giant pandas, remain the property of the Chinese state, which lends the animals
to foreign zoos for around a million dollars per year. Any products of overseas
panda unions also belong to the Chinese motherland.
Initially, Bao Bao
had trouble adjusting to life in her ancestral homeland. The local dialect
(Sichuanese) and diet (supplementary steamed buns, rather than biscuits)
bedeviled her. Nevertheless, by the time the American-born panda ended her
quarantine last month at the Dujiangyan Panda Base, in the hills of Sichuan
province, she was, as David Wildt, a senior scientist and the head of the
Center for Species Survival at the National Zoo, described to me, “doing really
great.” Indeed, species-wide, giant-panda news is positive. China’s
captive-breeding program, into which Bao Bao will be seconded once she reaches
sexual maturity, has produced a bumper crop of piebald babies. More important,
the giant panda was taken off the endangered-species list last September
because China’s efforts to safeguard its mountainous habitat have allowed the
population to grow. The International Union for Conservation of Nature
(I.U.C.N.) now classifies the animal as merely “vulnerable.” In Beijing,
considerable political will is dedicated to protecting the panda. After all, it
would be awkward should China’s furry ambassador to foreign governments end up
extinct.
The panda may be
protected, but other animals are not so fortunate. China’s craving for bits of
other beasts—elephant tusks, rhino horns, pangolin scales, bear bile, tiger
bones, sea-horse skeletons, donkey hides—has decimated fauna populations
worldwide. In addition to an ancient fascination with decorative ivory, Chinese
demand is tied to traditional Chinese medicine, which has for centuries claimed
efficacy in dubious ingredients. Rhino horn, to take one example, is considered
helpful in treating blood disorders and even cancer, despite being largely
composed of keratin, the ingestion of which is not much different from chewing
one’s fing
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New Meetings and Conferences updated Here
New Meetings and Conferences updated Here
If you have anything to add then please email me at elvinhow@gmail.com
I will include it when I get a minute. You know it makes sense.
Recent Zoo Vacancies
Vacancies in Zoos and Aquariums and Wildlife/Conservation facilities around the World
*****
About me
After more than 49 years working in private, commercial and National zoos in the capacity of keeper, head keeper and curator Peter Dickinson started to travel. He sold house and all his possessions and hit the road. He has traveled extensively in Turkey, Southern India and much of South East Asia before settling in Thailand. In his travels he has visited well over 200 zoos and many more before 'hitting the road' and writes about these in his blog http://zoonewsdigest.blogspot.com/
or on Hubpages http://hubpages.com/profile/Peter+Dickinson
Peter earns his living as an independent international zoo consultant, critic and writer. Currently working as Curator of Penguins in Ski Dubai. United Arab Emirates. He describes himself as an itinerant zoo keeper, one time zoo inspector, a dreamer, a traveler, an introvert, a people watcher, a lover, a thinker, a cosmopolitan, a writer, a hedonist, an explorer, a pantheist, a gastronome, sometime fool, a good friend to some and a pain in the butt to others.
"These are the best days of my life"
Peter Dickinson
Independent International Zoo Consultant        |
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