Friday, May 31, 2019

Zoo News Digest 31st May 2019 (ZooNews 1029)

Zoo News Digest 31st May 2019  (ZooNews 1029)

Marbled Cat
Photo by Alexander Sliwa



elvinhow@gmail.com

 

Dear Colleague,


The most incredible story of the past few days has got to be Delhi Zoo Officials Don't Know How Many Animals They Have, Want Police Protection To Do The Census. I mean, can you believe it?

Then we have those idiot Animal Rights Anarchists trying once again to take Morgan from Loro Parque... three links below.

Now we have the animal traders starting on the Pangolins in Pakistan. After they had decimated the Asian population they moved on to Africa. Fifteen years ago there was never a mention of African Pangolins but now the huge tonnage of scales must mean they becoming harder to find. So back to Asia and this time in is the turn of Pakistan.


"good zoos will not gain the credibility of their critics until they condemn the bad zoos wherever they are." Peter Dickinson

Lots of interest follows

*********

Did You Know?
ZooNews Digest has over 110,400+ Followers on Facebook( and over 110,500 likes) and has a monthly reach often exceeding over 1000,000 people? That ZooNews Digest has subscribers in over 900 Zoos in 155+ 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.

I remain committed to the work of GOOD zoos,
not DYSFUNCTIONAL zoos.
********
*****
***
**
*

The last of the 'Gorillas in the Mist' is presumed dead
The last of the "Gorillas in the Mist" -- made famous by renowned American primatologist Dian Fossey -- is believed to have died.

A gorilla known as Poppy, who would have turned 43 on April 1, has not been seen by trackers since August last year, according to Fossey's namesake nonprofit organization.
Poppy was born nine years after Fossey established a camp within Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park in 1967 as part of an effort to study the area's vanishing mountain gorilla population.
Fossey was killed in Rwanda over 30 years ago but her nonprofit said in a statement ab


Food Fight: New SCBI Metagenomics Study Helps Guide Zoos on Black Rhino Nutrition
For humans, figuring out how to eat healthy can be overwhelming with the influx of new fad diets, from the gluten-free caveman diet to the veggie-heavy Mediterranean diet. For black rhinos — who are specialized browsers — finding the right diet can be just as challenging for those in human care. A new study from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and partners compares the bacterial communities (microbiome) in the gut of wild rhinos to that of those in human care, resulting in a recommendation for a health-boosting rhino diet.



KC Zoo elephant returned to exhibit after briefly leaving enclosure
Kansas City Zoo officials issued an emergency alert Wednesday, May 29, 2019, after Tamani, a 13-year-old African elephant left his designated area. No patrons or other animals were danger, and the elephant has returned to his enclosure, the zoo said.



Former curator suing Potawatomi Zoo for alleged sexual harassment, animal mistreatment
The Potawatomi Zoo is facing a lawsuit.

Former curator Jennifer Davis is suing the zoo over an alleged inappropriate relationship and animal mistreatment.

Davis says she was sexually harassed and executive director Macy Dean had a relationship with a prison inmate from the DOC's work release program.



Dreamworld tiger cubs highlight fight for survival
The Gold Coast's latest litter of tiger cubs has once again drawn attention to the plight of their wild cousins.

Five weeks old today, the adorable pair mainly of Bengal tiger origin, has made the move into their specially-designed nursery den at Dreamworld. Guests can catch a glimpse of the brothers before they join their mother Adira on the park's Tiger Island.



How wildcats will be reared for release in England and Wales
“If any beast has the devil’s strength in him it is the wildcat,” wrote a 15th-century hunting author – but historic persecution has brought the wildcat to the brink of extinction in Britain.

Now there is a new attempt to breed hundreds of wildcats in captivity and return the shy animal to England and Wales, where it has not roamed for 150 years.



Free Morgan Foundation in court again in fight for wild orca
On Wednesday, the highest Dutch administrative court will hear legal arguments in the case of the wild-born orca know as Morgan, who was captured in the Wadden Sea and now languishes in Spanish tourist attraction. The Dutch government is to blame for her plight, say Matthew Spiegl and Dr Ingrid N Visser. Infringement of EU law  – including wildlife law – undermines the very foundation of the union. When acts of infringement are alleged, they must be acknowledged, addressed and resolved without excuse or delay.



Loro Parque trusts that Dutch Justice will prove them right again
After the hearing of the Dutch Council of State which has just taken place in The Hague, Loro Parque is confident that the Dutch judiciary will resolve this appeal by once again agreeing with the Dutch Government in the case of the orca Morgan, as has already happened on all previous occasions (this will be the tenth resolution on the same theme in the Dutch administration and justice system).

The pronouncement of other institutions, such as the European Parliament, has also always supported the action of the Dutch and Spanish authorities in the case of the rescue of this orca which, had it not been for Loro Parque, would have had to be euthanised.  In short, the Free Morgan Foundation has never had a judicial resolution in its favour in the last nine years, despite which it continues with a strategy of trying to force court cases that only seems to seek public visibility.



dolphinaria.truth
They will never be able to finance a sanctuary …
[Deutsch weiter unten]
A few days ago, zoos.media published an article on how untrustworthy the new fundraising campaign was: http://zoos.media/medi…/free-morgan-foundation-geld-spenden/. They asked for more than $8,000 and raised far less than $3,000. They would need $3,500-4,000 to cover their cost to travel to the Netherlands – so, if they apparently already had enough money why are they betraying people by saying they would need more than $8,000?

But this won’t be our main point here – nearly everybody knows that the Free Morgan Foundation is not trustworthy except the few people that are betrayed by the animal rights industry. This campaign also shows another thing: they are not able to run the sanctuary, a net cage project, they claim as a solution for orcas in human care, which it, by the way, isn’t for many reasons. Caring for one killer whale for only one year costs approximately $500,000+ – these are about $1,400+ per day.

The Free Morgan Foundation is far from being able to finance that. Moreover, no one knows what they are financing at the moment. They lose legal battle after legal battle, waste a lot of money, and they are doing a bad job. In all these years they never came any closer to reach their goals. More importantly, they never helped Morgan. They are just there to legitimize the animal rights industry collecting money in the name of Morgan that most likely will benefit the so-called activists but will never help Morgan, or another orca or animals in general.

Every donation to the animal rights industry is not helping animals – not when you donate Free Morgan Foundation or its collaborators like some whale watching businesses in Vancouver, for example, or some NGOs that have never earned to have the charitable status they got because of ignorance of the governments. PETA, a collaborator of Free Morgan Foundation, prefers to murder animals instead of giving them long-term care. The true face of the animal rights industry is lie and hate.



Inside the dark world of captive wildlife tourism
video.nationalgeographic.com/video/animals-source/wildlife-watch/0000016a-5b4f-d1e7-abea-df5f895b0000









Twycross Zoo CEO Dr. Sharon Redrobe, OBE on the zoo’s mission for conservation and a ‘one world’ future
“I think we are doing that. We have continued to grow and expand. We have got our turnover up 30%, in the last few years, and our visitor numbers up about 20%. So we are now at around 600,000 visitors a year.

“We have carried on with our development programme, completing Giraffe Savannah, Gibbon Forest and then Chimp Eden, which were the big three things we wanted to do in the first five-year plan as well as all the smaller builds.”



Light at night is harmful for amphibians, new research shows
Light at night might be convenient for humans, but it's having a detrimental effect on amphibian populations, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

"Research on the effects of light pollution has recently seen a surge in popularity," said Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Jessica Hua. "It's difficult to find any place on Earth that is not affected by even minimal light pollution. We recognized a gap in the research and realized that not much was known about how light pollution can impact amphibians. Since amphibians are sensitive to environmental changes, they make great models for studying how pollution of any type can impact other species."

  

Happy Feet in a Hostile World? The Future of Penguins Depends on Proactive Management of Current and Expected Threats
Penguins face a wide range of threats. Most observed population changes have been negative and have happened over the last 60 years. Today, populations of 11 penguin species are decreasing. Here we present a review that synthesizes details of threats faced by the world’s 18 species of penguins. We discuss alterations to their environment at both breeding sites on land and at sea where they forage. The major drivers of change appear to be climate, and food web alterations by marine fisheries. In addition, we also consider other critical and/or emerging threats, namely human disturbance near nesting sites, pollution due to oil, plastics and chemicals such as mercury and persistent organic compounds. Finally, we assess the importance of eme




Injured lion attacks forest tracker inside animal care centre
A 52-year-old forest tracker was attacked by an injured adul ..



'Rhino's death should serve as a wake-up call for species conservation'
The death of Malaysia’s last male Sumatran rhinoceros, Kertam or Tam, is a reminder of the urgency to save endangered species on the brink of extinction.

Yayasan Sime Darby (YSD) governing council member Caroline Christine Russell said the story of how Malaysia lost the Sumatran rhinoceros to extinction was a reminder that conservation efforts need to be stepped up for other species on the brink of extinction.

“It is now more urgent than ever to make species conservation front and centre of the national agenda, and to concentrate resources towards saving species like the Malayan elephant, Sunda clouded leopard, Bornean banteng, Proboscis monkey, and other threatened species.

“The Malayan tiger faces an extremely high chance of extinction in the wild, and we should focus all efforts towards saving the species before it is too late,” she said in a statement.



Will climate change cause humans to go extinct?
The claim that humanity only has just over a decade left due to climate change is based on a misunderstanding. In 2018, a fairly difficult-to-read report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that humanity needs to cut its carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in half by 2030, to avoid global warming of 1.5°C above the levels seen before the industrial revolution.



What is extinction? The answer is complicated.
Extinction is a natural phenomenon: After all, more than 90 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth aren’t alive today.

But humans have made it worse, accelerating natural extinction rates due to our role in habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, disease, overfishing, and hunting.



Chimpanzees spotted ‘crabbing’ in discovery which could rewrite human history
Once upon a time, humans couldn’t simply pop down to Tesco, buy a crab and then happily enjoy a lovely light lunch.

At some point in ancient history, our ancestors had to figure out how to catch fish and other aquatic organisms, potentially providing them with nutrients which powered the brain development process which led to the evolution of modern humans.

Now scientist




Delhi Zoo Officials Don't Know How Many Animals They Have, Want Police Protection To Do The Census
In a strange turn of events, Delhi zoo authorities have admitted that they have no clue about the number of animals under their watch. They have asked the High Court to get more time to get the animal census.
According to reports, HC has ordered that the animal census will be carried under police protection as the zoo officials have been blocking the census team to hold the animal count.




Why Don’t We Hear About More Species Going Extinct?
We’ve been hearing it for years: The world is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis, with species going extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster because of human impact on the environment.

Most recently a report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimated that as many as a million species risk extinction in the coming decades due to human-related activities.

All of which raises the question: If so many species are going extinct, why don’t we hear about new extinctions every day?



Hacking conservation: how a tech start-up aims to save biodiversity
Beads of sweat form on Alex Dehgan’s brow as he steps through the mist and heat of the tropical conservatory at the US Botanic Garden in Washington DC. The air is not as hot and humid as in the forests of Madagascar, but the warmth reminds him of the two and a half years he spent there, studying lemur populations and surviving bouts of cerebral malaria, schistosomiasis and dysentery.

Dehgan enters the medicinal plant garden and f




Pakistan’s pangolins fall victim to Chinese demand
“The pangolin is killed because of its scales, which are its enemy. [The scales are] used in traditional Chinese medicines, thus, it is being smuggled from the province [for sale in China]” said Javed Ahmed Mahar, conservator at the Sindh Wildlife Department. The scales are made out of keratin, the same substance as that of human fingernails. Mahar said that some were so strong they are used to make crude bulletproof jackets as well.



We need a requiem for all those creatures we make extinct
T he publication in Paris of the Global Assessment Report on May 6th last confirmed that we are now living in the sixth-largest extinction in 3.8 billion years of Earth’s history. The 1,800-page study shows that we and future generations of species are seriously at risk, unless firm action is taken to reverse this trend.

The last time such a major extinction of life happened on Earth was 65 million years ago when an asteroid crashed into the Yucatan area of Mexico. The explosion caused such global destruction that more than half the species on Earth became extinct.



Egnor Imagines: Professor Terminated; Replaced by Bonobo
Professors say the darnedest things. Case in point: atheist philosopher Justin E.H. Smith with his argument that human reason, which simply evolved, is inferior to animal instinct. In some alternative reality out there in the multiverse, a philosopher who said this would have the opportunity to live out the consequences in his own career.





Photography tips for zoos, wildlife sanctuaries and rescues
For many people, the opportunity to observe and photograph the beauty and behavior of animals like wolves, raptors, and big cats in the wild is limited by many factors, including the scarcity of these animals and the need for massive lenses to observe them from great distances. For many of us, our local wildlife preserves, zoos and other environmental education centers, provide good, and in some cases the only, opportunity to see and photograph many species of animals.



Why are tigers orange? Their colour confuses the animals they prey on who see them as green, experts say
William Blake summed it up in his famous poem known by generations of schoolchildren: ‘Tyger, tyger, burning bright/ In the forest of the night.’ But now the answer is at hand.

While conspicuous to us, computer simulations of what the big cats look to the main animals they prey on, deer, shows a different picture.



Advocates for Lucy the elephant fail to convince courts to review her confinement conditions at Edmonton Zoo
For years, activists have been trying to get Lucy, the lone elephant at the Edmonton Valley Zoo, relocated to warmer climes, claiming she’s unwell and lonely — but the latest legal effort by animal rights groups to force the courts to review the conditions of her confinement has failed.

This case is a complicated one, said Peter Sankoff, a University of Alberta legal professor and expert in animal rights law, and is ripe for an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, because it raises the issue of how humans are supposed to stick up for animals if courts don’t give them the chance to do so.



More elephants exported to DRC
A FAMILY of six elephants comprising of two adults, a bull and cow, and four calves were loaded at the Port of Walvis Bay on the 'El Nino' vessel destined for a tourism game park in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) yesterday.

This is the first time a consignment of such magnitude involving adult elephants has left the country and, according to Namport spokesperson Tana Pessat, it will not be the last as this was a trial run to guarantee that future exports are conducted smoothly.




Born captive: A survey of the lion breeding, keeping and hunting industries in South Africa
Commercial captive breeding and trade in body parts of threatened wild carnivores is an issue of significant concern to conservation scientists and policy-makers. Following a 2016 decision by Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, South Africa must establish an annual export quota for lion skeletons from captive sources, such that threats to wild lions are mitigated. As input to the quota-setting process, South Africa’s Scientific Authority initiated interdisciplinary collaborative research on the captive lion industry and its potential links to wild lion conservation. A National Captive Lion Survey was conducted as one of the inputs to this research; the survey was launched in August 2017 and completed in May 2018. The structured semi-quantitative questionnaire elicited 117 usable responses, representing a substantial proportion of the industry. The survey results clearly illustrate the impact of a USA suspension on trophy imports from captive-bred South African lions, which affected 82% of respondents and economically destabilised the industry. Respondents are adapting in various ways, with many euthanizing lions and becoming increasingly reliant on income from skeleton export sales. With rising consumer demand for lion body parts, notably skulls, the export quota presents a further challenge to the industry, regulators and conservationists alike, with 52% of respondents indicating they would adapt by seeking ‘alternative markets’ for lion bones if the export quota allocation restricted their business. Recognizing that trade policy toward large carnivores represents a ‘wicked problem’, we anticipate that these results will inform future deliberations, which must nonetheless also be informed by challenging inclusive engagements with all relevant stakeholders.




Money laundering and the illegal wildlife trade
While it has all the hallmarks of transnational organised crime, the illegal wildlife trade continues to be viewed as being outside ‘mainstream crime’.

Frequently linked to other forms of serious crime such as fraud, corruption and money laundering, the illegal wildlife trade generates an estimated US$20 billion annually and is the fourth most profitable criminal trafficking enterprise behind drugs, arms and human trafficking according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).






**********************************************************************

** ***
** **
***
*

For Updated Conferences and Meetings Please Click
HERE

For Recent Zoo Vacancies Please Click

After more than 50 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/Hubpages http://hubpages.com/profile/Peter+Dickinson
Peter earns his living as an independent international zoo consultant, critic and writer. Until recently 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 storyteller, 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"


photo 
Peter Dickinson
Independent International Zoo Consultant







Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Zoo News Digest 28th May 2019 (ZooNews 1028)

Zoo News Digest 28th May 2019  (ZooNews 1028)






elvinhow@gmail.com

 

Dear Colleague,


For around the seventh time this last week I came across the newspaper header "rare white lion cub". It will be the same next week along with "endangered rare white tiger". It goes on and on and never stops. The Dumb zoos out there are sucked in and will purchase one if the opportunity arises and usually at a vastly inflated price...and for what? All of these unfortunate beasts are inbred. They are of no value or use to conservation. They are just taking up space and mis-educating the public. They will breed and so compound the problem. No GOOD zoo will take them so they will be passed along to another Dumb zoo.

Example from today:

Welcome, Sonja: Rare White Lion Born At Hungary Zoo, Makes First ...



Two rare white tiger cubs find new home in Nicaragua
There is no officially sanctioned studbook for these unfortunate creatures. They are valueless and yet come at a price.
Nobody disputes that white tigers and lions can and do occur in the wild and that's great if that is where they remain. Naturally occurring mutations be they black, white, red or blue are just fine as they are still able to contribute to the wild gene pool and that's a good thing. Putting any of these inbred (and sometimes subspecific mix) captive animals back is not. It will cause problems.
Tigers in the wild are in trouble. This is not just because of poaching. Besides poaching is less lucrative now that Tiger Farms in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Vietnam and South Africa are churning the animals out. Cheaper to kill something in a cage than in a jungle.
No, Tigers in India today are in trouble because there is no where for them to go. So this week I put this little poster on my Facebook page.

Wow. What a lot of comments. Some understood exactly what I was getting at. Many did not. I just hope that the discussion that evolved allowed contributors and readers to learn something.

This popped up in one of the stories during the week "Vegan and animal-rights activist". Just what is the point of mentioning you are a Vegan? Does this give some special gift of understanding? I think not.
Incidentally I have often noted that in photographs of rallies of Animal Rights Anarchists that many are sporting tattoos. Most tattoo ink contains animal by-products.


"good zoos will not gain the credibility of their critics until they condemn the bad zoos wherever they are." Peter Dickinson

Lots of interest follows

*********

Did You Know?
ZooNews Digest has over 110,400+ Followers on Facebook( and over 110,500 likes) and has a monthly reach often exceeding over 1000,000 people? That ZooNews Digest has subscribers in over 900 Zoos in 155+ 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.

I remain committed to the work of GOOD zoos,
not DYSFUNCTIONAL zoos.
********
*****
***
**
*

Monkeys saved after Birmingham nature reserve arson attack
Two spider monkeys were saved by firefighters after an arson attack at a nature reserve.

Crews were called to a blaze in the monkey house at Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park at about 23:00 BST on Thursday.

Paul Bayliss, from Bournbrook fire station, said: "The fire was at one end and the monkeys were hiding in another."



Shortage of staff to protect wildlife in Turkey: Official
“Many species in the nature have dwindled. For example, the number of chevrotains should be 200,000-250,000 in Turkey, but it is only 35,000; the number of gazelles should be 600,000, but it is only 16,000; the number of mountain sheep should be 600,000-700,000, but it is only 20,000. Why is this the case? This issue is followed by the General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parts. We are supposed to undertake this protection with forest security public servants, but how many of them are left? Only 250 and they are also retiring,” said Erdem İsmetoğlu, the directorate’s vice president, on May 22.



Kawan At Islamabad Zoo Being Treated Inhumanly: Wildlife Expert
Wildlife especially elephant 'Kawan' at Islamabad zoo is in dire need of attention of the quarter concerned as it is being treated inhumanly.
Talking to APP, a wildlife expert requesting anonymity said, the quality of food served to Kawan was unhygienic and it was being fed sugarcane and hay by the visitors.



Pioneering Veterinary Medicine for Africa’s Enigmatic Pangolins
Veterinarian Dr. Karin Lourens has become known as Africa’s “pangolin doctor” for leading medical efforts to help the scaly anteaters rescued from the illegal wildlife trade.

Case in point, she’s treating an endangered ground pangolin, one of a species found in South and Eastern Africa, and he’s lucky.

He’s one of 50 pangolins rescued this year from wildlife traffickers and put in the care of Lourens.



Vietnam seizes 5 tonnes of pangolin scales from Nigeria
Communist Vietnam is a hotbed for the illegal wildlife trade, where animal products from elephant ivory to rhino horn and tiger bones are consumed domestically and also smuggled abroad.

Police on Thursday found 5.3 tonnes of pangolins scales hidden in a shipment from Nigeria at a port in southern Ba Ria Vung Tau province, according to Hai Quan, the official mouthpiece of Vietnam Customs.

"The scales were stuffed into 151 sacks inside a container... (and) bags of raw cashew nuts were used as a disguise in order to avoid detection from authorities," the online news website said Friday.



Republicans aren’t just climate deniers. They deny the extinction crisis, too
Maybe you’ve read King Lear and remember this famous line: “‘Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.” The words were written more than 400 years ago as a comment on the deadly consequences of greed, delusion and political folly, but they could serve just as well as a Republican party slogan today. They’re a fitting description of the Republican party’s delusional campaign to deny the environmental crises that threaten our planet and our civilization.



Colombian breeds rare frogs to undermine animal traffickers
In a small farmhouse surrounded by cloud forest, Iván Lozano inspects dozens of glass containers that hold some of the world's most coveted frogs.

The conservationist has been fighting the illegal trade in rare tropical frogs for years, risking his life and his checkbook to save the brightly colored, poisonous amphibians whose population in the wild is dwindling.

But Lozano doesn't hunt down poachers and smuggl



Andrew Crawford: Colombia’s frogs face “massacre” with illegal trafficking
ndrew crawford is Associate Professor of biology at Universidad de los Andes and member of the Smithsonian Tropical Research institute. His research on amphibian evolutionary genetics covers plenty of terrain in Colombia, from the Pacific coast with its poison dart frogs to the discovery with a team of scientists of a new species in the cloud forests of the high Andes. As a frog expert, Crawford spoke with The City Paper about the many threats facing this species in the country.




Five Things to Know About Botswana’s Decision to Lift Ban on Hunting Elephants
Botswana, home to the world’s largest African elephant population, has lifted its five-year suspension of elephant hunting, attracting the ire of conservationists while placating those who argue that the land giants, known to kill livestock and destroy crops, are wreaking havoc on locals’ livelihoods.



Trump Administration Orders the Removal of 30 Species from the Endangered Species List
In late 2017, top leaders from the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) southeastern region issued a directive that instructed agency officials to delist, downlist, or otherwise preclude 30 species each year from the endangered species list. The directive, dubbed the “Wildly Important Goal,” was framed as a method to promote “positive, proactive conservation,” though it fails to explain how the denial of federal protections for endangered or threatened species aids conservation efforts.



New Details About Hours-Long Struggle to Retrieve Body of Woman Mauled by Lion in North Carolina
Alex Black came face to face with an escaped lion when she was just 10 days into her unpaid internship at a private animal sanctuary.

The 22-year-old had been preparing deer meat to feed the big cats, and suddenly found herself alone, staring down the lion in a place where it could have reached visitors, according to her aunt, Virginia Black.



Rare all-white panda spotted in China
A rare all-white panda has been captured on cameras in the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Southwest China's Sichuan province, the reserve management authorities said on Saturday.

The panda was captured in mid-April by an infrared camera about 2,000 meters above sea level in the wild, the authorities said.

The panda has no spots on its body and its eyes look red. It was crossing the forest at the time.



DNREC’s Brandywine Zoo wins international avian husbandry award
DNREC’s Brandywine Zoo has won a Plume Award from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ (AZA) Avian Scientific Advisory Group, recognizing the zoo’s achievements in avian husbandry and conservation. The Brandywine Zoo is one of only three AZA-member facilities internationally to receive the prestigious award this year. The Plume Award was for the zoo’s American Kestrel Monitoring Program, recognized by the AZA as a “Noteworthy Achievement for an Avian In-Situ Program” – meaning “in the field,” or studying animals in the wild.



Dolphins' happiness living in captivity at marine animal park probed, as tourist attraction considers sea pen
The question of whether dolphins can be happy living in captivity at a marine animal park is about to be tested on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

A world-leading scientist is in Coffs Harbour for an Australian-first study into the welfare of five dolphins at the tourist attraction, Dolphin Marine Conservation Park.



Philippine eagles Geothermica and Sambisig to be loaned to Singapore: Ambassadors for Philippine biodiversity
On June 4, a pair of captive-bred Philippine eagles will fly to Singapore as part of a Wildlife Loan Agreement (WLA) entered into by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS), Singapore’s leading wildlife conservation organization.

Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu and WRS Deputy Executive Officer Cheng Wen-Haur signed the agreement highlighting a first of such agreement for the critically endangered Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi),  the country’s national bird.




In a first, UP to set up four tiger rescue centres
With the number of both tigers and leopards increasing in th ..



TAM, SABAH’S LAST MALE SUMATRAN RHINO, IS DEAD
Malaysia’s last male Sumatran rhino, Tam, has died, following an abrupt decline in health due to old age, sources say.

Tam, short form for Kertam was pronounced dead shortly after noon Monday, BorneoToday has learnt.

Sabah is now left with one last Sumatran rhino, a female, Iman, whose own health has weakened due to a ruptured tumor in her uterus.



After Tam's death, Sabah hopes to ink deal with Indonesia on rhino breeding programme
Following the death of Malaysia's last male Sumatran rhino, the Sabah government is hoping to officially seal an agreement with Indonesia on a proposed breeding programme involving the country's only surviving female rhino.

Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Christina Liew said that offspring of the sole surviving female Sumatran rhino named Iman will be shared ownership with Indonesia.



Amid U.S./China tensions, pandas' presence in Atlanta becomes more exceptional
With the San Diego Zoo's two giant pandas safely back in China, Zoo Atlanta has become a member of an even more exclusive club.

The California zoo's loan agreement for pandas Bai Yun and Xiao Liwu recently ended and was not extended, leaving Atlanta, the Memphis Zoo, and Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian National Zoo as the only locations with pandas. Though there are currently tensions over trade between the U.S. and China, the conflicts have no connection to the giant pandas on loan to Atlanta's zoo, according to Hayley Murphy, deputy director of Zoo Atlanta.



Are we facing a potential species mass extinction event or are we in the midst of it?
Is species at ‘risk of extinction’ the correct metric to apply in assessing and for convincing people of the worsening global biodiversity and ecosystem services predicament?

In this article it is argued that biodiversity, in terms of the number of species, is less important from an ecological perspective than the biomass/population size of the ecosystem’s most common species.



5 essential tools for nature conservation we are still missing (Part 1/2)
There is not a day passing without the announcement of new web based tools, dashboards or platforms launched in support to nature conservation. Maps and data sets have become very easy to access and share over the web and any junior programmer can today easily integrate these data in a nice looking interface. Looking behind the doors, one will find most of the time that the content presented is the same as anywhere else and that only the packaging has been changed, either to make it more attractive or simply to target different end-users.



Ranked: The Ten Countries With The Most Endangered Species In The World
It’s tough to argue with the fact that humankind is having a dramatic – and terrible – impact on the animal kingdom. Industry, pollution, agriculture, deforestation, air travel and decreasing habitats are conspiring to make it very hard for thousands of species to survive, let alone flourish. And that truth stretches to every corner of the world, be it forest, mountain, reef, ocean, city or savannah.



Gregory Wrightstone: exposing the mass extinction lie
The latest chapter of the climate campaign consists of warnings about a coming mass extinction of species. Here is a stunning analysis of these claims by Gregory Wrightstone. This made a big impact at Wednesday’s House hearings. I doubt you will see this in the news (it does not fit the narrative).



**********************************************************************

** ***
** **
***
*

For Updated Conferences and Meetings Please Click
HERE

For Recent Zoo Vacancies Please Click

After more than 50 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/Hubpages http://hubpages.com/profile/Peter+Dickinson
Peter earns his living as an independent international zoo consultant, critic and writer. Until recently 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 storyteller, 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"


photo 
Peter Dickinson
Independent International Zoo Consultant