Zoo News Digest 7th August 2016
(ZooNews 934)
(ZooNews 934)
"Vermeer monkey" (2012), by Daniel Sueiras
http://www.plataformadeartecontemporaneo.com/pac/
(and yes...I know it is an ape)
Peter Dickinson
elvinhow@gmail.com
Dear Colleague,
The first thing I do
in the morning when I turn on my computer is look at the Birthdays. There are
usually around ten announced every day. Then I send each one this message
"May the best of your past be the worst of
your future…Enjoy your day!!!" It, to me, has more meaning than a
simple 'Happy Birthday'. My problem is, I'm getting older and so are my friends
and colleagues. People are dying and sadly their Facebook pages are not dying
with them. When I remember I will post something along the lines of "I'm
thinking of you today". I'm getting it wrong more often though and will
get a flurry of messages saying 'Peter he/she died two months ago'. It looks
like I will have to start deleting dead friends and colleagues but part of me
doesn't want to do that.
Please see the ad
for the latest International Zoo News
below. Always a good and informative read. The Editorial especially so.
During the week I
came across the following link which I duly posted on the ZooNews DigestFacebook Page.
Lion Whisperer Donna
Wilson says close relationship is down to trust and ‘respectful fear
I posted it because
it was something I so much dislike going out on social media and so I added the
following comment "Completely unnecessary,
not clever and sends out the wrong message.....this will only add to the
problem of Tiger selfies and cub farming." I stand by what I said
100%.
Within an hour of
posting I had been accused of slander on the one side and had people defending
Donna or the activity on the other. None of this is going to change my mind.
You could find reading the comments on the Page quite interesting. There is an
appalling amount of ignorance there that is so very very difficult to break
through. I have made my thoughts and beliefs quite clear in the following
articles.
The Zoo Keepers Part
in the Illegal Animal Trade
Playing With Lions
Somehow though
writing and people reading is not enough. Even people I work with who are fully
aware of the awful fate that awaits these animals seem to become blinded when
the opportunity to pose with a tiger arises. They holiday in Thailand, have
their tiger posing pictures taken and then post them on Facebook. Some years
back I was visiting a Thai Zoo with a guy I met on the road. Sure enough there
was a Tiger there to pose with. I spent ten minutes explaining to him the
origins of the cub and what would ultimately happen to it. It made no
difference…he had always wanted to and didn't want to miss the chance.
There is another
side to posing which I don't suppose people give much thought to. There is a
certain British Zoo Director who is presently out to obtain a group of animals.
One of the main reasons he is facing difficulties getting them is that there is
a collection of photos of him posing with Orangutans and playing with big cats.
Such photographs can come back to haunt you.
I don't doubt
(according to what my colleagues tell me) that Donna Wilson is "one of the good ones" and well-meaning
and caring. However it sends out the wrong message big time and lumps her into
that nasty little group along with Doc Antle, Craig Busch, Eduardo Serio and a
host of others. I do hope Donna will see the light. Animals will die in cruel
and horrible ways unless playing and posing with big cats on social media
ceases.
Some colleagues
recently returned from Sweden where they said that Ticks were being a problem.
Oddly, in the same week there were two other remarks so I republished 'The riskfrom a tiny terror' which was written by a Zoo Keeper who contracted Lyme's Disease. It make
distressing reading. Then (see links below) it has now been found that
Mosquitoes can carry it. I don't know about you but I find that a bit worrying.
Mosquitoes love my blood and will travel from neighboring countries just to
feed on me.
See the announcement
for the next SEAZA conference. I would dearly like to go as I so much enjoyed
the last one. I don't think I should though as the collection I draw attention to each week is hosting the event so I don't believe I would
be very welcome or popular. Plus I was outspoken on all this Tiger and
Orangutan posing last year and as far as I can see nothing has changed at all.
Thinking about the
financial worries of SeaWorld. This is a commercial operation with the
shareholders at the top of the pile. They are concerned about profit. Whatever
decisions are made and announced can be reversed. Just remember I said that.
I was so sad to learn of the passing of 'Lady' the Gorilla in Al Ain Zoo. When she first arrived in the zoo she spent part of her days and all of her nights in my house with me and my wife (yes there are photos somewhere....but you won't see them on social media). She lived as part of the family and was much loved. It is as a family member that I will miss and remember her.
Did You Know?
ZooNews Digest has over 25,700 'Like's' on Facebook and has a weekly reach often exceeding over 250,000 people? That ZooNews Digest has subscribers in over 800 Zoos in 153+ countries? That the subscriber list 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.
Dear Colleague,
The first thing I do
in the morning when I turn on my computer is look at the Birthdays. There are
usually around ten announced every day. Then I send each one this message
"May the best of your past be the worst of
your future…Enjoy your day!!!" It, to me, has more meaning than a
simple 'Happy Birthday'. My problem is, I'm getting older and so are my friends
and colleagues. People are dying and sadly their Facebook pages are not dying
with them. When I remember I will post something along the lines of "I'm
thinking of you today". I'm getting it wrong more often though and will
get a flurry of messages saying 'Peter he/she died two months ago'. It looks
like I will have to start deleting dead friends and colleagues but part of me
doesn't want to do that.
Please see the ad
for the latest International Zoo News
below. Always a good and informative read. The Editorial especially so.
During the week I
came across the following link which I duly posted on the ZooNews DigestFacebook Page.
Lion Whisperer Donna
Wilson says close relationship is down to trust and ‘respectful fear
I posted it because
it was something I so much dislike going out on social media and so I added the
following comment "Completely unnecessary,
not clever and sends out the wrong message.....this will only add to the
problem of Tiger selfies and cub farming." I stand by what I said
100%.
Within an hour of
posting I had been accused of slander on the one side and had people defending
Donna or the activity on the other. None of this is going to change my mind.
You could find reading the comments on the Page quite interesting. There is an
appalling amount of ignorance there that is so very very difficult to break
through. I have made my thoughts and beliefs quite clear in the following
articles.
The Zoo Keepers Part
in the Illegal Animal Trade
Playing With Lions
Somehow though
writing and people reading is not enough. Even people I work with who are fully
aware of the awful fate that awaits these animals seem to become blinded when
the opportunity to pose with a tiger arises. They holiday in Thailand, have
their tiger posing pictures taken and then post them on Facebook. Some years
back I was visiting a Thai Zoo with a guy I met on the road. Sure enough there
was a Tiger there to pose with. I spent ten minutes explaining to him the
origins of the cub and what would ultimately happen to it. It made no
difference…he had always wanted to and didn't want to miss the chance.
There is another
side to posing which I don't suppose people give much thought to. There is a
certain British Zoo Director who is presently out to obtain a group of animals.
One of the main reasons he is facing difficulties getting them is that there is
a collection of photos of him posing with Orangutans and playing with big cats.
Such photographs can come back to haunt you.
I don't doubt
(according to what my colleagues tell me) that Donna Wilson is "one of the good ones" and well-meaning
and caring. However it sends out the wrong message big time and lumps her into
that nasty little group along with Doc Antle, Craig Busch, Eduardo Serio and a
host of others. I do hope Donna will see the light. Animals will die in cruel
and horrible ways unless playing and posing with big cats on social media
ceases.
Some colleagues
recently returned from Sweden where they said that Ticks were being a problem.
Oddly, in the same week there were two other remarks so I republished 'The riskfrom a tiny terror' which was written by a Zoo Keeper who contracted Lyme's Disease. It make
distressing reading. Then (see links below) it has now been found that
Mosquitoes can carry it. I don't know about you but I find that a bit worrying.
Mosquitoes love my blood and will travel from neighboring countries just to
feed on me.
See the announcement
for the next SEAZA conference. I would dearly like to go as I so much enjoyed
the last one. I don't think I should though as the collection I draw attention to each week is hosting the event so I don't believe I would
be very welcome or popular. Plus I was outspoken on all this Tiger and
Orangutan posing last year and as far as I can see nothing has changed at all.
Thinking about the
financial worries of SeaWorld. This is a commercial operation with the
shareholders at the top of the pile. They are concerned about profit. Whatever
decisions are made and announced can be reversed. Just remember I said that.
I was so sad to learn of the passing of 'Lady' the Gorilla in Al Ain Zoo. When she first arrived in the zoo she spent part of her days and all of her nights in my house with me and my wife (yes there are photos somewhere....but you won't see them on social media). She lived as part of the family and was much loved. It is as a family member that I will miss and remember her.
Did You Know?
ZooNews Digest has over 25,700 'Like's' on Facebook and has a weekly reach often exceeding over 250,000 people? That ZooNews Digest has subscribers in over 800 Zoos in 153+ countries? That the subscriber list 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.
Could the Pill save
the polar bear?
Conservationists
tend to spend their time worrying about protecting forests, catching poachers
or keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. But all these things (and more) are
driven by humans. Given that it’s easier and cheaper to reduce the human birth
rate than it is to address these other issues, why aren’t conservationists more
concerned about keeping our population down?
After all, it is
estimated that more than three-quarters of the world’s ice-free land has been
modified by people. We are already overstepping the planet’s boundaries and our
actions are causing climate change and the sixth mass extinction.
By 2050 human
population growth alone will threaten a further 14% of the planet’s species;
this is on top of the 52% decline in numbers of mammals, birds, reptiles,
amphibians and fish over the past four decades.
Only 13 years ago,
we were 6 billion; just seven years later, we hit 7 billion and by 2100 we
could be as many as 12.3 billion people. Shockingly, with each child a woman
has, her carbon emissions legacy is increased six-fold. It cannot be denied
that our size, density and growth rate all increase wildlife extinctions.
But all is not lost.
Fertility rates decline the longer a girl spends in school. By simply providing
better female education, th
Orangutan trading syndicates uncovered
Demand for protected
species, including orangutans, on the black market has remained high despite
the authorities’ continued campaign for their preservation.
Syndicates illegally
trading in orangutans originating from Mount Leuser National Park (TNGL) have
been uncovered following the recent seizure of five orangutans ready to be
traded in Jakarta and Medan, North Sumatra.
Daniek Hendarto, the
coordinator of the Center for Orangutan Protection (COP), said the seizure of
the five orangutans within the last week indicated that the illegal trade in
protected animals was still
rampant.
“Just in a week,
five orangutans were seized. This is a big number and proves that the orangutan
trade is still there in the community,” Daniek told The Jakarta Post on
Thursday.
He said the five
orangutans were seized from two separate places by a team from the National
Police together with a number of non-governmental organizations, including COP.
Daniek said one of
the orangutans was seized from Kampung Rambutan in Jakarta on Sunday. It was a
one-year-old orangutan and was to be traded by suspect HN, 33, currently in
police custody.
Two days later, he
added, the same team seized
Feds taking fresh look at wildlife petting, photo-ops,
5 years after Zanesville animal disaster
Five years after a
Zanesville animal keeper triggered panic by unleashing tigers, lions and bears
in Ohio's countryside, the federal government is looking anew at restricting
the public's ability to pet and pose for pictures with young, potentially dangerous
animals.
The risk to humans
from petting an adorable 5-week-old tiger cub at a roadside zoo is not so much
the issue. But to make tiger and bear cubs available for cuddles, ooohs and
aahhs, wild animal parks rely on a breeding-and-handling ecosystem that
animal-rights activists say results in cruelty and abandonment.
If the government
would eliminate your right to snuggle with a big cat while that cat is still
little, the activists say, then the larger ecosystem -- the one that helped
Terry Thompson acquire 56 wild, dangerous animals that he released from cages
before killing himself in October 2011 -- could be quashed.
Some people say this
is overkill.
The federal
government, which in March began tamping down on public handling of baby lions
and tigers, wants to hear more from the public about proposed restrictions.
What it's about:
The move to restrict
handling of wild animals by anyone other than professionals in accredited zoos
or wildlife sanctuaries grew heated after Thompson, deeply in debt and
reportedly despised by some neighbors, released 56 animals from his 73-acre
Muskingum County farm, th
40 years, and a lot to ‘croc’ about!
It has been 40 years
since The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology opened its
doors for the public. Started in 1976, the crocodile bank has grown from a
place that had only a trickle of visitors, to one of the main attractions of
tourists who come to Chennai. As the croc bank celebrates their eventful
journey of 40 years, we join them on a trip down memory lane, and also get a
low-down on their current activities.
Looking back...
The founder of the
crocodile bank, Romulus Whitaker says that it all started with the increase in
popularity of the Chennai Snake Park Trust after it was moved to Guindy from
Rajakilpakkam near Tambaram. "The tremendous success of the snake park made
a couple of us think about other reptiles and their con
Fears for big cats: Could tigers soon become EXTINCT
thanks to BRITISH tourists?
Two reports to mark
Global Tiger Day show how the animal's impending oblivion is being accelerated
by tourism.
Travellers'
remarkable lack of understanding about Far East tiger farms is jeopardising the
fragile future of an animal down to as few as 3,900 individuals left in the
wild.
Although this figure
is 700 more than the last count six years ago, it is dwarfed by the huge number
of tigers languishing in captivity. As many as 8,000 of the animals are kept on
Asia’s tiger farms.
The Emerging Role of Asia in Wildlife Conservation
Practice
The practice of
solving conservation problems for wildlife has presented more and varied
challenges for researchers and practitioners in Asia, especially over the last
quarter century. While human populations have grown, lands available for
wildlife have steadily decreased and habitats have been degraded.
Yet as conservation
practice has matured, researchers are striving to make their science relevant
to the issues at hand and practitioners have better tools and information
available to implement solutions.
Legalization of tiger product trade slammed by
environmentalists
Friday marks the
International Tiger Day, just days after two big cats at a Beijing safari park
attacked two women, killing one.
China's newly
amended law on wild animal protection, approved this year, has been
controversial as it allows the limited commercial exploitation of tigers, which
are sought after by the traditional Chinese medicine industry due to their
supposed medicinal properties.
Beyond cruelty
On July 23, tigers
at Beijing Badaling Safari Park attacked two passengers who got out of their
car while driving through the tiger enclosure. This has sparked heated
discussion online, with some criticizing them for breaking the rules and some
accusing the park of lax management.
Park staff told
Global Times on Wednesday that the incident is still under investigation and
the two tigers were not "executed."
"Many of these
safari parks in China should be banned because they train tigers in a cruel way
to entertain visitors or sell tiger products," Mang Ping, a professor from
the Central Institute of Socialism and a founder of the Zoo Watch animal protection
NGO, told the Global Times.
But the treatment
tigers face in captivity goes beyond just cruelty.
Xionglin Xionghu
Villa of Guilin, a safari park and baijiu company based in Guilin, the Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region is allegedly the world's biggest breeding base for
tigers.
On its website,
there are various types of baijiu with "medicinal properties made from the
bones of a rare species animals"
for sale. They do not say what animals are used.
Work to begin on Dhs 151m main building at Dubai
Safari
Approval has been
granted for work to begin on the smart main building of Dubai Safari at a total
cost of Dhs 151m ($41m).
State news agency
WAM quote Dubai Municipality deputy director general Essa Al Haj Al Maidoor as
saying the building would include smart, secure and environmentally friendly
services.
These include the
use of treated water renewable energy, interactive software features for
visitors, surveillance cameras, and free wi-fi.
The building, which
is due to be completed at the end of the year, will also feature a theatre for
hosting events to accommodate a thousand people, a clean energy production
garden and an interactive garden for children.
The Dhs 1bn
($272.2m) Dubai Safari
Al Ain Zoo’s lowland gorilla Lady dies aged 41
She may have lived
alone since her long-term partner died in 1998 but keepers caring for Lady the
lowland gorilla, who passed away aged 41, insist she had plenty of friends at
Al Ain Zoo.
When her male
companion Maxi, also a lowland gorilla, passed away from natural causes, Lady
found comfort from watching her favourite TV show - Barney and Friends,
featuring tales from the purple dinosaur, and by mixing with other animals at
the zoo.
Lady, who was the
zoo’s oldest inhabitant and arrived in the country as a four year old, adopted
a tan-coloure
Can we agree? An ongoing dialogue about where retired
research chimpanzees should live
A couple of weeks
ago we wrote about concerns for the health and wellbeing of chimpanzees moved
from dedicated research facilities in the US to the only federally-supported
sanctuary, Chimp Haven (“Do politics trump chimpanzee well-being? Questions raised about deaths of US research
chimpanzees at federally-funded sanctuary” 7/14/16). The impetus for this
particular post was a compelling article written by Dr. Cindy Buckmaster (“Dr.
Collins, please save our chimps! Lab Animal, Vol 45, No 7, July 2016). The
article was about the deaths of 9 of 13 retired research chimpanzees who had
recently been transferred to the federal sanctuary from the National Center for
Chimpanzee Care (NCCC; University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bas
Mexico City Zoo builds germplasm store to spare
exposed species
In a laboratory in
Mexico City’s Chapultepec Zoo, veterinaries have been working to extract and
preserve “seeds” from 20 species of endangered animals, according to an
official.
In the reproduction
laboratory, gametes from national protected species such as the Mexican wolf,
the California condor, the volcano rabbit, the Mexican salamander and the
jaguar are being studied and preserved, Fernando Cortes Villavicencio,
technical and research director at the General Directorate for Zoos and
Wildlife in Mexico City, told Xinhua on Saturday.
The scientists are
also working with specimens of exotic animals from other latitudes that live in
zoos, like the snow leopard or some primates, said Cortes Villavicencio.
“We have at least
preserved 20 different species which are
Ministry, zoos work on portal for animal exchange
The Environment and
Forestry Ministry and the Indonesian Zoos Association (PKBSI) have agreed to
set up an online portal to facilitate animal exchange among conservation
institutions.
Animal exchanges are
considered crucial for the preservation of genetic diversity of animals outside
their original habitat.
The ministry’s
director general of ecosystem and natural resource conservation, Tachrir
Fathoni, said the portal would help stakeholders find the animals they needed
for breeding and genetic improvement purposes.
So far, he said, for
breeding purposes the conservation institutions could either borrow, exchange
or obtain animals through grants. These three options, he added, would also be
included in the portal.
“The point is that
by using the online portal, unnecessary expenses will be eliminated,” Fathoni
told a workshop on animal management guidelines in Jakarta recently.
Fathoni also said
exchanges of animals were needed for research purposes and revival of
particular species. An
A Homecoming for Hellbenders, the Biggest Salamanders
in North America
German study finds Lyme in mosquitoes
Researchers have
found the pathogens that cause Lyme disease in mosquitoes for the first time in
central Europe.
Lyme disease or Lyme
borreliosis is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by spirochetes of the
Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato complex.
In the present
study, adult as well as larval mosquitoes were collected at 42 different
geographical locations throughout Germany.
This is the first
study to analyze German mosquitoes for the presence of Borrelia spp.
The team found
Borrelia DNA in ten Culicidae species of mosquito, comprising four distinct
genera (Aedes, Culiseta, Culex, and Ochlerotat
Melbourne Zoo’s elephant calf dies after battling
infection
Melbourne Zoo staff
are mourning elephant calf Willow, who has succumbed to a deadly blood
infection just seven weeks after she was born.
The zoo's head
veterinarian Michael Lynch made the decision to euthanise the baby calf
yesterday after a scan revealed the life-threatening infection had worsened.
"We took her
for some specialised scanning down at Melbourne University vet school and that
demonstrated quite clearly to us the damage to her joint, on her hind leg, was
so severe that she would not have a normal life afterwards," Dr Lynch said.
Willow was taken
back to the zoo to be with her mother Num-oi before being euthanised last
night.
The zoo today
released a touching
Nagoya zoo’s ‘hot guy’ gorilla featured in book to
boost awareness of endangered species
A celebrity western
lowland gorilla from Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Nagoya is
involved in another promotional blitz — this time a picture book for children
has been published to help raise public awareness of the need to protect
endangered species.
Dubbed an ikemen,
which means “hot guy,” due to his well-defined facial features, Shabani the
gorilla at Higashiyama Zoo is attracting throngs of visitors. A photo book
featuring him has already been published.
The new picture
book, titled “Shabani Daisuki” (“Big Love for Shabani”), is a story in which
the gorilla invites a boy and a girl to his home and play together.
Author Shingo Okada
said he hopes children will learn more about the endangered species through the
picture book and think about what we can do to protect them.
Publisher Sankeisha
Co. is leadin
The orangutan trap
An orangutan steals
crops from a poor farmer in Indonesia and is shot in retribution. Who is to
blame?
When Ricko Jaya
first laid eyes on the orangutan, it was crouched in a jackfruit tree and
stinking of rot. Even from the ground below, Jaya, a veterinarian and the
coordinator of the Human and Orangutan Conflict Response Unit (HOCRU) on the
Indonesian island of Sumatra, could see the animal’s festering wounds. This was
a large male with prominent cheek pads that indicate dominance. He’d been
hanging around the orchard for at least a week, nursing his injuries, before
one of Jaya’s field operatives caught wind and called headquarters.
Now rescue was here
and the orangutan wasn’t going without a fight. He clung to a branch and
glowered down at the humans below. Jaya shot him with a tranquiliser dart, and
the orangutan – later nicknamed Raya – fell down onto an outstretched net. The
injuries were bad, with gashes on shoulders and torso, abdominal bullet wounds,
and a badly swollen face. Jaya and his colleague and wife, Yenny Jaya, loaded
Raya into the back of their van, hooked him up to an intravenous drip and
started the tedious 12-hour drive back to an orangutan rehabilitation compound
on the outskirts of Medan, a swarming, sprawling port city on Sumatra.
There, in the
centre’s specially designed clinic, they sedated Raya again and pulled out more
than a dozen air-rifle bullets – which, to their horror, had been sharpened at
the tip for maximum penetration. Raya had been beaten so badly that X-rays
revealed a broken jaw and fractured skull. The Jayas had res
Summary of Wildlife Farming in Vietnam
IUCN Lion Report Raises Questions
Earlier this year,
the IUCN published their “much awaited” (and about 2 years late) Red List
report on the status of Africa’s lions.
Well, it was “much
awaited” by some – including organizations like CITES, the EU, perhaps the
USFWS, etc – but we should have known what was coming.
You can read the
entire report here – it is not all that long. The report is about Indian and
African lions – strange as the two populations face very different conservation
requirements. I’ll focus only on the African lions.
Basically, the
report on the status of Africa’s lions is based on 45 “relatively well
monitored populations” and their trends from 1993 to 2014. From those numbers,
the report mentions that lions in those sample populations DECLINED by 66% in
western and central Africa (actually, not one single central African population
was examined, something the IUCN seems to have overlooked), DECLINED by 59% in
eastern Africa and INCREASED by 8% in southern Africa. Overall, lion
populations were predicted to have declined by about 43% based on observed
rates in sample populations – and that number is important.
You see, a 43%
decline over three generations is not quite enough to list lions as
“endangered” on the IUCN Red List. Of course, the 66% decline in the western
(and central?) African lions certainly places them on the “endangered” list,
and maybe the 57% decline in the eastern African lions will also confer an
“endangered” listing, but overall, the African lions were saved by the increase
in southern African lions and to some extent by the positive trend in the
Indian lions.
Sighs of relief from
the trophy hunters – they can still hunt in Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Zambia and Mozambique, an activity of which the IUCN approves.
But let’s have a
real close look at the IUCN report, shall we?
The first thing to
look at is where the numbers they used came from. Don’t bother looking at the
Bibliography – they ain’t there. It would appear that the IUCN relied heavily
on a single publication by Craig Packer and dozens of other co-authors in a 2013
paper entitled “Conserving large carnivores: dollars and fence” (Ecology
Letters 16(5): 635-641).
Packer began
assembling the data for that paper long before it was published, and some of
the information (mine for example) dates back at least ten years before the
paper was published. Some data came from “personal communications” from
researchers, meaning they did not have to justify their data in any scientific
way. Also, the IUCN report uses data from 1993 as a comparison. Where did that
data come from? I know for a fact that many of the populations listed as the 45
“relatively well monitored populations” were not being monitored in 1993.
So, no real data
from 1993, and no real data for 2014. How can the IUCN justify the numbers?
The second thing to
look at is the southern African data, where there was supposedly evidence of an
increase of about 8%. However, of the 23 populations examined, 15 are fenced.
Of those 15 fenced populations, all but two (Etosha NP in Namibia and Kruger NP
in South Africa) are heavily man
Zoo claims oldest captive American alligator
In the Belgrade Zoo,
special treatment is reserved for one elderly resident.
Muja, an American
alligator, is the oldest animal in the Serbian capital’s small zoo. Moreover,
the zoo boasts that he is the world’s oldest American alligator in captivity.
Aleksandar
Rakocevic, who takes care of Muja, said Friday that information available from
other zoos and animal rights groups support the claim that the alligator is the
oldest of his kind in captivity.
At least 80 years
old, Muja arrived fully grown from Germany in 1937 — one year after the zoo
opened. He has become one of
Microchip all big cats in captivity, experts say,
after hunt for escaped lynx takes three weeks and fears of lion on loose
All big cats held in
captivity in Britain should be microchipped, experts have urged after an
escaped lynx spent three weeks on the run and amid rumours of a lion on the
loose in Cornwall.
The British Big Cats
Society is calling for all large and exotic cats held under licence to be
fitted with the trackable GPS devices.
It said that the
lynx that went missing from Dartmoor Zoo in Devon on July 6 would probably have
been caught in less than 24 hours if it had one of the implants.
Missing wild cat
Flaviu was finally caught
Elusive Arabian sand cat spotted after 10 years’
disappearance
Blink and you’ll
miss it. The sand cat is a shy and secretive animal only seen in the desert at
night.
It’s a nocturnal
hunter perfectly adapted to its desert home. It doesn’t need to drink water as
it can get all it needs from the small birds, reptiles and mammals that are its
prey. Special hairs in its ears and on its paws keep the sand out.
Despite its wide
distribution across the deserts of North Africa, Arabia and Central Asia,
little is known about this elusive species.
“There’s an absence
of scientists working on sand cats and very few assessments are being made to
assess the behaviour, population and status of the species,” says John Newby of
the Sahara Conservation Fund.
Lack of records and
difficulty in spotting it mean
7 Lessons We Really Should Be Learning From Zoos
Why Some Male Lions Don't Have Manes
Like a cheetah’s
spots or a zebra’s stripes, a male lion’s mane is perhaps the animal's most
iconic feature. But there is actually a significant amount of variation in the
king of the jungle's 'do, from voluminous golden locks to none at all.
For years,
scientists identified different lion species and subspecies, in part, by the
length of their locks. They believed that mane length was a genetic
characteristic, passed down from generation to generation.
But a study by Bruce
Patterson, the curator of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago, reveals that
the length can largely be attributed to climate. According to The Field Museum,
the temperature of the zoo li
Malaysia goes to battle for Godzilla-like lizard
A bizarre-looking
monitor lizard found only on the island of Borneo is in urgent need of
international protection from the black-market trade in wildlife involving
Japan and other countries, according to documents submitted by Malaysia ahead
of a major conference on wildlife trade.
Malaysia’s proposal
to totally ban commercial trade in the Bornean earless monitor, by listing it
on Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora, or Cites, is set to be taken up in late September when
delegates from the convention’s 182 parties meet in South Africa.
The species,
described as a “holy grail” for reptile collectors because of its rarity,
uniqueness and Godzilla-like appearance, is in a “precarious” situation in the
wild and there is “strong justification” to totally ban international trade in
it, the supporting document says.
“The impact of trade
is inferred to be great,” it says, noting that earless monitors are
increasingly turning up for sale in countries like Japan and Germany, which are
among the most lucrative markets for exotic pets and illegally obtained
wildlife.
In Japan, where a
pair once sold for ¥3 million (S$39,558), the lizards became popular several
years after being featured on
An English mining company is keeping an entire species
from extinction in Mexico
Conservationists go
to great lengths to save a species from extinction, and in the case of a small
Mexican fish, to great depths as well.
For the past 12
years, London Zoo has been breeding a rare fish with crucial help from a large
commercial manufacturer. British Gypsum supplies the zoo with gypsum, a mineral
it mines in Brightling, southeast England. Gypsum is normally used as a fertilizer
and in building products, but in this case it’s the only way of keep the
mineral balance of the water just right for the peculiar needs of the checkered
pupfish.
London Zoo runs
conservation programs in more than 50 countries that are crucial to the
survival of several thousand species, but the checkered pupfish has been
particularly tricky. It only exists in one Mexican state, San Luis Potosí, and
mostly in a single lake called Media Luna. The fish’s environment is being
threatened by agriculture, tourism, and invasive species. And Mexico has no
government-led conservation program to protect it.
Keeping species
alive is a comple
HOW TO UNDERSTAND ZOO ENRICHMENT
Sometimes, when you
visit a zoo, there’s seemly random stuff in the exhibits for animals to
interact with: huge plastic balls in with the tigers, hanging wire baskets
stuffed with leaves for the giraffes, sometimes even silly pinatas or cardboard
boxes painted like cake if an animal is having a birthday. Something a lot of
guests don’t know is that these “toys” given to the animals aren’t random -
they’re part of a carefully structured facility-wide behavioral enrichment
program that is geared towards keeping animals active and engaged with their
surroundings. Enrichment is omnipresent in modern zoological facilities, but
sometimes it’s sneaky or implemented behind the scenes. Knowing how to spot
enrichment and figure out what it’s used for - or knowing what questions to ask
a staff member to learn more about their enrichment program - will enhance the
quality of your visit to a zoo or aquarium and help you form a more educated
interpretation of the quality of care a facility provides.
Eating wild animals: Commonplace, cultural,
complicated
No matter where you
live, it’s likely that if you try hard enough (and are willing to pay the
price), you can get your hands on some monkey meat.
Bushmeat markets are
most prominent in Africa, Asia and Central and South America, but globalization
has spread the (often illegal) sale of wild animal meat across borders and into
major cities on every continent.
Due to high
extraction rates, the hunting of bushmeat has been termed unsustainable in most
of the places around the world where it is practiced. This overharvesting of
animals is becoming a growing issue not just for conservationists, but also for
the people who rely on forests for their food. In Central Africa, the supply of
wild meat is expected to drop 81 percent by 2050 due to overhunting.
However, the
consumption of bushmeat — and the trade that makes it possible — takes place
amid complex economic, geographic, political and cultural realities that make
it incredibly difficult to regulate
Meet the Rare Swimming Wolves That Eat Seafood
They move like
ghosts along the shorelines of Canada's Vancouver Island, so elusive that
people rarely see them lurking in the mossy forests.
British filmmaker
Bertie Gregory was one of the lucky ones: He saw coastal wolves—also known as
sea wolves—in 2011.
"There is
something about being in the presence of a coastal wolf—they just have this
magic and aura around them," he says.
That experience
inspired him to return and document the animals for National Geographic’s first
YouTube series, wild_life with bertie gregory, which launches August 3.
“Coastal wolves are
such a unique predator, and they are hunting in this absolutely epic
landscape,” says Gregory. Roughly the size of Maryland, the island and its
remote western fringes are still a wild frontier in the Pacific Northwest.
(Read "In Search of the Elus
People Keep Dying At This Wildlife Park
A woman visiting a
wildlife park in Beijing, China, was killed over the weekend after she tried to
save her daughter from a tiger attack. Her daughter sustained severe injuries
from the incident.
Badaling Wildlife
World is a park that lets people drive through its Siberian tiger exhibit to
view the captive animals.
And this isn't the
first time human blood has been spilled on the park's premises. One employee
was killed by an elephant in March, a security guard was killed by a tiger in
2014 and a hiker was killed by a tiger in 2009 whe
SeaWorld blames ongoing attendance drop on flailing
Latin American economies
SeaWorld
Entertainment may need a decade to recover from the image problem caused by the
documentary “Blackfish,” a top theme park consultant told The Post on Thursday.
Dennis Speigel,
president of International Theme Park Services, said that while SeaWorld
executives blame poor second quarter attendance on a drop in tourism in
Florida, where it runs five of its 11 parks, it is likely it is also still
feeling the impact from the 2013 documentary.
“The imagery issues
have not had enough time to go away,” Speigel said. “This is a ten-year
turnaround.”
Speigel made his
comments hours after SeaWorld reported attendance was off 7.6 percent in the
quarter, to 5.98 million, resulting in a 5.2 percent drop in revenue.
Could the Pill save
the polar bear?
Conservationists
tend to spend their time worrying about protecting forests, catching poachers
or keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. But all these things (and more) are
driven by humans. Given that it’s easier and cheaper to reduce the human birth
rate than it is to address these other issues, why aren’t conservationists more
concerned about keeping our population down?
After all, it is
estimated that more than three-quarters of the world’s ice-free land has been
modified by people. We are already overstepping the planet’s boundaries and our
actions are causing climate change and the sixth mass extinction.
By 2050 human
population growth alone will threaten a further 14% of the planet’s species;
this is on top of the 52% decline in numbers of mammals, birds, reptiles,
amphibians and fish over the past four decades.
Only 13 years ago,
we were 6 billion; just seven years later, we hit 7 billion and by 2100 we
could be as many as 12.3 billion people. Shockingly, with each child a woman
has, her carbon emissions legacy is increased six-fold. It cannot be denied
that our size, density and growth rate all increase wildlife extinctions.
But all is not lost.
Fertility rates decline the longer a girl spends in school. By simply providing
better female education, th
Orangutan trading syndicates uncovered
Demand for protected
species, including orangutans, on the black market has remained high despite
the authorities’ continued campaign for their preservation.
Syndicates illegally
trading in orangutans originating from Mount Leuser National Park (TNGL) have
been uncovered following the recent seizure of five orangutans ready to be
traded in Jakarta and Medan, North Sumatra.
Daniek Hendarto, the
coordinator of the Center for Orangutan Protection (COP), said the seizure of
the five orangutans within the last week indicated that the illegal trade in
protected animals was still
rampant.
“Just in a week,
five orangutans were seized. This is a big number and proves that the orangutan
trade is still there in the community,” Daniek told The Jakarta Post on
Thursday.
He said the five
orangutans were seized from two separate places by a team from the National
Police together with a number of non-governmental organizations, including COP.
Daniek said one of
the orangutans was seized from Kampung Rambutan in Jakarta on Sunday. It was a
one-year-old orangutan and was to be traded by suspect HN, 33, currently in
police custody.
Two days later, he
added, the same team seized
Feds taking fresh look at wildlife petting, photo-ops,
5 years after Zanesville animal disaster
Five years after a
Zanesville animal keeper triggered panic by unleashing tigers, lions and bears
in Ohio's countryside, the federal government is looking anew at restricting
the public's ability to pet and pose for pictures with young, potentially dangerous
animals.
The risk to humans
from petting an adorable 5-week-old tiger cub at a roadside zoo is not so much
the issue. But to make tiger and bear cubs available for cuddles, ooohs and
aahhs, wild animal parks rely on a breeding-and-handling ecosystem that
animal-rights activists say results in cruelty and abandonment.
If the government
would eliminate your right to snuggle with a big cat while that cat is still
little, the activists say, then the larger ecosystem -- the one that helped
Terry Thompson acquire 56 wild, dangerous animals that he released from cages
before killing himself in October 2011 -- could be quashed.
Some people say this
is overkill.
The federal
government, which in March began tamping down on public handling of baby lions
and tigers, wants to hear more from the public about proposed restrictions.
What it's about:
The move to restrict
handling of wild animals by anyone other than professionals in accredited zoos
or wildlife sanctuaries grew heated after Thompson, deeply in debt and
reportedly despised by some neighbors, released 56 animals from his 73-acre
Muskingum County farm, th
40 years, and a lot to ‘croc’ about!
It has been 40 years
since The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology opened its
doors for the public. Started in 1976, the crocodile bank has grown from a
place that had only a trickle of visitors, to one of the main attractions of
tourists who come to Chennai. As the croc bank celebrates their eventful
journey of 40 years, we join them on a trip down memory lane, and also get a
low-down on their current activities.
Looking back...
The founder of the
crocodile bank, Romulus Whitaker says that it all started with the increase in
popularity of the Chennai Snake Park Trust after it was moved to Guindy from
Rajakilpakkam near Tambaram. "The tremendous success of the snake park made
a couple of us think about other reptiles and their con
Fears for big cats: Could tigers soon become EXTINCT
thanks to BRITISH tourists?
Two reports to mark
Global Tiger Day show how the animal's impending oblivion is being accelerated
by tourism.
Travellers'
remarkable lack of understanding about Far East tiger farms is jeopardising the
fragile future of an animal down to as few as 3,900 individuals left in the
wild.
Although this figure
is 700 more than the last count six years ago, it is dwarfed by the huge number
of tigers languishing in captivity. As many as 8,000 of the animals are kept on
Asia’s tiger farms.
The Emerging Role of Asia in Wildlife Conservation
Practice
The practice of
solving conservation problems for wildlife has presented more and varied
challenges for researchers and practitioners in Asia, especially over the last
quarter century. While human populations have grown, lands available for
wildlife have steadily decreased and habitats have been degraded.
Yet as conservation
practice has matured, researchers are striving to make their science relevant
to the issues at hand and practitioners have better tools and information
available to implement solutions.
Legalization of tiger product trade slammed by
environmentalists
Friday marks the
International Tiger Day, just days after two big cats at a Beijing safari park
attacked two women, killing one.
China's newly
amended law on wild animal protection, approved this year, has been
controversial as it allows the limited commercial exploitation of tigers, which
are sought after by the traditional Chinese medicine industry due to their
supposed medicinal properties.
Beyond cruelty
On July 23, tigers
at Beijing Badaling Safari Park attacked two passengers who got out of their
car while driving through the tiger enclosure. This has sparked heated
discussion online, with some criticizing them for breaking the rules and some
accusing the park of lax management.
Park staff told
Global Times on Wednesday that the incident is still under investigation and
the two tigers were not "executed."
"Many of these
safari parks in China should be banned because they train tigers in a cruel way
to entertain visitors or sell tiger products," Mang Ping, a professor from
the Central Institute of Socialism and a founder of the Zoo Watch animal protection
NGO, told the Global Times.
But the treatment
tigers face in captivity goes beyond just cruelty.
Xionglin Xionghu
Villa of Guilin, a safari park and baijiu company based in Guilin, the Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region is allegedly the world's biggest breeding base for
tigers.
On its website,
there are various types of baijiu with "medicinal properties made from the
bones of a rare species animals"
for sale. They do not say what animals are used.
Work to begin on Dhs 151m main building at Dubai
Safari
Approval has been
granted for work to begin on the smart main building of Dubai Safari at a total
cost of Dhs 151m ($41m).
State news agency
WAM quote Dubai Municipality deputy director general Essa Al Haj Al Maidoor as
saying the building would include smart, secure and environmentally friendly
services.
These include the
use of treated water renewable energy, interactive software features for
visitors, surveillance cameras, and free wi-fi.
The building, which
is due to be completed at the end of the year, will also feature a theatre for
hosting events to accommodate a thousand people, a clean energy production
garden and an interactive garden for children.
The Dhs 1bn
($272.2m) Dubai Safari
Al Ain Zoo’s lowland gorilla Lady dies aged 41
She may have lived
alone since her long-term partner died in 1998 but keepers caring for Lady the
lowland gorilla, who passed away aged 41, insist she had plenty of friends at
Al Ain Zoo.
When her male
companion Maxi, also a lowland gorilla, passed away from natural causes, Lady
found comfort from watching her favourite TV show - Barney and Friends,
featuring tales from the purple dinosaur, and by mixing with other animals at
the zoo.
Lady, who was the
zoo’s oldest inhabitant and arrived in the country as a four year old, adopted
a tan-coloure
Can we agree? An ongoing dialogue about where retired
research chimpanzees should live
A couple of weeks
ago we wrote about concerns for the health and wellbeing of chimpanzees moved
from dedicated research facilities in the US to the only federally-supported
sanctuary, Chimp Haven (“Do politics trump chimpanzee well-being? Questions raised about deaths of US research
chimpanzees at federally-funded sanctuary” 7/14/16). The impetus for this
particular post was a compelling article written by Dr. Cindy Buckmaster (“Dr.
Collins, please save our chimps! Lab Animal, Vol 45, No 7, July 2016). The
article was about the deaths of 9 of 13 retired research chimpanzees who had
recently been transferred to the federal sanctuary from the National Center for
Chimpanzee Care (NCCC; University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bas
Mexico City Zoo builds germplasm store to spare
exposed species
In a laboratory in
Mexico City’s Chapultepec Zoo, veterinaries have been working to extract and
preserve “seeds” from 20 species of endangered animals, according to an
official.
In the reproduction
laboratory, gametes from national protected species such as the Mexican wolf,
the California condor, the volcano rabbit, the Mexican salamander and the
jaguar are being studied and preserved, Fernando Cortes Villavicencio,
technical and research director at the General Directorate for Zoos and
Wildlife in Mexico City, told Xinhua on Saturday.
The scientists are
also working with specimens of exotic animals from other latitudes that live in
zoos, like the snow leopard or some primates, said Cortes Villavicencio.
“We have at least
preserved 20 different species which are
Ministry, zoos work on portal for animal exchange
The Environment and
Forestry Ministry and the Indonesian Zoos Association (PKBSI) have agreed to
set up an online portal to facilitate animal exchange among conservation
institutions.
Animal exchanges are
considered crucial for the preservation of genetic diversity of animals outside
their original habitat.
The ministry’s
director general of ecosystem and natural resource conservation, Tachrir
Fathoni, said the portal would help stakeholders find the animals they needed
for breeding and genetic improvement purposes.
So far, he said, for
breeding purposes the conservation institutions could either borrow, exchange
or obtain animals through grants. These three options, he added, would also be
included in the portal.
“The point is that
by using the online portal, unnecessary expenses will be eliminated,” Fathoni
told a workshop on animal management guidelines in Jakarta recently.
Fathoni also said
exchanges of animals were needed for research purposes and revival of
particular species. An
A Homecoming for Hellbenders, the Biggest Salamanders
in North America
German study finds Lyme in mosquitoes
Researchers have
found the pathogens that cause Lyme disease in mosquitoes for the first time in
central Europe.
Lyme disease or Lyme
borreliosis is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by spirochetes of the
Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato complex.
In the present
study, adult as well as larval mosquitoes were collected at 42 different
geographical locations throughout Germany.
This is the first
study to analyze German mosquitoes for the presence of Borrelia spp.
The team found
Borrelia DNA in ten Culicidae species of mosquito, comprising four distinct
genera (Aedes, Culiseta, Culex, and Ochlerotat
Melbourne Zoo’s elephant calf dies after battling
infection
Melbourne Zoo staff
are mourning elephant calf Willow, who has succumbed to a deadly blood
infection just seven weeks after she was born.
The zoo's head
veterinarian Michael Lynch made the decision to euthanise the baby calf
yesterday after a scan revealed the life-threatening infection had worsened.
"We took her
for some specialised scanning down at Melbourne University vet school and that
demonstrated quite clearly to us the damage to her joint, on her hind leg, was
so severe that she would not have a normal life afterwards," Dr Lynch said.
Willow was taken
back to the zoo to be with her mother Num-oi before being euthanised last
night.
The zoo today
released a touching
Nagoya zoo’s ‘hot guy’ gorilla featured in book to
boost awareness of endangered species
A celebrity western
lowland gorilla from Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Nagoya is
involved in another promotional blitz — this time a picture book for children
has been published to help raise public awareness of the need to protect
endangered species.
Dubbed an ikemen,
which means “hot guy,” due to his well-defined facial features, Shabani the
gorilla at Higashiyama Zoo is attracting throngs of visitors. A photo book
featuring him has already been published.
The new picture
book, titled “Shabani Daisuki” (“Big Love for Shabani”), is a story in which
the gorilla invites a boy and a girl to his home and play together.
Author Shingo Okada
said he hopes children will learn more about the endangered species through the
picture book and think about what we can do to protect them.
Publisher Sankeisha
Co. is leadin
The orangutan trap
An orangutan steals
crops from a poor farmer in Indonesia and is shot in retribution. Who is to
blame?
When Ricko Jaya
first laid eyes on the orangutan, it was crouched in a jackfruit tree and
stinking of rot. Even from the ground below, Jaya, a veterinarian and the
coordinator of the Human and Orangutan Conflict Response Unit (HOCRU) on the
Indonesian island of Sumatra, could see the animal’s festering wounds. This was
a large male with prominent cheek pads that indicate dominance. He’d been
hanging around the orchard for at least a week, nursing his injuries, before
one of Jaya’s field operatives caught wind and called headquarters.
Now rescue was here
and the orangutan wasn’t going without a fight. He clung to a branch and
glowered down at the humans below. Jaya shot him with a tranquiliser dart, and
the orangutan – later nicknamed Raya – fell down onto an outstretched net. The
injuries were bad, with gashes on shoulders and torso, abdominal bullet wounds,
and a badly swollen face. Jaya and his colleague and wife, Yenny Jaya, loaded
Raya into the back of their van, hooked him up to an intravenous drip and
started the tedious 12-hour drive back to an orangutan rehabilitation compound
on the outskirts of Medan, a swarming, sprawling port city on Sumatra.
There, in the
centre’s specially designed clinic, they sedated Raya again and pulled out more
than a dozen air-rifle bullets – which, to their horror, had been sharpened at
the tip for maximum penetration. Raya had been beaten so badly that X-rays
revealed a broken jaw and fractured skull. The Jayas had res
Summary of Wildlife Farming in Vietnam
IUCN Lion Report Raises Questions
Earlier this year,
the IUCN published their “much awaited” (and about 2 years late) Red List
report on the status of Africa’s lions.
Well, it was “much
awaited” by some – including organizations like CITES, the EU, perhaps the
USFWS, etc – but we should have known what was coming.
You can read the
entire report here – it is not all that long. The report is about Indian and
African lions – strange as the two populations face very different conservation
requirements. I’ll focus only on the African lions.
Basically, the
report on the status of Africa’s lions is based on 45 “relatively well
monitored populations” and their trends from 1993 to 2014. From those numbers,
the report mentions that lions in those sample populations DECLINED by 66% in
western and central Africa (actually, not one single central African population
was examined, something the IUCN seems to have overlooked), DECLINED by 59% in
eastern Africa and INCREASED by 8% in southern Africa. Overall, lion
populations were predicted to have declined by about 43% based on observed
rates in sample populations – and that number is important.
You see, a 43%
decline over three generations is not quite enough to list lions as
“endangered” on the IUCN Red List. Of course, the 66% decline in the western
(and central?) African lions certainly places them on the “endangered” list,
and maybe the 57% decline in the eastern African lions will also confer an
“endangered” listing, but overall, the African lions were saved by the increase
in southern African lions and to some extent by the positive trend in the
Indian lions.
Sighs of relief from
the trophy hunters – they can still hunt in Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Zambia and Mozambique, an activity of which the IUCN approves.
But let’s have a
real close look at the IUCN report, shall we?
The first thing to
look at is where the numbers they used came from. Don’t bother looking at the
Bibliography – they ain’t there. It would appear that the IUCN relied heavily
on a single publication by Craig Packer and dozens of other co-authors in a 2013
paper entitled “Conserving large carnivores: dollars and fence” (Ecology
Letters 16(5): 635-641).
Packer began
assembling the data for that paper long before it was published, and some of
the information (mine for example) dates back at least ten years before the
paper was published. Some data came from “personal communications” from
researchers, meaning they did not have to justify their data in any scientific
way. Also, the IUCN report uses data from 1993 as a comparison. Where did that
data come from? I know for a fact that many of the populations listed as the 45
“relatively well monitored populations” were not being monitored in 1993.
So, no real data
from 1993, and no real data for 2014. How can the IUCN justify the numbers?
The second thing to
look at is the southern African data, where there was supposedly evidence of an
increase of about 8%. However, of the 23 populations examined, 15 are fenced.
Of those 15 fenced populations, all but two (Etosha NP in Namibia and Kruger NP
in South Africa) are heavily man
Zoo claims oldest captive American alligator
In the Belgrade Zoo,
special treatment is reserved for one elderly resident.
Muja, an American
alligator, is the oldest animal in the Serbian capital’s small zoo. Moreover,
the zoo boasts that he is the world’s oldest American alligator in captivity.
Aleksandar
Rakocevic, who takes care of Muja, said Friday that information available from
other zoos and animal rights groups support the claim that the alligator is the
oldest of his kind in captivity.
At least 80 years
old, Muja arrived fully grown from Germany in 1937 — one year after the zoo
opened. He has become one of
Microchip all big cats in captivity, experts say,
after hunt for escaped lynx takes three weeks and fears of lion on loose
All big cats held in
captivity in Britain should be microchipped, experts have urged after an
escaped lynx spent three weeks on the run and amid rumours of a lion on the
loose in Cornwall.
The British Big Cats
Society is calling for all large and exotic cats held under licence to be
fitted with the trackable GPS devices.
It said that the
lynx that went missing from Dartmoor Zoo in Devon on July 6 would probably have
been caught in less than 24 hours if it had one of the implants.
Missing wild cat
Flaviu was finally caught
Elusive Arabian sand cat spotted after 10 years’
disappearance
Blink and you’ll
miss it. The sand cat is a shy and secretive animal only seen in the desert at
night.
It’s a nocturnal
hunter perfectly adapted to its desert home. It doesn’t need to drink water as
it can get all it needs from the small birds, reptiles and mammals that are its
prey. Special hairs in its ears and on its paws keep the sand out.
Despite its wide
distribution across the deserts of North Africa, Arabia and Central Asia,
little is known about this elusive species.
“There’s an absence
of scientists working on sand cats and very few assessments are being made to
assess the behaviour, population and status of the species,” says John Newby of
the Sahara Conservation Fund.
Lack of records and
difficulty in spotting it mean
7 Lessons We Really Should Be Learning From Zoos
Why Some Male Lions Don't Have Manes
Like a cheetah’s
spots or a zebra’s stripes, a male lion’s mane is perhaps the animal's most
iconic feature. But there is actually a significant amount of variation in the
king of the jungle's 'do, from voluminous golden locks to none at all.
For years,
scientists identified different lion species and subspecies, in part, by the
length of their locks. They believed that mane length was a genetic
characteristic, passed down from generation to generation.
But a study by Bruce
Patterson, the curator of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago, reveals that
the length can largely be attributed to climate. According to The Field Museum,
the temperature of the zoo li
Malaysia goes to battle for Godzilla-like lizard
A bizarre-looking
monitor lizard found only on the island of Borneo is in urgent need of
international protection from the black-market trade in wildlife involving
Japan and other countries, according to documents submitted by Malaysia ahead
of a major conference on wildlife trade.
Malaysia’s proposal
to totally ban commercial trade in the Bornean earless monitor, by listing it
on Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora, or Cites, is set to be taken up in late September when
delegates from the convention’s 182 parties meet in South Africa.
The species,
described as a “holy grail” for reptile collectors because of its rarity,
uniqueness and Godzilla-like appearance, is in a “precarious” situation in the
wild and there is “strong justification” to totally ban international trade in
it, the supporting document says.
“The impact of trade
is inferred to be great,” it says, noting that earless monitors are
increasingly turning up for sale in countries like Japan and Germany, which are
among the most lucrative markets for exotic pets and illegally obtained
wildlife.
In Japan, where a
pair once sold for ¥3 million (S$39,558), the lizards became popular several
years after being featured on
An English mining company is keeping an entire species
from extinction in Mexico
Conservationists go
to great lengths to save a species from extinction, and in the case of a small
Mexican fish, to great depths as well.
For the past 12
years, London Zoo has been breeding a rare fish with crucial help from a large
commercial manufacturer. British Gypsum supplies the zoo with gypsum, a mineral
it mines in Brightling, southeast England. Gypsum is normally used as a fertilizer
and in building products, but in this case it’s the only way of keep the
mineral balance of the water just right for the peculiar needs of the checkered
pupfish.
London Zoo runs
conservation programs in more than 50 countries that are crucial to the
survival of several thousand species, but the checkered pupfish has been
particularly tricky. It only exists in one Mexican state, San Luis Potosí, and
mostly in a single lake called Media Luna. The fish’s environment is being
threatened by agriculture, tourism, and invasive species. And Mexico has no
government-led conservation program to protect it.
Keeping species
alive is a comple
HOW TO UNDERSTAND ZOO ENRICHMENT
Sometimes, when you
visit a zoo, there’s seemly random stuff in the exhibits for animals to
interact with: huge plastic balls in with the tigers, hanging wire baskets
stuffed with leaves for the giraffes, sometimes even silly pinatas or cardboard
boxes painted like cake if an animal is having a birthday. Something a lot of
guests don’t know is that these “toys” given to the animals aren’t random -
they’re part of a carefully structured facility-wide behavioral enrichment
program that is geared towards keeping animals active and engaged with their
surroundings. Enrichment is omnipresent in modern zoological facilities, but
sometimes it’s sneaky or implemented behind the scenes. Knowing how to spot
enrichment and figure out what it’s used for - or knowing what questions to ask
a staff member to learn more about their enrichment program - will enhance the
quality of your visit to a zoo or aquarium and help you form a more educated
interpretation of the quality of care a facility provides.
Eating wild animals: Commonplace, cultural,
complicated
No matter where you
live, it’s likely that if you try hard enough (and are willing to pay the
price), you can get your hands on some monkey meat.
Bushmeat markets are
most prominent in Africa, Asia and Central and South America, but globalization
has spread the (often illegal) sale of wild animal meat across borders and into
major cities on every continent.
Due to high
extraction rates, the hunting of bushmeat has been termed unsustainable in most
of the places around the world where it is practiced. This overharvesting of
animals is becoming a growing issue not just for conservationists, but also for
the people who rely on forests for their food. In Central Africa, the supply of
wild meat is expected to drop 81 percent by 2050 due to overhunting.
However, the
consumption of bushmeat — and the trade that makes it possible — takes place
amid complex economic, geographic, political and cultural realities that make
it incredibly difficult to regulate
Meet the Rare Swimming Wolves That Eat Seafood
They move like
ghosts along the shorelines of Canada's Vancouver Island, so elusive that
people rarely see them lurking in the mossy forests.
British filmmaker
Bertie Gregory was one of the lucky ones: He saw coastal wolves—also known as
sea wolves—in 2011.
"There is
something about being in the presence of a coastal wolf—they just have this
magic and aura around them," he says.
That experience
inspired him to return and document the animals for National Geographic’s first
YouTube series, wild_life with bertie gregory, which launches August 3.
“Coastal wolves are
such a unique predator, and they are hunting in this absolutely epic
landscape,” says Gregory. Roughly the size of Maryland, the island and its
remote western fringes are still a wild frontier in the Pacific Northwest.
(Read "In Search of the Elus
People Keep Dying At This Wildlife Park
A woman visiting a
wildlife park in Beijing, China, was killed over the weekend after she tried to
save her daughter from a tiger attack. Her daughter sustained severe injuries
from the incident.
Badaling Wildlife
World is a park that lets people drive through its Siberian tiger exhibit to
view the captive animals.
And this isn't the
first time human blood has been spilled on the park's premises. One employee
was killed by an elephant in March, a security guard was killed by a tiger in
2014 and a hiker was killed by a tiger in 2009 whe
SeaWorld blames ongoing attendance drop on flailing
Latin American economies
SeaWorld
Entertainment may need a decade to recover from the image problem caused by the
documentary “Blackfish,” a top theme park consultant told The Post on Thursday.
Dennis Speigel,
president of International Theme Park Services, said that while SeaWorld
executives blame poor second quarter attendance on a drop in tourism in
Florida, where it runs five of its 11 parks, it is likely it is also still
feeling the impact from the 2013 documentary.
“The imagery issues
have not had enough time to go away,” Speigel said. “This is a ten-year
turnaround.”
Speigel made his
comments hours after SeaWorld reported attendance was off 7.6 percent in the
quarter, to 5.98 million, resulting in a 5.2 percent drop in revenue.
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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
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About me
After more than 47 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 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, 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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