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
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If you are a subscriber to the email version then you probably knew this already. You would also know that ZooNews Digest pre-dates any of the others. It was there before FaceBook. It was there shortly after the internet became popular and was a 'Blog' before the word had been invented. ZooNews Digest reaches zoo people.
I remain committed to the work of GOOD zoos,
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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,
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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).
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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"
"These are the best days of my life"
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