Nepal has 155 adult tigers, 5% of world population
PTI, Jul 29, 2010, 05.02pm IST
KATHMANDU: The number of adult tiger has reached 155 in Nepal's forests, an increase of 28% over last year's population, a top official has said.
The tiger population grew after tiger census was conducted in the Chure area of Chitawan National Park, which was skipped during last year's census, according to Coordinator of the Tiger census 2010 Bivash Pandav, an Indian national, who is working under World Wildlife Fund Nepal office in Kathmandu.
The number of adult tiger has reached 155 in Nepal's forests which is an increase of 28%, announced Gopal Prasad Upadhyaya, director general of Department of National Park's and Wildlife Conservation.
Though this not an increase in tiger population in actual term, but the number has also not declined in the region, he said. In Chitawan National Park located in central Nepal alone, 125 tigers were recorded.
Last year only 91 tigers were found when the census was carried out only in the lowland of the tiger reserve.
The total adult tiger population of 155 (124 to 229) was arrived at after adding other tiger populations from Bardia, Shuklaphanta and Parsa reserves.
The census was done through the latest process of camera trapping which required 3,582 human days and 170 elephant days, according to experts at WWF Nepal.
The monitoring of tiger was done from December 7, 2009 to March 22, 2010. As per the census it is estimated that the tiger area of Nepal has 6.53 adult tigers in 100 km area, which is a good population for breeding purposes, say experts.
WWF Nepal has provided Nepal government with $51,351 to carry out the tiger census. This means Nepal is home to nearly 5 per cent of tiger in the wild worldwide which is estimated to be 3,200.
There are 13 tiger range countries in the world including Nepal, India, China and Myanmar. The tiger range
countries have been working together to conserve the endangered wild animal tiger, to make the number double or around 7,000 in next Year for Tiger 2022.
Nepal government is also committed to double the tiger population to 250 by the year 2022, said minister for forest Dipak Bohara. The government is committed to control poaching, increase tiger habitat and prey animals with a view to double the tiger population in the next 12 years, he said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/Nepal-has-155-adult-tigers-5-of-world-population-/articleshow/6233044.cms
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Nepal-India ink pact to combat illegal trade in animal parts
Published: Thursday, Jul 29, 2010, 19:30 IST
Place: Kathmandu Agency: PTI
Nepal and India today inked a key pact to conserve biodiversity and combat illegal trade in wild animals coinciding with the first International Tiger Conservation Day.
"As Nepal and India are facing similar challenges in conserving the biodiversity, including the tiger, the signing of the joint resolutions gives us the responsibility to take the lead role in protecting tigers and showcasing to the world that together we can make a huge difference," said inister for forest Dipak Bohara, who was present at the function in the capital.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which aims to conserve biodiversity and strengthening ecological security in the trans-boundary region, was signed by Gopal Prasad Upadhyaya, director general, department of national parks and wildlife conservation, Nepal and SPYadav, DIG and joint director, national tiger conservation authority, ministry of environment and Forest, India.
"After signing the MoU with China in June to control illegal trade we expect to enter into a similar agreement with India in the near future," Bohara said.
Besides having a common boundary, Nepal and India are facing similar challenges of tiger conservation, joint director Yadav pointed out.
India and Nepal had excellent working relations in the past and the formalisation of this relation is another milestone, he said.
As the combined population of tigers in Nepal and India is more than half of the world population, joint efforts are essential for the conservation of tigers, he pointed out.
The bilateral pact was an outcome of the 4th Nepal-India Consultative Meeting on trans-boundary Biodiversity Conservation at the ministry of forest in Kathmandu, according to a statement issued by the ministry.
The signing of the pact is a step forward towards strengthening bilateral cooperation and trans-boundary conservation, said Upadhyaya.
India's three national parks and conservation areas Dudhwa Katrnighat, Balmiki and Sohelwa with the combined tiger population of 150 have been connected to Nepal's national parks. Thus joint efforts between the two neighbouring countries are essential for better conservation of tigers and checking illegal trade in tiger parts, accoding to experts.
The pact is a key step towards the signing of the MoU on biodiversity conservation between the two countries, according to experts.
The pact stresses on bilateral and regional cooperation including establishing a joint monitoring mechanism for interaction and intelligence sharing and exploring funding opportunities with special focus on the protected areas of the Terai Arc Landscape in both Nepal and India.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_nepal-india-ink-pact-to-combat-illegal-trade-in-animal-parts_1416324
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PM issues action plan to save tiger
Added At: 2010-08-01 7:24 PM
Last Updated At: 2010-08-01 7:31 PM
THT Online
World Bank has pledged USD 9,00,000 to Nepal to conserve tigers, now an endangered species all around the world.
KATHMANDU: Caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal on Sunday issued a directive to draft a detailed plan of action for a tiger conservation project to be launched with the financial assistance of World Bank.
PM Nepal’s instruction came at the first meeting of National Tiger Conservation Committee held today in the capital.
A major donor agency of Nepal, the World Bank has pledged USD 9,00,000 to Nepal to conserve tigers, now an endangered species all around the world.
During the meeting, PM Nepal stressed on the need to promote conservation efforts for tigers and the expansion of its habitat, adding adjustments should be made in the existing laws if required.
Apart from the Prime Minister, also present in the meeting were Home Minister Bhim Rawal, Forest and Soil Conservation Minister Dipak Bohara, Environment Minister Thakur Prasad Sharma and Law Minister Prem Bahahdur Singh.
High level government officials and representatives from WWF Nepal and National Nature Conservation Fund, among others were also present.
Today’s meeting, assessing the national level efforts made so far in tiger conservation, described the results to be satisfactory.
The meeting also concluded that Nepal has been successful in meeting the commitments expressed in the 15-point Kathmandu Declaration, issued amid an international workshop on conservation of tiger last November. The workshop was presided over by the Prime Minister.
Government statistics reveal that there are now 155 tigers in Nepal, up from 121 last October. Today’s meeting also concluded that Nepal is likely to have 250 tigers by 2015, an estimated target the country had planned to achieve by 2022.
Today’s meeting decided to take initiatives towards establishing a secretariat for networking conservation efforts in South Asia and engaged in groundwork regarding the agenda Nepal expects to raise in upcoming international conference to be held in St Petersburg in Russia later this September.
A cabinet meeting held last Baishak had formed an 8-member committee on conservation of tiger. The committee is led by Prime Minister, with ministers for home, defence, finance, law, forest,
http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=PM+issues+action+plan+to+save+tiger&NewsID=251917
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Lynx don’t care about the line between Ontario and Minnesota, and researchers on both sides are starting to pay attention
By Cheryl Lyn Dybas with Photography by Ilya Raskin
Ron Moen rattles his grey pickup truck down a back road covered by hard-packed snow in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, a few dozen kilometres south of the Canada–U.S. border. We’re surrounded by a winter wonderland of rime-tipped balsam firs and frozen lakes that stretches north to Ontario and beyond. Moen skids to a halt beside a steep snowdrift, and we step out of the truck into banks so deep, they stop the six-foot-tall wildlife biologist in his tracks. It’s early March, dusk is settling, and all is silent. Moen and I slog a few metres toward the forest edge and enter a thicket of firs and alders, their boughs doubled over with ice from a recent storm. His voice muffled by the collar of his parka, Moen whispers, “It’s out there. Somewhere.”
(Map: Steven Fick/Canadian Geographic)"> |
| Map the Lynx’s range around Lake Superior. |
“It” is Lynx canadensis, a northern forest cat as elusive as sasquatch. Known to the Ojibwa as “the vigilant protector of the people,” the lynx sees without being seen in this white-on-white world. Here in the boreal forest, the medium-sized wild cat, which can grow to a metre in length and averages 5 to 15 kilograms, appears to have it all: its main prey, the snowshoe hare; the brushy woods the hare prefers; and the deep snows that the lynx and hare bound across using the thick cushions of hair on the soles of their large feet. But the lynx — which lives in all provinces except Prince Edward Island and in Minnesota, Maine, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, Alaska and Colorado, where a reintroduction program has been under way since 1999 — became a prize catch when fur prices boomed in the 1970s and 1980s. It was hunted and pushed to the brink in the lower 48 states and has been listed as a threatened species for a decade, even though it is still trapped, mostly for fur coats, in Canada. (In response to overharvesting in the early 1900s, Ontario instituted a trapline registration system in 1947; the province’s population is said to be recovering.)
| “A scenario predicted by climate-change models says the cat’s habitat could move as much as 200 kilometres by 2100.” |
Biologists at Environment Canada believe there are at least 110,000 lynx in the country. Because the lynx is so secretive, however, population estimates are just that — estimates. Nobody knows how many live in the United States. (There may be lynx in Oregon and Idaho and from Wisconsin to New Hampshire, but experts believe the animals occasionally pass through and do not constitute established populations.) Fewer than 250 likely live in Minnesota, says Moen, a reserved 49-year-old based at the University of Minnesota Duluth. And as the continuous snow cover and boreal forest shift north, a scenario predicted by climate-change models, the cat’s habitat could move as much as 200 kilometres by 2100. Which means, says forest ecologist Lee Frelich of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, “Canadian wildlife biologists need only look south” to see the conservation challenges they’ll be facing in the near future.
Scientists on both sides of the border are trying to discover how much lynx populations in Ontario and Minnesota intermingle and which parts of the landscape play a critical role in their border crossings. Needless to say, lynx don’t respect the international boundary, crossing the line regularly in search of meals or mates. Yet because they’re a threatened species in the United States, they’re managed completely differently in the two countries, says Justina Ray, a biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
Minnesota is currently at the southern edge of the lynx’s range east of the Rockies. Superior National Forest and Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming are two “priority areas” for lynx conservation, according to a 2007 report by The Nature Conservancy. “Intensive natural resources management intervention” will be required, the report says — in other words, the type of work that has taken Moen into these woods in search of lynx for more than seven years.
Out of sight behind the alders, Moen has set five box traps. Made of steel fencing and wood, with a trigger mechanism that shuts the door, the rectangular enclosures are baited with road-killed deer. Once trapped, as 35 have been over the years, the lynx is tranquilized using a pole syringe and is fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS) or a Very High Frequency (VHF) radio collar so that Moen and his colleagues can track its movements. Moen also takes a blood sample to determine the animal’s health and for DNA analysis to identify individuals.
There are no lynx in Moen’s traps today, so we retreat to his truck. He opens the door and leans in, then emerges brandishing what looks like old-style TV rabbit ears to listen for the lynx already collared for his study. Each collar has its own frequency, which Moen can search for on his radio receiver. At first, we hear static. Then suddenly: beep-beep-beep.
“It’s probably closer than we know,” says Moen, peering into the darkness. Still, he decides to head back to town for the night. Lynx are most active at sunrise and sunset, so we’ll return at dawn. The best way to catch a lynx, he says, is to think like one.
 |
| Map the range of the Lynx around Lake Superior. |
While we sleep at a ski-and-snowshoe lodge about 40 kilometres from Moen’s traps — an outpost complete with snowshoes hanging cross-hatched above a stone fireplace — lynx number 28 in Moen’s study roams the forest. By the waning light of a last-quarter moon, L-28 walks with its hindquarters up and head down — typical lynx posture — leaving paw prints as big as a man’s hand in the deep snow. The lynx circles a small lake and crosses a frozen alder swamp; it can smell fresh deer meat. It pads along a snowmobile trail a meal, the door of trap number one slams shut.
Next morning, I’m on my way back to the woods with Moen, two of his students and a field assistant. We park in yesterday’s tire marks and see lynx tracks leading into the trees, as well as signs of a snowshoe hare darting to and fro.
Moen follows his boot prints to the first trap and is met by a pair of soul-searching, translucent green eyes. Crouching in the back of the trap, distinctive black ear tufts standing up, L-28 makes a low noise that’s half growl, half hiss. Clearly, the cat didn’t appreciate its overnight accommodations. Because L-28 already has a radio collar — it was first trapped in 2005 — Moen sidles to the back of the trap and slides open the door. I stand a metre away in thigh-deep snow. L-28 bounds out and over the snow in a flash, his oversized paws in near-gallop, lynx and forest blurring together as one.
| “Crouching in the back of the trap, distinctive black ear tufts standing up, L-28 makes a low noise that’s half growl, half hiss.” |
One way to ensure that the lynx has a future in Minnesota, says Moen, is through “responsible” management programs in Canada and the United States that consider the animal’s habitat along natural and not political lines. He has been quietly working to make that happen, organizing international workshops and collaborating with researchers, including OntarioMinistry of Natural Resources biologist Neil Dawson and Trent University ecologist Dennis Murray. They attended a 2007 gathering in Grand Portage, Minnesota, that drew together more than 70 wildlife biologists. It was the first workshop to assemble such a large number of lynx researchers from both sides of the border, fostering a small wave of international collaboration among scientists studying the animal. Which is important, because, as Moen says, “the frequency of cross-border lynx travel turns out to be much higher than anyone anticipated.”
Some lynx in Moen’s study, such as L-15, are veterans of back-and-forth forays. Trapped in Grand Marais, Minnesota, on March 30, 2004, L-15 was recorded northwest of Thunder Bay five months later — more than 150 kilometres away. Less than two weeks after that, L-15 was back in Grand Marais. It’s usually males that wander far afield, says Moen. Females, probably because they have kittens, have smaller home ranges, which can vary from 60 to 100 square kilometres. This spring, however, a lynx in another study set a new record, travelling 2,000 kilometres from its transplanted home in Colorado back to Alberta before meeting its end in a fur trap.
Minnesota logger Joe Foster saw a lynx mother with her young in 2002. Two years later, Moen found lynx dens and saw a female lynx with kittens. These sightings constituted the first direct evidence that Minnesota has a resident lynx population.
There’s another connection between logging and lynx: researchers have concluded that the success of a lynx population in its southern range depends not on old-growth forest, as had long been thought, but on early successional forest — woods with trees from 10 to 30 years old. Snowshoe hares, which make up more than 80 percent of the lynx’s diet, hide there in young thickets or in “edgerows,” the northern wilderness equivalent of the hedgerows where rabbits hop. Moen’s traps are located in a region of spruce-fir forests in early successional stages. Sections periodically harvested for timber are scattered across the area. Many have young trees springing up amid a lynx favourite: jumbles of downed branches atop scrubby undergrowth. “Logging isn’t all bad for lynx,” says Moen. “In some ways, it’s the modern equivalent of [the regenerative] fires that once burned [but are now suppressed] from here through Canada.”
National borders mean nothing to a fire, a forest or a lynx, says biologist Luke Hunter, executive director of Panthera, a New York City-based conservation organization founded in 2006 to protect the world’s 36 species of wild cats. Panthera supports research such as the work of Megan Hornseth, a graduate student of Trent’s Dennis Murray, who is studying how various types of forest edge affect lynx movement. “Co-operation between Canada and the United States,” says Hunter, “could be a model for how to approach cat conservation around the world.”
Ecologist and writer Cheryl Lyn Dybas lives just outside Washington, D.C. Photographer Ilya Raskin is a biology professor at Rutgers, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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A lion takes a nap at the Nairobi National Parks Safari Walk. Homeowners around the Nairobi National Park will have to contend with hungry lions or an angry law that will require most to give way to the animals. PHOTO/ FILE
In Summary
Homeowners around the Nairobi National Park will have to contend with hungry lions or an angry law that will require most to give way to the animals.
Responding to a plea by a resident of Ongata Rongai, Mr C. Karanja, who on Wednesday told of how he had to open his gate in the company of three wild lions, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has absolved the animals of any blame.
In a plea to the Nation’s Cutting Edge column, Mr Karanja told of lions standing majestically at his gate along Rimpa Road.
“I had heard stories of lions roaming in the area but dismissed them as mere sensationalism. But at 11pm, the animals were there. I approached them with my car full lights on and they merely walked away. You can imagine how difficult opening my gate was. I wonder why the KWS can’t remove them. I hope they are not waiting for somebody to become a meal before they act.”
However, Mr Paul Udoto, the corporate communications manager at KWS, blamed home owners who may have fenced off the animal’s dispersal areas.
“We would not want to see any loss of human life but if we are to protect the dwindling lion population, we must give them their right to hunt,” Mr Udoto told the Nation.
He added: “Building new homes in these areas will only escalate the wildlife/human conflict while turning the park into a zoo.”
And the lions may soon have their way when the proposed Draft Wildlife (Conservation and Management) Bill 2009 becomes law.
Among others, the Bill requires that people who have put up buildings on animal migratory corridors vacate the land.
The Bill seeks radical reforms to reclaim former wildlife habitats that have been subdivided and sold to individuals.
Mr Karanja may never really know why the lions did not maul him, but experts say full lights disorient animals, a phenomenon they call light pollution.
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Saturday, 31 July 2010 08:41
When U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy ruled that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illegally limited the size of protected territory for the endangered lynx, he may have opened the door for the elusive lynx to make a reappearance in Yellowstone National Park.
The lynx is an infrequent visitor to Yellowstone National Park: in recent years there have been two reports of a lynx in the northern part of the Park, both in 1997; records going back before the turn of the
century indicate 57 records of lynx sightings on file in Yellowstone between 1883 and 1995. There's no evidence that lynx ever permanently lived in Yellowstone.
This isn't necessarily surprising: lynx are known for their transitory and elusive ways. Seeing one in Yellowstone would be quite the accomplishment.
Or seeing one anywhere, for that matter; the lynx has been an endangered species for a decade now as various environmental groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have been sparring over the terms of protection and how many acres should be protected as critical habitat to allow the lynx population to grow. The Bush Administration worked to keep the territory as minimal as possible: just 1,841 square miles at one point. A second recommendation upped that to 39,000 square miles in Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington.
Malloy threw that out after the the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and three other conservation groups argued the FSW was omitting territories where lynx were known to roam and breed, upping the total and adding acreage in southwest Montana, and north and central Idaho. In particular, Malloy told the FWS to go back and add areas like Gallatin National Forest, adjoining Yellowstone, as one of the critical habitat areas. These areas, he ruled, should create corridors that give the lynx the ability to roam freely; they just can't be pockets carved out of larger areas. The areas listed by Malloy would double the critical habitat for lynx.
Now, expanding the critical habitat for lynx won't necessarily mean they will live in Yellowstone. And even if they return, lynx are notoriously reclusive, preferring to hang on in the deep forests far away from open space. (So don't expect them to be sauntering alongside the Grand Loop Road in your lifetime.) Still, Malloy's ruling does give them a potential boost -- and anything adding to the diversity of Yellowstone National Park is a good thing.
it's a little bit of a lengthy read, but deserving of the twenty minutes it takes to go through it. this is the first hand account of Defenders of Wildlife's Excutive Vice President Jamie Clark when she returned to the gulf to see the effects of the oil spill. if you're intrested in the progress of the oil spill and what the spill means for the wildlife of the gulf, this will be worth your time.
"It’s day 49 of the Gulf oil catastrophe and I am back on the ground, this time in southern Louisiana with Cindy Hoffman and Krista Schlyer to see for myself the true impact on wildlife.
We hit the road early this morning and headed to the BP incident command headquarters to meet with Rowan Gould, the acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Kind of odd (and a bit disconcerting) to go into the belly of the beast, but once we were there, I was glad we entered. Lots of activity, a lot of intensity and even more security. After some negotiating by Rowan, we were able to get into the back rooms where all the action was happening. Before he negotiated with Mike Ulster, the head of the efforts for BP in Louisiana, the BP security would not even let us look in the windows of the rooms.
As Rowan toured us around, I was astonished at the number of people from all over the country and from numerous agencies that had been deployed to tackle this crisis. Mike Ulster, the overall incident commander for La. from BP’s north slope operation in AK, and I saw FWS staff from Florida, Tennessee, California, Virginia and many other points across the country (former colleagues of mine had left already full-time jobs back home to respond to this disaster). The place was also crawling with military, Coast Guard, National Guard troops, and Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries staff. I have to admit, I was impresed by how coordinated the effort actually seemed to be.
Rooms full of FWS, Coast Guard and other staff at computers and phones tracking the data on the spill, printing out real-time maps, and directing others on the ground where to go to deploy booms, skimmers and conduct wildlife rescues. Rowan told us that helicopters fly a grid every day to gather data on the oil and wildlife. They report back to this central command center, which then deploys boats out to where wildlife is being impacted the most. Over fifty boats are staffed with rescue personnel and are out on the water every day, throughout the day, to capture oiled animals and bring them in for rehab. Just yesterday, they had captured 170 birds, five of them dead. He said it is really hard to get the oil off the birds, it’s just like Jello. This oil is way different than the oil in Valdez, AK. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen.
We would soon experience this all for ourselves, as he suggested that we head down to Grand Isle to meet up with some of the Fish and Wildlife folks that would take us out on a boat. Se off we went, to Grand Isle, a small fishing and beach community that looked like every house on stilts was brand spankin’ new. We later learned from our boat captain that Hurricaine Katrina hit this part of the Gulf head-on and leveled most of the houses, so just about everything we were seeing was newly built. They were not even yet fully recovered from that natural disaster.
We boarded a small boat captained by one of the hundreds of fishermen recently hired by BP. He had been fishing these waters his whole life, (he told us he spends way more time on the water than on land) and now he and his son and their boats are employed by the very people that put him out of business. He was clearly from southern La. He was delightful to talk to, knew so much about the area and shared his knowledge about the whole reshaping of the region over the years, from the diversions of the mighty Mississippi River to the ongoing attempts to shore up the ecologically rich barrier islands scattered all throughout Barataria Bay. While the whole area is incredibly vast, the maximum depth is only about four feet, which make the globby oil all the more devastating to the ecology of the area.
He took us first to Bird Island, and boy was it! It was undeniably magical.
The island was teeming with birds, a busy rookery for pelicans, egrets, roseatte spoonbirds and others. The sounds coming from the island were amazing, it was truly like listening to a bird symphony. I will say though, the smells were quite a bit less enchanting! A whole lot of birds in one place aren’t the neatest housekeepers around. The island was boomed with two rings all around, but the oil had easily made landfall due to some severe storms over the past couple of days. Many of the birds looked surprisingly clean, but some were obviously covered in oil.
Among those was a family of pelicans, with chicks that were coated in a thick carmel colored oil. Even the brush they were perched on was covered in the slime. These chicks can’t fly yet, but their parents, in their effort to feed and care for their young, head out into these now deadly waters searching for food. When they dive down to make their catch, they get covered in oil. Once they get back to their nests, in the process of feeding and sheilding their young from the blazing sun, the oil on their feathers drips off onto the very chicks they are trying to protect. Combined with many of the nests being “waterfront” property and subject to the tidal surges of oil, this easily put these and other chicks directly in harm’s way. As a mother myself, this was heartbreaking. While it was obvious the parents were doing all they could to raise these chicks, I fear it will be all for naught given how compromised they already are.
Rescues of birds are very challenging, as you can imagine. Officials need to be careful that they don’t cause more damage to the thousands of other birds nesting and rearing young on the island by getting in close to try and rescue one or two. The rescue team recorded what they saw, but needed a smaller boat that would not spook the birds as much as the motor boats we were in, which they did not have at the time. They would go back later for the oiled chicks.
Sadly after the completion of the afternoon inspection, we headed out to Queen Bess Island. I was particularly interested in getting out to this island because of all of the press on this area over the weekend. With so many birds drenched in oil, I feared the site would be unbearable to see. Our boat captain told us that Queen Bess had recently been restored, adding land and a rocky coast to protect the thriving rookery. Apparently all of the rechanneling of the Mississippi River by the Army Corps had really impacted this thriving island, causing water to erode these bird hotspots to the point of almost totally disappearing. The rocks around the island were coated in the slimy oil, clear evidence of the impact that was reported in the papers. They had managed to capture many of the worst-off birds over the weekend, and replace the booms, although the booms we saw were already saturated with oil once again and globs of it were floating all around.
By the time we got to Queen Bess, our rescue team had managed to get the smaller boat they could paddle up to the island. One of the rescuers, donning a white hazmat suit, got into the boat and paddled towards shore. His mission: to gently flush the birds on the shore so he could see which ones were so covered in oil that they could not fly. Fortunately, this trip was better than those of the recent past, and he did not find any in such a debilitating state. With the rescue mission over for the day, we headed back to shore. As we crossed back over Barataria Bay, it was hard not to notice the flotilla of fishing boats that have been converted with long simmers that almost look like wings hanging off each side of the vessels. These “fisherman” spend all day out in the Bay skimming the oil off the surface trying to “clean” the area. It’s hard to imagine ever getting an area that vast with such fast moving water ever clean, but you can’t help but be overwhelmingly impressed with the fortitude and determination and comraderie of all those hard working folks who are working tirelessly in unbelievably harsh weather conditions to get this job done. The daily temperatures and heat index rose above 112 degrees F, high enough to wither most humans, including me.
Driving back through Grand Isle at sunset, we decided to check out the beach and see what was happening there. We ran across a large clean-up crew that was packing up for the day. There were big man-made berms of sand that had recently been mounded all along the coast line. Huge culvert-like tubes fronted the sand berms for as far as we could see in either direction along the once (I’m sure) densely populated swimming area. Cars with Coast Guard and others were driving up and down the beach. It reminded me of the border wall, along the Mexico/US border. A safety officer came over to us to warn us not to touch anything or attempt to crawl over the berm to the ocean (why in the world would we do that?!). The whole area is now considered contaminated and if we got too close, we would be required to go through decontamination procedures. That was enough to discourage me from any significant exploration.
We headed back to New Orleans for the night, overwhelmed by what we saw but incredibly impressed by all the people working so hard to beat this beast of a spill. It’s so clear that this region is overwhlmingly impacted on so many levels for the future as far as we can see it. Let’s just continue to hope the the spectaular wetlands and incredible biological diversity can hang on while humans work hard to right this horrible wrong on the landscape."
Thought cheetah’s live solely in Africa? Think again- the following article was in a Panthera newsletter and discusses the topic one of the rarest subspecies of cats, nearly as rare as Russia's amur leopards- Iran’s Asiatic cheetahs, and their struggle to save this remnate is a long and hard one:
Saving a Cat That Calls the Iranian Desert Its Home
By Dulcie Leimbach
April 28 -- While the Security Council strategizes to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the United Nations has also been trying to solve another threat within that vast, complicated country: the life of the Asiatic cheetah, the fastest land mammal on earth.
The Asiatic cheetah is a critically endangered member of the cat family that is now relegated to the central plateau of Iran. Its near extinction happened through habitat degradation and disturbance and diminished prey – primarily gazelles. The cheetah once roamed the Middle East and Central Asia up to Kazakhstan, but at its lowest point, a few decades ago, its numbers hit a mere 50 cats subsisting in the rocky, desertlike terrain in the middle of Iran.
More recently, that number may be as high as 100 and relatively stabilized, thanks to the Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Project, a partnership between the UN Development Program and Iran’s Department of the Environment. The Global Environment Facility, a group of 181 countries, international institutions, nongovernmental organizations and private entities that supports improvements to the environment, provided $725,000 for the first phase of the project. The Iranian government contributed up to $800,000 in-kind donations.
The UN Development Program and other UN agencies participate in the cheetah project through the Millennium Development Goals and its environmental sustainability component. Other parties that have been involved include the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Cheetah Conservation Fund.
The Asiatic cats “live in remote areas in a big region, so it’s hard to quantify” their actual total, said Luke Hunter, executive director of Panthera, a wild-cat conservation group in New York that is also partnering in the venture. Hunter travels to Iran about once a year for research on the cheetah.
The animal took a turn for the worse after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when conservation work fell by the wayside, and wildlife in general and cheetahs in particular became ever more vulnerable to hunters, who went after the cats for sport and profit as well as to keep them from devouring farmers’ livestock.
Although the more recent governments of Iran and those saving the animal have staved off the animal’s full demise through the creation of national parks and wildlife refuges, the cheetah still confronts a long stretch to revitalization, with the major threats being illegal hunting, overgrazing of its habitat by livestock and significant depletion of its wild prey.
“There’s lots of human impact in the parks” on the cheetah, Hunter said in an interview with UNA-USA. Cheetah prey continues to be hunted illegally for meat, which is sold on the black market, a crime that the government has curtailed to some success. The government has also been buying back private land to protect crucial grazing sites for the cheetahs’ prey, particularly areas with water holes, but that quest is expensive. The bigger challenge is maintaining a large stock of gazelles for the cheetah to thrive on, but gazelles have been hunted to near death, too.
And cheetah sometimes end up as road kill, roaming at night onto the major highways intersecting its territory.
An Invitation to Run
Despite these threats, this arid region is ideal for the athletic cheetah, where the wide-open spaces offer tracks for the animal’s famous 60-mile-an-hour dashes – the last species of a lineage of cats built for such chases. Like a greyhound, it is blessed with long, lean legs, a super-size chest and a waspy waist, as Hunter described the cat’s physique. Its body extends up to two and a half feet long, not including the tail, which acts as a rudder to stabilize the animal when it makes its swift turns toward prey. Besides gazelles, the Asiatic cheetah dines on ibex and urials, killing prey by attacking its throat to suffocate it.
“The cheetahs subsist O.K., but both species of prey – the ibex and urial – are mountain dwellers,” Hunter says. This terrain makes it challenging for the cat to use its high-speed hunting techniques. When the prey moves down the slopes for water or new grass in the valleys, the cheetah seizes the moment.
With a coarse, tawny black-spotted coat, it is not quite as gorgeous and silky as a leopard, yet it carries itself regally. As a symbol of elegance and fleet on its feet, the cat was captured in Asian art for centuries. Maharajas trained them to hunt for gazelles, earning the name “hunting leopard.”
The Cat Project’s Successes
The first phase of the cheetah project, from 2001 to 2008, analyzed the causes undoing the population and made headway in addressing the most serious threats. Preservation sites were upgraded from “prohibited hunting” areas to wildlife refuges and national parks, providing more protection. Project game guards and the government’s own protection force helped secure these regions for the cheetahs and reduce poaching of its prey; fines for cheetah kills are also high. A public-awareness campaign, complete with posters in Farsi, to save the cat helped enlighten Iranians, especially those living in the region where the animal exists.
Indeed, interest in the cat has risen among Iranian researchers, with reports in journals published and a project Web site (cheetah.irandoe.org) publicizing the cheetah’s status. Iran has even instituted an Asiatic cheetah day – Aug. 31, when educational programs and festivals are held mainly around the cheetah habitat.
“Very few experts have been needed to be brought in from the outside,” said B. Murali, a program specialist for the South and West Asia division at the UN Development Program in New York. “The people in Iran working on this are highly qualified and competent.”
Such awareness efforts, however, do not always work. In 2008, a local herder chased a young cheetah and chained it at home but eventually turned it over to the conservationists. Since then, the cub has been living in a large natural enclosure in Miandasht Wildlife Refuge, a 210,000-acre area considered an important cheetah habitat. The cat, called Koshki, will most likely not be released to the wild because of its poor survival skills, but its close monitoring should provide more information on this relatively obscure animal, whose counterpart in Africa has been researched much further.
Little is known, for starters, about the Asiatic cheetah’s ecology, movement patterns, habitat requirements and biology, though Hunter said that in an optimal environment, the cat could breed up to 8 cubs a litter every 18 months. As a shy animal, it steadfastly avoids human contact.
With the project’s approximately $2 million second phase going since January 2009, research will continue on the cheetah through more extensive tagging using collared satellite devices. The goal is to learn such basic information as ranging patterns, habitat preferences and community dynamics. This phase, to last through 2012 and cover a large physical range, will add more guards in national parks and preserves, reinforcing the value of engaging villagers in protecting the cats from illegal hunting and overgrazing.
Big-cat conservation and monitoring, nevertheless, is often a process entailing two to three decades, so the second phase is an “incremental step” that will provide a “blueprint for a fine-tuned approach” to saving the animal, said Mehdi Kamyab, the team leader for the Energy, Environment and Disaster Management Program cluster at the UN Development Program in Tehran.
As Hunter said, saving the Asiatic cheetah is “important for its own sake.”
“It’s a fantastic animal,” he added. “It’s been part of the Persian culture for 2,000 years and deserves to be so for 2,000 more.”
Dulcie Leimbach is the publications director of UNA-USA.
George Schaller: Everyone's EnvironmentConservation is not just the job of biologists and officials, nor is it a goal. Rather, it’s a never-ending process in which all of us must take part
George Schaller, 77, is recognised by many as the world’s pre-eminent field biologist. He has studied wildlife in Asia, Africa and South America for more than 50 years. National Geographic conferred it’s Lifetime Achievement Award upon him in 2007; he is also the winner of several other prestigious awards. His studies have helped protect animals as diverse as the mountain gorilla, giant panda, lion and the Tibetan antelope. His work inspired the foundation of over 20 parks and preserves worldwide. Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Shey-Phoksundo National Park in Nepal, and the Chang Tang Nature Reserve in Tibet are some of them.
We are all aware of the basic environmental problems affecting our small planet. These range from habitat destruction, water shortage, and extinction of species to pollution of air, water and land to climate change. Governments and news media serve the economy and tend to forget that everything we make, buy and use is wholly dependent on nature. The Earth is a living organism with soil, sea, air, life, sunlight and others all interacting in a way that makes us wholly dependent on natural systems for survival. Yet we have been destroying our environment at an ever-accelerating rate. We have been living off the earth’s capital rather than the interest. Therefore, as Al Gore noted, “we must make the rescue of the environment the central organising principle for civilisation.”
This must involve everyone. Every personal act is also an ecological act, whether we drive a car, plant maize, write an essay on paper or computer, flick on a light. “When drinking a glass of water, think of the source,” states a Chinese proverb. Why save some species, insignificant or otherwise? We know that nature remains a supermarket for new foods, just as it is a pharmacy for new drugs. Every species is a genetic storehouse for the future. We still know little about ecology, about the function of individual species. We have no idea how many species you can lose before the whole system collapses. Human survival — even if promoted by self-interest — seems like a good argument for saving our biological diversity, for leaving future generations with options.
Population growth is a critical issue for the world, but consumption of resources has a much steeper upward curve. However, it should be remembered that globalisation was already active in the 1800s. The British exported wheat to the UK for profit during the great Indian drought of 1890-1910 while thousands of people there starved to death.
Certainly all countries are now fully aware of issues, but environmental concerns remain peripheral to most. Denmark has made a major effort to reduce its carbon footprint, China has had a logging ban in effect since 1998 and has established many nature reserves, Costa Rica has good forest management practices involving local communities, and Rwanda has done a superb job of protecting its mountain gorillas. There are many success stories, large and small, but certain issues — such as the related one, climate change and depletion of fresh water — have barely been addressed. About one-third of fresh water in irrigation canals is lost mainly to evaporation. Over 2,000 years ago, the Afghan civilisation had the sense to cover the canals they built.
We have treated clean air, clean water, fertile soils as free public resources to do with as we want, pollute, degrade, destroy. There is no free lunch. We now have to pay the price. If we want to protect a watershed to assure clean water to those living downstream, those who give up some resource for the common good will have to be paid. If we set up a reserve to protect wildlife, the communities who have traditionally used the resources for fuel, roof thatch and others will have to be paid. It is called “payment for ecosystem services”.
Similarly, companies that pollute air and water must pay. Money? If governments spent a fraction of the billions that they do on armaments and unnecessary wars, there would be ample funds to pay for truly keeping our planet healthy, beautiful, and productive. Industry and agriculture must become far more innovative, productive, and efficient. In addition, the task is to shape new attitudes and create a new design in the strategy of surviving on a crowded planet and still maintaining the full diversity of life. Gandhi said, “There is enough in the world for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
We know that small reserves cannot preserve widely roaming species, and, in fact, all species — plant and animal — are at risk from inbreeding or catastrophic events such as hurricanes. There is need to think of conservation on a landscape basis with areas designated for human use, core areas strictly protected as reservoirs for plants and animals, and corridors connecting core areas. To manage such a landscape will take the co-operation of government, scientists, industry, and importantly, the local communities. It is a difficult task. If solutions in conservation were easy they would have been adopted long ago.
Field biologists cannot do conservation: They can mainly gather knowledge, try to educate, and prod governments to enact policies and implement action. Furthermore, conservation is based to a large extent on values other than economic — on religious, aesthetic, nationalistic, and other moral values, depending on the culture. It comes from the heart. People don’t preserve the giant panda or tiger because these animals represent biodiversity but because they touch the emotions.
The Hindus have sacred groves and sacred animals. Buddhist principles include respect and compassion for all living beings. Islam says, “Allah loveth not wasters.” All cultures have a feeling of goodwill toward the environment, but the ideas have to be rekindled. Most leaders have been lax about that. Indira Gandhi was an exception, and among today’s religious leaders His Highness the Dalai Lama is a forceful voice for conservation. There are two major reasons for killing animals — for subsistence and for profit, the two often going together. Why were tigers lost from India’s Sariska and Panna reserves? Because of underpaid, indifferent, and negligent guards. That is relatively easy for the government to correct if it has the interest to save this iconic animal. Much of the poaching and smuggling of tiger skins and bones to China is now by organised gangs. India is notorious for its slow legal system and minimal fines for wildlife crime. China, by contrast, is quick and strict in its legal procedures, one reason panda poaching was greatly reduced. The killing of Tibetan antelope or chiru — for its fine wool that is smuggled to Kashmir to be woven into expensive shahtoosh shawls — carries often a jail sentence of about five to 15 years. With more rigorous protection, the killing decreased after the 1990s and the numbers are now on the increase. A good guard force is the key to wildlife protection. Tigers and leopards will prey less on livestock if the forest contains ample natural prey, a good reason for reducing poaching of deer and other species. Villagers could modify herding practices of their cattle to reduce predation, barriers could be constructed to deter elephants, and in certain instances there could be compensation for damages. Conservationists are still grappling with such issues, trying to find solutions that benefit both the wildlife and the livelihood of people.
Having done wildlife field research for nearly six decades, I don’t deal in optimism and hope but in persistence. I have fought on behalf of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska (whose heart the oil companies want to destroy) and mountain gorillas for half a century, and have spoken up on behalf of tigers and pandas for three to four decades. Conservation is not a goal but a never-ending process, one in which everyone has to be involved. As Gandhi noted, “You have to be the change you want to see in the world.”
By using all our wisdom, knowledge, passion, perseverance, dedication, and ever-lasting commitment, we can retain the beauty and health of our planet.
After all, it is the only home we shall ever have.
THERE'S ONLY A FEW THOUSAND TIGERS LEFT IN THE WILD!
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I thought this was interesting, although not surprising when you stop to think.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=bigger-animals-keep-a-stiff-lower-f-10-03-01
"Big cats or wolves seem like scaled-up versions of the tabby or terrier sleeping on your sofa. But the proportions do subtly change as animals get larger. For one thing, big animals’ feet are smaller relative to their bodies than are smaller beasts’. But they compensate with physics, according to new research in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. [see: http://bit.ly/cDdbUx]
When we think about animal locomotion…whether it’s walking, running, or just standing around…we usually focus on the bones and muscles in the legs and feet. But for four-legged critters, it’s the footpads that ultimately support the animal’s weight. So scientists [Kai-Jung Chi, National Chung-Hsing University, Republic of China (Taiwan) and V. Louise Roth, Duke University] decided to take a closer look at these “natural shoes” in different-sized carnivores, including dogs, cats, wolves, leopards and hyenas.
And they found that the relatively smaller footpads of, say, leopards are much stiffer than those of little bitty kitties. Apparently so that the big cats’ feet can handle the stress of the greater body weight. If a tiger’s paws were as soft as a house cat’s, he’d need hippo-sized feet to stand.
It’s said that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. But now we know that the bigger they are, the harder their feet."
—Karen Hopkin
The Florida panther is a highly threatened representative of cougar (Puma concolor) that lives in the low tides, palm forests and swamps of southern Florida in the United States. Its current taxonomic status (Puma concolor coryi or Puma concolor couguar) is unresolved. The Florida Panther is also known as the cougar, mountain lion, puma, and catamount.
Males weigh about 169 pounds and live within a range that includes the Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park, and the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. This population, the only unequivocal cougar representative in the eastern United States, currently occupies only 5% of its historic range. The number of living Florida panthers is estimated to be between 80 and 100.
Mother helping her offspring.
How sweet is this? I found this on the Smithsonian National Zoological Park Website.
TIGERS: Majestic, powerful, beautiful, ENDANGERED! September 27th 2009 marks the 9 year anniversary of International Tiger Day. Started by the Phoenix Fund, a Russian non-governmental organization in 2000, the celebration of all things TIGER is now an annual city holiday in Vladivostock with 300+ participants!
To help celebrate International Tiger Day 2009, Big Cat Rescue is discounting their tour price by 10% from Sept 27th - Oct 3rd, to anyone who mentions the words "tiger conservation" or "international tiger day". Also for all orders of $50 or more in our online pro store, customers will receive a free plush tiger!
Visit our online store here:http://www.bigcatrescue.biz/servlet/StoreFront
Thank you to Tiger Awareness for the images of tigers in the wild: http://www.tigerawareness.co.uk/and to Wildlife Heritage Foundation for the image of an Amur Leopard: http://www.whf.org.uk/
Thanks for watching and please join us in celebrating the TIGER!
http://www.bigcatrescue.org/
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