Arizona Gets its First Wild Ocelot

Sky Alliance 2008 ocelot pix

For the first time ever, an ocelot has been photographed living wild in Arizona, the Sky Island Alliance announced. This small, spotted cat was previously found only in the southern tip of Texas.


The picture was dates Nov. 9, but just physically picked up from a motion-activated wildlife camera last week in Cochise County. That's in the southeast corner of Arizona. Geography buffs will notice that Arizona doesn't even touch Texas. We've got 50 miles of New Mexico in between. "This record from Arizona places ocelots over 200 miles north in latitude from where they are found in Texas," the Sky Alliance says. It looks like its also 200-plus miles west.

IUCN shows ocelots in NE Mexico only

animalfiles show them in SE & NE Mexico

This ocelot may come from a population on the other coast of Mexico. Some rangemaps out there, like this one from theanimalfiles, show the ocelot living in both northeast and northwest, Mexico, but not in between. The preeminent international authority on animal species, the IUCN Red List, shows them only in the northeast and not even touching the United States. It would be a huge boon for diversity of the species if these two prongs of the population could meet up.


Ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) are listed as endangered in both the U.S. and Mexico. They used to range up to Louisiana and Arkansas but were wiped out when farmers cleared out grasslands in the 1930s. Its other big problem is its pretty fur. The IUCN Red List says that worldwide the species is of least concern because it has a big population in Central and South America.

“This ocelot, alive in Southern Arizona, is so exciting to see, to take pride in.  We now know that these incredibly rare cats are here with us, can co-exist with us, and have done so right under our noses,” said Sky Island Alliance biologist Jessica Lamberton.

The volunteers who went out to pick up the camarea were part of Witness for Wildlife and was placed with help from Freedom to Roam, a group that works on wildlife corridors.
 

Where to Go to See Big Cats

Where to Go to See Animals in the West 

Seeing Ocelots in the U.S
They're really hard to see, but the 100-some cats that live in America are mostly concentrated in the 45,000-acre Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, the EDF says. Texas Parks and Wildlife says they're also at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge near Alamo; Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park near Mission; Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area near Edinburg; and Audubon’s Sabal Palm and Grove Sanctuary near Brownsville.

Jaguars, Extinct in US, Found Within 30 Miles of Border

A jaguar has been confirmed living--or at least roaming--within 30 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico. The Cougar Network, which tracks big cat sightings, sent out word that the Sky Island Alliance has two photos of jaguars eight days apart about 90 miles north of where everyone thought they lived in Sonora.

Conservation groups like the Northern Jaguar Project,  have worked for years to bring back the big, spotted cat that once ranged as far north as the Grand Canyon across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and possibly Louisiana.

The find would be significant because last year the last known U.S. jaguar died under circumstances that increasingly look dodgy. Arizona Fish and Game caught Macho B in a trap they said was for bears or cougars. They tranquilized and collared him. Days later the then-sluggish cat was euthanized. The capture and drugs may have hastened his death. Just last month investigators found that the capture was intentional, a possible felony since the jaguar (Panthera onca) is endangered.

Just last month the Fish and Wildlife service reversed a 2006 decision and determined that the jaguar deserves a critical habitat. Even the known population in the Northern Jaguar Preserve, 135 miles south of the border, is cut off by hundreds of miles from the the main population.

The motion-activated game cameras showed the jaguars from different sides, so no one is sure if it's the same cat, Sergio Avila, an alliance biologist in Tucson, told the Arizona Daily Star. A handful of jaguars have been spotted just over the U.S. border in recent decades. Where the sex was determined, it was always males, probably pioneering out to find new territories.


Carlos Elias, co-owner of El Aribabi ranch where the photos were taken, his wife and biologist Avila exploded with joy when they reviewed the pictures and found the jaguar. They "began hugging and cheering - a celebration of three years working together to preserve the excellent ecological conditions on the property so that species like the jaguar have a place to roam and thrive," the Sky Island Alliance reported.

"Our family has worked hard to restore ecological processes in this land," Elias said. "We hope this gets the attention of government agencies and foundations, so we can establish a sustainable model that protects biodiversity and supports landowners and their families at the same time."
Where to See Big Cats Around the World

Q & A With Endangered Species Artists

Lots of environmental causes give gifts when you make a donation. But how many eco totes do you really need? A couple of clever Chicago artists, Jenny Kendler, and Molly Schafer, have devised a new way to help the environment: the Endangered Species Print Project. They create a limited edition art print of a criticially endangered species. You buy it for $50. They give all the money to an organization that protects the species you'll see on your wall. 

The organizations they're helping are so tiny (like the populations they serve) that they don't have the slick fund-raising apparatus that supplies thank you gifts. So Kendler and Schafer effectively stepped in and offered the groups both publicity and donations--plus charming portraits of their animals.

Here's how they describe it:

The Endangered Species Print Project offers limited-edition art prints of critically endangered species. The number of prints available corresponds with the remaining animal or plant populations. For example, only 45 Amur Leopards remain in the wild, so for this edition, only 45 prints will ever be made. A different organization, whose mission is to the ensure the survival of the species depicted, is chosen for each print. 100% of the sales of ESPP prints are donated to these conservation organizations. You can check out the ESPP site at http://endangeredspeciesprintproject.com, and don't forget to peep our blog, which is full of amazing endangered species facts and news.

ESPP is an art project and labor of love is run by myself, Jenny Kendler, and my friend and fellow-artist Molly Schafer. Our personal work can be seen at http://jennykendler.com and http://mollyschafer.com

The artists recently did a Q&A with us:
When did you start the project?

ESPP officially launched in the summer of 2009, but Molly and I had been working on the idea and all the start-up details for about a year prior to that.

How did you pick which animals and groups to include?

We choose species for ESPP that are critically endangered, and that have a conservation organization working on their situations, which the print can support. We pick species that we think have an interesting story that we think will capture people's attention, and concentrate on one's where peoples' donations can make a difference. It's hard to choose sometimes, because there are, sadly, so many species out there under threat. People have been treating the planet pretty recklessly for some time, and thousands of species are at risk or extinction. Molly and I have long lists of other species that will eventually be ESPP prints, as this is a long-term project for us --- so keep your eyes peeled for more prints!

Have you seen any of these animals in the wild?

I have not, actually -- though I have seen an Amur leopard in captivity, which was sad, since it just paced its cage. I can only imagine how breathtaking it would be to see one in its wild habitat! Because many of the ESPP species are very rare, some of them are rarely seen by anyone. The Seychelles Sheath-tailed Bat, for example, lives on only one island and has a population of only 37 individuals. This means though, that donations through ESPP can have a large impact.

I know you just got started last year, but has the ESPP raised money already for the groups?

Absolutely! We have been thrilled by people's response to the project, and have raised more than $2000 already for our partnered conservation organizations --- something that we are especially proud of, since we are a small two-woman operation.

Which have been the most popular with buyers?

Oddly enough, most of the prints are neck and neck. Just when we think one is going to come out the clear favorite, we get sales of the others. People especially seem to love the Vancouver Island Marmot though, and the Panamanian Golden Frog. One must admit, they are very charming.

What's been your favorite animal-related adventure around Chicago? (I grew up in Des Plaines, so I'm especially curious if you know of any neat animals to see). What's been your favorite animal-related travel adventure?

Jenny: Okay, I think this particular animal adventure is the most fun when it's a bit of a surprise, so I will tell you where to go, but not what you'll see. Go to the forest preserve nearby the totem pole just above Belmont Harbor at sunset. The summer or fall is the best time of year. If you sit on the trail on the north side, and watch carefully, you'll get a big surprise!

Another great one is just up the Lake Shore bike trail from Belmont Harbor at the bridge that lets boats into the harbor. If you go during the spring, you can watch hundreds of gorgeous blue and copper Barn Swallows flying back and forth to their nests under the bridge.

Oh, and since I'm spilling the beans about all my favorite animal spots in Chicago, I'll also tell you that if you go to Lincoln Park near the zoo at night, you'll very often see 50+ little rabbits in an hour or so. Go in the summer and there are the cutest tiny babies.

Molly: Ahh, those are all good ones. If you are stuck in rush hour traffic on Lake Shore Drive, the swallows also zoom around the stopped cars which can be quite amazing.

I haven't had many good wild animal encounters in Chicago (I missed the mountain lion that came through 2 years ago). Once Jenny and I went to the Caldwell Woods Forest Preserve right after I had an recovered from an awful knee injury. A big buck with an old knee injury hobbled past us. At that time I was drawing a lot of deer (before everyone else did too) so it was pretty special.

But my favorite Chicago animal experience would have to be when I was sitting in the window of my Logan Square studio and a hawk flew right past, inches from my window, with a dead pigeon flopping in it's beak. Or, maybe, when I was watching two men was feed squirrels and pigeons in Wicker Park. Suddenly pigeons,squirrels, and men scattered every which way and I had to duck to avoid the pigeons. A small hawk had dive-bombed the lot of them, but he went away with empty talons.

Anything else fun or weird about the project you'd like people to know?

The most fun thing about the project for us is that it lets us indulge ourselves as artists, activists, and animal-nerds all in one project! As for weird, your readers might like to check out the ESPP Blog every Wednesday for our Endangered Strangers posts --- where we post pics and amazing facts about little known endangered species. There's also lots of amazing, and often weird, info about each species we have done a print of on our main website. For example, did you know that the Hispaniola Solenodon, who will be featured in an upcoming ESPP print, has a ball-and-socket joint in its snout?

Survivor China: 3 Kids Camp Out with Tigers in a Safari Park

In China 667 people competed to spend three days in a safari park's tiger compound, enbar.net reports. Three twenty-somethings will get to stay in a cage/cabin at Qinling Safari Park to kick off the Year of the Tiger, which starts February 14.

This is the kind of thing you'd never see in an American safari park, what with the liability issues and common sense we have. From 10 a.m. Sunday to 11 a.m. Wednesday, the two men and one woman will stay in "a 10-square-meter cabin made out of a cage which has been placed at the center of the 'tiger mountain area,' the habitat of 48 wild tigers. The cabin has no electricity, heating or furniture and is covered only with straw to protect the three from the cold."

It's like Survivor, Chinese-style with tigers thrown in. The three bring their own food and tents and keep track of the tigers, with cameras, sound recordings and writings. Li Hang, a 25-year-old TV reporter, also brought his guitar to "kill time and hopefully communicate with the tigers." Oh, he'll be the first one they'll want to eat.

The park claims this stunt is supposed to promote protection and study of the tiger. They could certainly use the help; China recently said it had only 50 wild tigers left. Qinling Safari Park (in northern China's Shaanxi province) seems to be more about gimmicks than protection. This Chinese zoo tourist shows pictures of circus tigers at Qinling. They also had a chimp addicted to cigarettes for 16 years. It's like they're living in 1970s Florida. Still, if given the chance, I'd love to be one of the people in the cage.

Read More Posts about Tigers

Where to Go to See Tigers and Other Big Cats

  Photo Courtesy of Tree of Life Web Project

LA Rain So Polluted Pelicans Have to Be Treated Like Oil Spill Victims

Brown pelicans, just removed from the Endangered Species List three months ago, are getting slammed by California's polluted storms. These swimming birds can cope with rain far more gracefully than whiny Los Angelenos have been. But the water is so polluted that they have to be treated like oil spill victims. The International Bird Rescue Research Center had 80 pelicans by 7 p.m. Friday and expects they'll be treating 100 hypothermic birds this weekend.

There's a bit of callous reaction to the brown pelican's plight. One comment on the Washington Post site said it was just the "circle of life." But they aren't dying because of storms; they're freezing because the contaminants break down their natural waterproofing and insulation.

"Brown pelicans tend to feed and congregate near harbors and river mouths where nutrients from the runoff attract fish and other creatures. Pelicans can easily become dirty from pollution in these areas and can lose their waterproofing. The current massive runoff from the storms has brought even more grease, car oil sheen, fish oils and other forms of surface pollution into the coastal areas where these birds feed," says executive director Jay Holcomb in a letter to supporters.

"We wash them just as if there had been an oil spill. We use dish-washing liquid," spokesman Paul Kelway told the AP. It takes about a week and $500 of treatment for the birds to recover from hypothermia. The center has responded to 150 oil spills around the world and treated 300,000 birds; 23 other groups in California are also trained to deal with oil spills and wildlife.


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Best Places to See California Wildlife

China Says It Has Only 50 Wild Tigers Left

China's own wildlife officials estimate that only 50 tigers survive within its borders, Xinhua News reports. And those shockingly low numbers include four subspecies. The World Wildlife Fund figures they'll go extinct within 30 years, an estimate which seems optimistic. The IUCN range maps show that tigers are doing much better outside China, sometimes just outside its borders.

China's State Forestry Administration (SFA) says only 20 Siberian tigers remain in China's northeast, 20 Bengal tigers in Tibet, and 10 Indochinese tigers in the southwest. And you can pretty much forget about the South China tiger. Zhu Chunquan, conservation director of biodiversity at WWF China, told AFP: "After the late 1970s, there has been no concrete evidence to show that there are any left."

Siberian Tiger (Pantera tigris ssp. altaic) : endangered (20 in China)

What's weird here is that there's a Siberian Tiger Breeding Center in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, that brags that it's bred 1,000 cats (some pictured here).

The center combines breeding and tourism, but has come under fire for animal cruelty. Specifically, it got in trouble for feeding the tigers live cows and sheep. That wouldn't be bad if they were training tigers to hunt in the wild, but the videos show it's more to make a buck off tourists. The bigger the animal killed, the more the tourist pays. Tourists on this video paid $60 (1,500 renminbi) to see a sheep slaughtered, not splurging $180 to witness a cow death.

The best hope for the Siberian tiger seems to be Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, who fancies them a national symbol.

South China Tigers (Panthera tigris amoyensis) critically endangered and possibly extinct 虎

No one is sure if these cats live in the wild anymore. WWF's estimate that there are zero South China tigers contradicts the group's estimate on its Chinese website of 30-40.

The IUCN says reintroduction is sketchy, but progressing. The UK group Save China’s Tigers, is releasing cats in Zixi, Jiangxi, and Liuyang, Hunan. The controversy is that they're retraining captive, closely-related tigers on private reserves in South Africa. About 70 captives survive, but they're not even 100% genetically South China tigers. The range map shows the animal does much better just outside China.

Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) -Endangered (20 in Tibet)

Most Bengal tigers now live in India. The rangemap tell the story best: The animals live in many countries bordering China to the north and east, but have been wiped out in China.

Indochinese Tiger (Panthera tigris ssp. corbetti) - (10 in the Southwest)

In the IUCN's count, they don't even bother listing China as a habitat anymore. Most live in Thailand.

View AnimalTourism.com Big Cats in a larger map

Where can you see Big Cats?

429 Dead Manatees found Last Year out of Population of 4,000; Only 37 Called Natural Deaths

A record 429 manatees were found dead off Florida last year out of a delicate population of just about 4,000. Could it be good news, reflecting a growing population? After all the the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission counted a record 3,807 manatees in their aerial surveys last year.


Not so fast, says the FWC:  "The situation is not that simple. Both the carcass totals and the annual counts from statewide aerial surveys are considered minimum numbers only, and they cannot be used to calculate long-term population trends." In other words, both the 400 and 4,000 are wild-ass guesses (WAG)--though maybe scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG).

Last year was really cold, so the manatees crowded the power plants and springs like never before, making for stunning pictures (like the one here by  Tom Reinert) and high counts. But that's not a complete or accurate count. The cold was a big factor: 56 died from cold stress, more than double the five-year average.

But there were record deaths from other factors, too. The data show only 37 were found to have died of natural causes. That doesn't mean people killed all the rest. Humans were directly tied to 97 from boats, 5 from locks and gates and 7 from other human-related causes. The rest are somewhat a mystery and manatee advocates think humans are tied to many more. 114 were described as "perinatal," just meaning they were very young, and they believe many are really tied to people.

What are we doing to stop killing manatees? The Fish and Wildlife Service is thinking about expanding manatee protection areas. Predictably speed boaters hate that and so does the U.S. Navy. FWS spokesman Chuck Underwood intimated to the LA Times that any big expansion is more or less dead in the water.

Where can you can see manatees?

Where can you see more wildlife down south?

More Manatee News

Will the FWS protect manatees from annoying tourists? 

Meet the Manatee profiler

Save Endangered Species; Make them Pets?

Tiger quoll giving tongue,
originally uploaded by pierre poliquin.

Australian biologist Michael Archer is hellbent to stop or reverse human-caused extinctions one way another. First he tried resurrecting the Thylacine, the mascot of tragically extinct animals, using DNA from museum specimens. Now, according to Time, he's close to getting permission to let regular people keep endangered species as pets so they won't go extinct in the wild.


Archer, a professor at the School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales, has been pushing this idea to the public for a while, as this 2000 article from the Telegraph shows. He told both publications something like: "No animal that human beings have turned into a domestic pet has ever died out. It's the ones we don't value that become extinct."


In particular Archer wants to try to save the quoll, a small marsupial with the spotted coat of a fawn. Quolls eat bugs, grubs and mice, but they've been wiped out by fox and cats. Cats often carry toxoplasmosis, which makes female quolls infertile, according the Warrawong Wildlife Sanctuary, which that has been arduously them since 1986.


Predictably, as when anybody wants to try some last-chance idea to help an animal, another animal lover pops up to criticize and impede them. In this case, animal rights activists worry it will play into the hands of the pet industry. More seriously scientists worry whether people will be able to provide appropriate homes.


Captive breeding has already saved or helped many species, including the California condors, European bison and bald eagle.  The Przewalski's horse, among other animals, only survives in captivity. The Bali starling, red wolf and black-footed ferret are making their way back. (Others have experimented with the more radical back-breeding, which uses remnant animals and those in other species that look like them.) The big shift here is moving the animals from pristine, scientific, objective settings to messy, emotional homes. (Though there is talk of licensing.)


"Quails make better pets than domestic cats!" says an information sheet from Warrawong. Archer has raised quolls and gushes over the experience. Meanwhile, the several quoll species have various alarming designations from the IUCN, but there are thousands left, not just a handful, so there's still some time--and a little room to experiment with a radical idea of keeping them as pets. North America might still have a native, wild parrot if somebody had just taken on the now extinct Carolina Parakeet as a companion.


As for the Thylacine, it's been a bumpy road. The project was called off because the DNA was too ragged, but it's restarted and has made some progress with genetic mapping. Certainly saving quolls as pets would be easier than Archer's other project of resurrecting the Thylacine through DNA.

Want to see animals in the wild or in rehabilitation centers? See AnimalTourism.com

Siberian Tiger Disappearing But At Least Putin's Cat is Okay

Just when news is breaking that Chinese poachers are wiping out 10-16% of the critically endangered Siberian tiger population each year, Vladmir Putin's tiger went missing. Russians had grown to love (or at least geographically track) this female tiger through Putin's tiger website. But her collar hadn't pinged in three months, exciting worries of poachers, who are wiping out tigers worldwide. The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is in special trouble from  poachers who use tiger parts for traditional medicine.

But, Putin's spokesman announced, the only thing that died were the batteries in her collar. She's fine and so is a cub she had recently. 

Which of Putin's tigers is this? It's hard to keep track since Putin has a special relationship with (at least) two tigers. This is the 5-year-old female one he shot with a tranquilizer dart last summer while touring the Usuri Reserve. The other one was a two-month old tiger he got as birthday present.

The first incident with this tiger -- it apparently escaped from trap just as Putin approached, was hit by another dart, but not felled till Putin shot her again -- prompted speculation that it was a dramatic stunt to show off Putin's toughness. But no one questions his fondness for tigers, which he sees as a symbol of Russia. While this tiger slept he talked gently with her, shook her paw and then said good-bye by kissing her on the forehead.

It's certainly good news for the tigers to have Putin as a friend. The Russian Academy of Sciences  (near Vladivostock) is tracking the Siberian or Amur tiger, the world's largest subspecies of tiger. Once considered a big environmental success story because the population recovered to about 500 from only 50. But now scientists fear the number has dropped down to 300 because of Chinese poachers, who leave explosives smeared with fat for the rare cats to swallow. (As usual, no one is sure about the numbers.)

Putin is going to host a worldwide tiger summit in Vladivostock next year as part of a $1 billion drive with the World Wildlife Foundation to double the world's tiger population to 6,500 by 2022. The tigers (and even more endangered Amur leopards) live in a tiny area near the Sea of Japan.

Wanna visit? Russian travel agencies do offer a few options--but not the type of ecotourism Americans may be used to with spas and massages. If you don't get a tip from a park ranger on where a tiger is, this tour guide warns you may have to wait for days in an isolated "hide-out tent" for the tiger to show. Well, at least there's room for ecotourism to grow to support the Amur Tiger.

Want to see big cats? Here's an AnimalTourism.com map and guide to places to see lions, tigers and cougars around the globe

Map of Russian Tiger Hotspots

The jaguar photo was contributed by the Russian Academy of Sciences’ permanent exhibition


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Manatees Making a Home in Mobile Bay, Alabama

We tend to think of manatees as living only in Florida and just barely hanging on there, but some exciting new research show they may be spreading to nearby Gulf states. Dr. Ruth Carmichael, senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab near Mobile, AL, just tagged Alabama's first officicial manatee resident. You can call the half-ton female "Bama."

The big question is whether the endangered West Indian Manatee has been here all along, unbeknownst to people, or whether they're expanding their range. Are people seeing more manatees because they're looking? Nobody knows..  In 2007 Carmichael started the Mobile Manatees Sighting Network, which gives people a one-stop shop to call or email anytime they see a manatee. In just the first year people reported as many sightings as they had over the previous 30 years.

Carmichael hears from two types of people who live or work near the water. One has never seen them and doesn't believe they're there. The other tells her, "'yeah, my kids have been swimming with them for 30 years.'" She then tries to gently convince them not to play with the manatees. Or give them the fresh water they crave. Since the manatee's biggest enemy is boat propellers, if you teach them that it's fun or profitable to hang around people, they have a greater chance of getting hurt. And technically, if you change an endangered species' behavior, it's a federal offense. Carmichael doesn't want to play cop, but would love it if people stayed back 100 feet. "Don’t touch them, don’t water them," she says. "and for God's sake, don’t feed them."

Biologists already figured out that most of the manatees are just summering in Alabama, not moving here full-time. In 2007 they sent a clear picture of a manatee to Florida wildlife officials, who figured out from her boat scars that it was Ellie, a 30-year-old manatee who hangs around Crystal River, FL, 350 miles away and 60 miles north of Tampa. This year Carmichael managed to tag Ellie, so she'll be able to figure out where and when she migrates.

Last winter at least three manatees tried to stay over, but the bay had an early, brutal cold snap. Two died in the cold and one survived by hanging out by the warmth of a water treatment plant. The manatees here might even be coming from Mexico, not Florida, Carmichael says. There is a handy map of where they've been seen around Mobile Bay and in Mississippi  if you want to help do some spotting. (Looks like the Theodore Shipping Channel near Deer River, Meaher State Park and Terry Cove near Orange Beach.)

Carmichael estimates up to 20 manatees may be spending time in the busy, industrial bay. That's less than 1% of the U.S. population, which is thought to be about 3,000-4,000. The last time the Fish and Wildlife Service took stock of manatees in 2007, they figured the numbers were slightly up, at least in some regions. Only about 377 or 11% live in the northwest where Ellie lives, but their numbers have been growing since the 1960s; between 1986 to 2000, the population grew an estimated 4%. (The 44% of the population on the Atlantic coast grew 3.7% while the 41% in the southwest were down 1.1% just from 1995 to 2000.)



Bonus animals in the area: alligators, shorebirds and horseshoe crabs
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 Photo courtesy of AngelShark 

Oz Outraged at Canned Hunt for Rare Antelope-- Which Texas Does in Droves

photo courtesy of Cats 2007
Australians this week were outraged when they realized the Taronga Zoo in Dubbo, NSW, is selling off blackbuck antelopes, which are endangered in their native India, to canned hunting ranches. Meanwhile, these kind of black buck hunts go on non-stop in Texas and nobody cares.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Bob McComb, owner of the Dongadale Deer Park and Stud, bought 24 blackbuck antelope from the zoo for between AU$160 and $300 (US$130 - $250). (Later the zoo admitted selling 84 animals to a bunch of these hunt clubs. Sure seems like the zoo was letting them breed to get cute babies to attract visitors.) The deal is he can only breed the ones he got from the zoo, but he'll "hunt" their offspring. He's confident he'll be able to get approval to do it, then charge thousands of dollars per kill.

Australians were suitably taken aback. They called for the zoo's animal welfare chief to quit. And New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees said No, he wasn't going to suddenly allow these widely-ridiculed hunting ranches--even though it'll make it hard to corral conservatives on other issues.

India sent Bollywood star Salman Khan to jail for shooting one of these lanky animals. The eight year court case may now be a movie. Wildlife preserves like the ABOHAR in Punjab are carefully coaxing their numbers up. Nature worshipping Bishnois protect them.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch in Texas, canned hunting is a big business. Even though real hunters looked down on the kind of weasels who shoot caged animals, then boastfully hang their heads on a wall, Texas is fine with it.

The Texas Hunt Lodge--one of many in the state--lets these brave men choose whether to stalk these antelope or hunt them from a blind, then use a bow, rifle, handgun or old fashioned black powder weapon. They'll even let them play safari. The price: $1,750 or $3,000, depending on whether the horns qualify as a mere trophy (about 18 inches) or a "record"--20 inches or more.

How did we end up with such different attitudes toward these antelopes? For starters there are now nearly as many blackbucks on ranches in Texas and Argentina as there are living in the wild in India (50,000.) India declares them endangered (but even some there contemplate hunting schemes because they eat a lot of sorghum crops.) Officially, IUCN calls these Antilope cervicapra "near threatened." That is, not officially endangered.

The black buck on the Edwards Plateau in Texas are considered exotic. Under wildlife laws here, that means they don't even count as wildlife.

More Than One-Third of Mammal Species In Jeopardy

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced its new Red List today, showing that mammals on earth are in real trouble. We now have 5,487 mammal species. That's down 76 (or 1.3%) since 1500.
But we know that 1,141 mammal species are officially endangered and at risk of becoming extinct. That's more than 20% of our mammals. But there's another problem: we can't even find enough another 836 mammals to figure out their status. They're listed as "data deficient."
“The reality is that the number of threatened mammals could be as high as 36 percent,” says Jan Schipper, of Conservation International who wrote about the findings in the magazine Science.
About 3.4% of mammal species fall into the worst category, Critically Endangered.
They're not all charismatic megafauna. A lot of the animals in trouble are bats and mice.
But one critically endangered is the Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus). There's less than 200 left because it eats the European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), which is also disappearing.

Best Places to See Wild Cats
Where to See Animals in Europe

Mexico trying to save the last 150 vaquita porpoises

Mexico just announced it would spend $16 million to get fishermen in the Bay of California to learn not to catch the vaquita porpoise, which is down to only about 150 animals. A website dedicated to saving the vaquita estimates 39 to 84 die each year in nets.

There are so few left that some have even argued they're extinct, so why bother trying to save them? The Vaquita Marina group says people still do see them--and catch them in nets--so they know there are still some around. They've even come up with a handy map of vaquita sightings.
They say that the cartoon-faced porpoise "can not be easily observed, since it flees when boats appear and remains under the water for several minutes without having to come out to breathe."


Go to the Best Places to See Anaimals in California
Where to See Dolphins













If there really are 150 left, the program amounts to $10,000 per vaquita--and a good example of how expensive it is to save a species if we let it dwindle so low. What they'll actually be spending the money on, according to Discovery News, is paying fisherman $4,500 not to fish in the reserve, $30,000 to learn safer techniques and $60,000 to turn in their boat and quit fishing.

Here's How To Comment on the Softening of the Endangered Species Act

The Bush administration is making a last minute attempt to plunder the Endangered Species Act before they leave office. The Associated Press dug up a draft copy of new proposed rules that would eliminate the need to consult with scientists about whether major construction projects would impact any endangered species. Like taking all those animals off the list wasn't enough, huh?

They're just changing the rules, so Congress doesn't even need to approve. Instead they have to let the public comment--but not actually listen to it. The San Francisco Gate reports that they've even stopped accepting emails. And cut the comment period from 90 to 30 days, says gristmill.

Just try to find a way to comment on the proposal. I couldn't find it anywhere in the Fish and Wildlife Service page. Not even their page just on endangered species. To find it, I had to use the document number from the National Wildlife Federation. Here's the magic word you need to know: "50 CFR part 402". That's the only way you're going to find it. Here's the official proposal online.

And here's their instructions on how to submit a comment. Now it's confusing because first they tell you where to comment, then they tell you they won't accept your email.

If they do take it, here's the place to submit a comment on 50 CFR part 402. I tried it and it seems to work.

And here are their ambiguous instructions:

Submit your comments or materials concerning this proposed
rule in one of the following ways:
(1) Through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.regulations.gov.
Follow the instructions on the Web site for submitting comments.
(2) By U.S. mail or hand-delivery to Public Comment Processing,
Attention: 1018-AT50, Division of Policy and Directives Management,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 222,
Arlington, VA 22203.
We will not accept e-mail or faxes. We will post all comments on
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.regulations.gov. This generally means that we will post any
personal information you provide us (see the Public Comments section
below for more information).

More Gorillas Than We Thought

The Wildlife Conservation Society released a new study today saying they've counted 125,000 western lowland gorillas in northern Republic of Congo. That's the highest density ever reported. Scientific American says that in the 1980s the estimate was only 50,000.

But everyone thought their numbers were severely diminished since then by people hunting the gorillas for bushmeat and by ebola. WCS called this find a "motherlode." These gorillas are shy. WCS got their number by counting gorilla nests, which these primates build each night to sleep in.

Gorillas everywhere are under huge threat. The western lowland gorilla is one of four sub-species. Biologists already thought this one was the most plentiful. The others are in far worse shape, some with only a few hundred left.

It's important not to confuse this relatively stable and sparsely populated country with its bigger neighbor the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rebels killd two people by rebels in in June and seven gorillas last year.