Author: Tim

Apex predators are extremely important for ecosystem survival, as they control the numbers of smaller species. Unfortunately these species are doing poorly as a whole. Below I have concentrated on on the biggest cats as they have a huge impact on the ecosystem that they live in. Unfortunately all are declining rapidly.

Lions: as the 20th century began it’s thought lion still numbered around 200,000 (numbers and now 20,000 if that, with that number having dropped by about 10,000 in the last 20-years), 

Tigers: at the turn of the 20th century it was thought there were around 100000 tigers (current estimate is between 3200 and 3900 animals, a minimum of a 96% reduction in numbers, with three now extinct including the Caspian Balinese and Javan- while recent genetic analysis suggests the Caspian tiger was merely the Western portion of the Siberian tigers range, there is no habitat to put it back into) beyond these three extinct tiger subspecies, South China tiger has not been seen in the wild for several decades and is also thought extinct and a Sumatran tiger is also critically threatened by the loss of its habitat. 

Leopards: being secretive, leopards are one of the hardest animals to quantify accurately. The encyclopaedia Britannica what’s the population of leopards in Africa at 700000, however this is probably a vast overestimate did other conservation organisations consider this an absurd estimation. One thing that has been noted, is that the habitat for the leopard has fallen by 75% since 1900. Current estimates for leopards living wild in South Africa ranged from 5000 to 10000,which suggests that the continent population cannot be above 200,000,having looked at the populations of leopards in various countries in Africa it is unlikely that any more than this.

Jaguars: appear to have done the best the best, with their population of 60,000 animals thought to be around 2/3 of what it was in 1900. However is President jair bolsonaro of Brazil has his way this could change rapidly, as the Amazon rainforest is the refuge for the majority of this remaining population. Encouragingly in places where are conservation work is done the jaguar population is still capable of growing, not all hope is lost provided we stop destroying their habitats.

Snow leopards: the fifth big cat, it is the undisputed king of the Himalayas. 2016 a thorough assessment suggested that there was between 4000 and 8000 snow leopards left in the world. WWF has a current estimate of around 4000-6500 worldwide. Being secretive it is very hard to get a precise figure.

Unfortunately this is an even bigger problem looking at historical populations. It’s unclear what the historical number of snow leopards were, however it seems reasonable to suppose that they’re largely unchanged. It is true that we have had all sorts of impact on the environment in these mountains, however given how little time we spend high in the Himalayas it is clear that at the very least the reclining snow leopard numbers is vastly smaller than that of the other big cats (though this is not because humans have behaved better, merely that it is too hard for us to get there regularly, and therefore we can’t pressurise their population the same way we have the other biggest cats.

Up till now the understood role of male elephants was to occasionally turn on and sire young. Apart from that they roamed alone and spent much of their time, roaming large areas and occasionally meeting up with other balls to form loose coalitions for time.

Continue reading “Scientists have discovered that male elephants play a significant role in elephants society”

Back in 1910 a hunter shot that lasts to French Pyrenean ibex. It survive for longer in Spain with the last one having been found dead in the year 2000. The new animals, the Spanish western ibex were started to be moved in the year 2014. There is now a population of around 400- a number boosted from last year’s total with 70 young counted this year.

Continue reading “A century after the last French Pyrenean ibex were killed, ibex introduced from Western Spain are thriving”

Savannah cats are a cross between a domestic cat and a serval. 

On the left is a savannah cat, on the right is a serval cat.

• 

• 

A serval cat is a cat species, that stands a bit taller than a normal domestic cat. They live in the savannas of the world and hunt mostly by leaping high in the air and coming down on the back of the animal they are trying to catch. There are also relatively efficient at catching birds that fly over them,and indeed if you see a serval in a zoo it is not unusual the same pile of feathers somewhere in their enclosure,

Savannah cats are a relatively recent cross-breed. They are given a code depending on how much of their genes are serval. While several cats are not actually endangered in the wild, if Savannah cats became too popular this might change quite quickly.

They exhibit some more dog like behaviors, many can be put on a lead and taken for a walk.

A Sumatran Tiger cub however is quite different. Apart from anything Sumatran tigers are critically endangered with less than 400 roaming the remaining forests of their home. Apart from poaching, and attempts to catch young for the pet trade (it will often lead to the death of the mother), they are also heavily threatened by the fact that their rain forest home is being cut down.

Stupidly much of their home is being cut down for palm oil growth, and while some of this is used in food products,it has been sold as a way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. The problem being, that in order to undo the carbon emissions from cutting down the forest in the first place, in areas are likely to take more than a century of use for palm oil.

Given the urgency of cutting are carbon emissions now,far from helping in the fight to halt climate change this behaviour will make it worse.

Quite rightly keeping Sumatran tigers as a pet is illegal in most countries. It is also highly unwise, unfortunately as it is also highly popular in certain places, partly given the size the Sumatran tiger is the least unwise tiger to try to keep in captivity. However if this trend of keeping tigers in captivity-most captive tigers are held in the USA, they could be pushed to extinction within the next short few decades.

The trend for Savannah cats is not much better. While Serval cats are not under great pressure in the wild, this could change fast, and while a cross between a serval and domestic cat will lead to a more placid animal, it is still likely to behave in a far wilder way than a domestic cat. Furthermore, if Savannah cats became popular we could see heavy pressure put on the wild Serval across its range.

• 

• 

It was only in 2010 the forest elephants were conclusively shown to be a separate species. Indeed up until this point it had been assumed that they were just different because they lived in different places but we’re essentially the same species. Turns out the genomes diverged between 2 and 3 million years ago,an African forest elephants and more closely related to the mammoth than their Savannah cousins.

Unfortunately due to the asymmetric deforestation within Africa, at the point of this discovery a small number of countries had the majority of the responsibility for conserving them into the future. One of these countries was Gabon, west African country that still has much of its rain forest intact.

Specializing in low number high cost tourism there was a hope that Gabon could succeed here. Unfortunately at the same point, the horrific ivory poaching was getting going at unsustainable levels again. 

As the Eastern and Southern African countries got the poaching back under control, the target was switched to the forest elephants of west Africa (in some ways as they have straighter tusks these are worth more anyway).

Unfortunately in the intervening years Gabon has lost anywhere between 40 and 80% of its wild forest elephant population. They hosted a significant portion of the entire species remaining population, this is bad news for it’s future conservation.

We need to halt a loss of elephants from the African forests, they are integral to the future survival of the entire ecosystem. One of the reasons that in rain forest you don’t get groves of the same species of trees, is because if this ever happens insect that damages the tree does too well in the area and can end up killing the trees. This is how you can end up with each acre in an African forest containing hundreds of different species of tree despite the small area.

Now in theory that’s a fantastic thing, however in practice there are some problems. Generally tree seeds fall into two categories: Either they are light and are blown on the wind, all they are heavy and relying on animals eating them and then dispersing the seeds with a nice dose of fertilizer. However this is the problem, you remove the seed dispersal, you can end up with mass die off.

Indeed the loss of forest elephants from African rain forest may lead to the collapse of them,and many incredible damages that this will cause to the weather and ecosystem of Africa.

Megaelosia bocainensis, a frog thought extinct for 50 years was found using eDNA which is DNA living organisms left behind in the environment.

It should be noted that a living member of this species was not found. However increasingly this technique is being used with great success, for tracing seriously endangered animals.

It is also thought this technique might be useful in the fight against future viruses and illnesses.

In a move that seems utterly obvious, though essentially, pine martens are to be reintroduced into a part of Wales near Bangor as a way of controlling the grey squirrels and protecting the red squirrels from being eradicated.

Frankly this is a move that should be being undertaken across the country.

If the UK government, were to translocate pine martens to 20 Woods throughout southern and central England,and made sure that the persecution that once push them to extinction did not happen, this would likely put huge pressure on the grey squirrel population across England. If successful within a decade the grey squirrel become significantly rarer, and within two decades would likely only exist within large parks in inner-city areas of the UK.

This would then allow reintroduction of the native red squirrels (and likely natural recolonization)- and quite apart from the fact that these are native animals and not animals that were brought here, squirrels do significant damage to British trees so by removing them, not only do we remove an invasive animal, also returns some of the countries ability to function properly-thereby making it easier for our ecosystem to continue to adapt as global warming impacts the UK.

Back in 2015 genetic analysis prove conclusively that a strange looking type of golden jackal in North Africa was actually and African wolf. Genetic analysis shows that is descended around 75% from grey wolves, with the other 25% of it’s lineage coming from Ethiopian wolves.

However when first described by science back in the early 1800s it was recognised as a wolf. So what happened more than 200 years? it was not the first time that the someone had noticed significant differences from the golden jeckells of Europe to the African wolf.

There are a number of things that African wolves do. Golden jackals do not howl in the same way (their call is quite distinct), and African wolves can be heard howling across their range on occasion.

As an aside, it would appear that golden jackals are increasing their range into Western Europe-humans clearly need to become better at telling the difference between European wolves and golden jackals.

Golden wolves as they are often called, have been given the scientific name canis anthus. It should be noted that the morphology of golden wolves and golden jackals is extraordinary similar, it is very difficult to tell the difference on sight.

In Morocco little work has been done to understand the African wolves: to fill in the information that we otherwise would have gained had we understood what they were for the last 200 years. 

This makes the researchers work in Morocco very difficult. If the researcher comes up with an estimate for the number of African wolves living there, there is nothing to compare it to. We will not know if if they are being hunted to extinction or their population is growing.

One big advantage of studying wolves, is their howls. Wolves have a very distinctive howl, so playing a howl into the dark and listening to the response can give you a good idea of both numbers health and gender of the wolves in the area (something that cannot be done to the same extent with jackals).

The research carried out has largely been around the Ifrane National Park, over an area of about 330 miles they have discovered 10 wolf packs through howling and a further two through tracks.

As in many other places, there is a problem with blame. Wolves are blamed for any attack on sheep, and despite the fact that this part of Morocco has a significant problem with feral dogs (well documented as being a far bigger issue when it comes to attack on livestock) the locals always blamed the wolves.

Frankly what they’re called is irrelevant: the loss of golden wolves from this corner of Morocco would upset the ecosystem balance (as is standard when the loss of wolves occurs in any ecosystem around the world).

The hope is that this information and the draw of wolves will bring money and governmental recognition that will protect the park more effectively. The Barbary macaques that also inhabit the reserve already help in this regard though further recognition would be helpful. One of the most useful things about knowing that these are wolves and not golden jackals, is that this recognition can help get better methods to stop predation of the sheep

Why should this picture be odd? Unfortunately it is our own prejudice that makes it seem so. Back in 1900 when 100,000 roamed Africa, they lived in almost all habitats.

Not found in dense jungle, or the extreme deserts, they could be found almost everywhere else. As such it was not at all rare to see them in the snow, and indeed the Iranian cheetahs are still occasionally seen in snowy landscapes.

This picture was taken in the Rogge Cloof Nature Reserve, in South Africa’s Eastern province.

The same as my last article on cheetah the population is growing well in South Africa. In this instance the reserve has trans-located several cheetah to Malawi a country 1400 miles from South Africa.

Both for the benefit of cheetahs themselves and for humans and other animals that live with them, this work must continue. Cheetah are an essential part of many ecosystems, keeping animals in check in places where there is no space or suitability for one of the bigger cat such as lion or leopard to control.

Government has recently designated extinction Rebellion on a list of organisations with extremist ideologies. While it is true that any group who spends their times complaining about things the government do can cause problems when they meet, to designate the group in organised crime group is absurd.

In a time when the entire world is more and more concerned about climate change and what we will be leaving for our future generations, the continued with extinction that humans are causing is of great concern. Indeed many of the mitigation features of earth that we are relying on, such as rain forests will not function properly if the extinctions are not stopped.

As I wrote recently, forest elephants are highly important ecosystem engineers,significant numbers of rainforests around the world that may collapse of forest elephants and other animals filling similar niches cease to exist in those places.

In the same way it is in theory possible for humans to do the pollination of flowers, it would be possible for humans to do the seed dispersal that elephants usually do. However should be an extremely expensive high man hour maintenance job, and would not work as efficiently anyway.

Extinction Rebellion, like the fight on climate change, have the ability to either allow us to leave a planet similar to the one we received for our children, or one that is barely possible to live on.

The government is certainly paid lip service to both of these issues. however they have certainly not put the full might of the British government behind it, case of extinction rebellion it is largely only been a few carefully times press releases that you can point at as showing their doing anything at all. these two issues are essential for the continued survival of our species in the lifestyle that we have become accustomed. 

The government has spent the last decade or so first saying that of course we must take care of these things but only after the financial crash has been rectified,how we can only do anything about it after the epidemic is fully over and the market has recovered. We simply don’t have the time to wait, the government must act now. If it doesn’t have the time itself, it must empower the foreign office, and British consular offices around the world to take the lead. These issues must be addressed now, there isn’t time to waste and the government must stop suggesting there is.