Category: Asia

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Bringing the Arabian Oryx back from the brink of Extinction

With the advent of large numbers of zoos – with healthy collections of animals from around the world, the loss of a species in the wild can sometimes be reversed.

Despite being declared extinct in the wild, many decades ago, the Arabian Oryx is now back and is doing well

Unfortunately the history of the Oryx is not good. By 1800, its range had become severely restricted throughout the Arabian peninsular. Pressure merely increased after this. By 1948 Oryx had been hunted to near extinction, particularly after the advent of the motor car, allowed access to previously safeholds. In 1972, the last few Arabian Oryx were living in Oman, and were killed a few weeks later.

A mixture of overgrazing by livestocks, and capture for private collection were of lesser importance of this species extinction in the wild, but proved also to be its saving grace.

Today, there are thought to be about 1200 wild Arabian Oryx (1 of four Oryx species) living in Saudi Arabia, with a further 6-7000 living in the wild.

This means that this species has gone from being extinct in the wild, to merely vulnerable (as classed by the IUCN) the first to ever do this.

The process started in 1986 when 50 individuals were transferred to a research centre in Saudi Arabia. At this point only a few hundred survived in captivity. To add to the complication, many were found to be severely infected by TB. While in normal species any infected animal would be killed this could not be done. Instead they were treated with various drugs, any young born to infected females would be taken away and hand-reared, as TB can be transferred in the mothers milk.

In 1989 the first Arabian Oryx were rereleased into teh wild in central Saudi Arabia. A decision was made to enclose allof the reserve 2553 square km, about the area of Dorset, though this was good for the other wild life in the area, which included Arabian gazelles, red-necked ostrich and Houbara bustards.. This reserve now has over 500 of these Oryx making it the biggest wild population.

Later Oryx were released into a large reserve into the south of the country, and these have become established with a population of about 100. While small, this is the largest fully free ranging population int he world.

There is still much to be done. Currently, work is being done, to create cross border reserves with the UAE, Oman and Yemon -the other countries of the Arabian Peninsula. If this works, then the Oryx will become a full feature of the whole of the Arabian peninsula as it once was.

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Cheetahs have arrived in India: what next?

The cheetah have arrived in India, and have been introduced into enclosures within the Kuno national park. At the current time, the enclosures are just 15x30m so a similar size to a large zoo enclosure. They will stay in this enclosure for a month in order for the team to be sure that their health is good.

After this, they will be shifted into a 1 kilometre square enclosure for up to another 4 months before being released fully into the Kuno national park.

A further 12 cheetah will be transferred next month with roughly 50 agreed to be transferred over the next few years.

The simple question, though, is that cheetah do not do well in small reserves in Africa, as they cannot compete with large cats like lions or leopards (or in India, Tigers). With far less space, and a much greater density of people in India, is there going to be space for the returning cheetah? Furthermore, this situation is not likely to improve in the near future: predictions are that, without a significant break on fertility rates, India’s population could exceed 2 billion by the end of the century. In this senario, it is hard to see how there is space for much wildlife at all.

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Namibian cheetah on the way to India for reintroduction!

Argued back and forth for decades (since their local extinction in 1952), the idea of reintroducing cheetah has never gone away for India. For the government, it is clearly at least partly a matter of pride – as the only home of the Asiatic lion, claiming over 50% of remaining wild tigers living within its borders, more than 10,000 wild leopards and even 4-500 wild snow leopards, cheetah was the only big cat to be allowed to go missing.

In the initial translocation 8 cheetah are being flown from Namibia to India

Even Cheetah is derived from the Hindi word Chita which means spotted one.

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Red panda awareness day

Today is red panda awareness day. Many people are not particularly sure what a red panda is. Indeed, when I volunteered in a local zoo, I often found myself standing by the red pandas as so many visitors walk past without giving this little animal a proper look.

It was once considered a member of the bear family, but recent analysis has shown that while it is in its own family Ailuridae, They are carnivores and have been found to be most closely related to the group that includes Skunks raccoons and weasels.

Although now considered the lesser panda, the Red panda was the original – indeed the giant panda was discovered later, and named because of similarities that they share. Panda is thought to come from the Nepalese words: “nigalya ponya” , which means bamboo eater.

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Workers strike as Indonesia increases fee to visit Komodo dragons is increase by more than 18 times to £205

As the largest lizard in the world the Komodo dragons hold a fascination for humans, as it is the only place where lizards still rule

The concern by those who work in tourism with the Komodo dragons seems quite justified. They fear that this enormous increase in price will put off people from visiting, and therefore completely destroy the tourism industry.

It should be noted that this is merely the fee to visit the islands, anything the guides charge is on top of that.

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The long-tailed macaque was declared to be endangered in march this year, is anything safe

The long-tailed macaque is naturally found throughout southeast Asia. Often seen as pests, these generalists are highly intelligent and can survive on almost any food. As a result they have been considered commodities and therefore have been slaughtered for the bushmeat trade and captured as pets throughout many of the places where they are found.

While still seemingly numerous where they are found, the long-tailed macaque is now an endangered species. Is anything safe?

Even rapidly breeding primates are not going to be able to cope with this sort of pressure for long.

It is perhaps the pet trade that is the greatest danger. As with many other complicated pets long-tailed macaques are hard to look after in captivity and often develop behaviours that are difficult to handle. As a result the demand for their capture continues.

Perhaps of greater concern (for humanity, at least) is the fact that illnesses leak between macaques and humans surprisingly easily. Therefore having large numbers of these animals in captivity, in bad conditions, may well be breeding the next epidemic.

It is clear that the place for long-tailed macaques is in the wild in remaining rainforests, not as pets in wealthy people’s homes.

Can this species be saved? If it can’t there seems little chance for us to save many others, nevertheless as with many other species we must rapidly stop over exploiting this animal before it is gone forever.

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Soliga tribe has been allowed to live inside tiger in a reserved area – and the tiger population doubles!

Around much of the world, as the various European countries expanded their empires, one of the first things that Europeans did, was to create reserves to protect the wildlife, and required the local people to move out.

Many tribes have incredibly small footprints on the ground, ad look after their environment far better than many conservationists would succeed

In many of these places, the local tribes were forcefully thrown of their land, and begrudgingly given small areas often with little value compared to where they lived before.

Now there is a difficult issue: those people who are living their lives in the same way that they have lived for thousands of years, are often fantastic for the reserve. However, in many places these people will turn to harvesting the wildlife in a totally different way, leading to many local extinctions.

India has a range of tiger reserves across the country. Few of them have more than a few hundred tigers, and many just have a few, yet, if this could be replicated, the Indian tiger population might have the ability to double once again
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Back on the 10th I wrote about the Tiger recovery, here is more details about the Kazakhstan reintroduction: by 2026?

The Caspian tiger once lived in 12 countries, from the west in Turkey, to the east in central Asia. Seemingly, across this range, they did not have consistent populations but the tigers lived on the shores of lakes in the region, with 15-20 valleys being their strongholds.

The Kazakhstan delta is mostly ready for a return of the Tiger, with just the missing prey base needing addressing, this is well in hand

On the whole, the Caspian tiger lived in relative harmony with humans up until the Russian invasion. The Russians brought with them, the custom of keeping livestock, which brought the humans into direct competition with the tigers. As a result, Russia started paying a bounty for every tiger killed. This was incredibly successful, such that by the 1940 they were exterminated. The hunting was banned in the 1940s but too late to save these tigers.

After this, the tigers former home was taken over and converted into farmland, so the few that survived the hunting, soon lost what home was left.

In the 1990s as Russia fell, WWF started working to help the ecosystem recover. As a result in the late 2000s a satellite analysis was carried out on the area, and one area stood out – a delta of the Lli river in Kazakhstan. It was found that if the prey base was first helped to recover (animals such as boar and deer) then this area could easily support tigers.

Now, it is true that the Caspian tiger went extinct 70 years ago. However, recent genetic analysis has shown that the Caspian and Amur tigers are not distinct enough to be classed separately – they are essentially one subspecies, with a large range. It is true that Caspian tigers tend to have had shorter fur, but tigers are able to adjust in this way, so tigers that are moved to warmer climates will grow less fur and be able to thrive.

Given Kazakhstan being the most advanced of the countries in the area, with relatively high living standards, they should be able to carry out the plan. The delay until 2026 is to allow time for the prey base to build up to sensible levels.

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As the huge panda reserve takes shape in SW China other species are benefitting

Over the last couple of years, snow leopards have been sighted in Pingwu county – Sichuan province. This confirms that the range of the snow leopard has expanded eastward as this reserve takes shape.

Pingwu supports around 335 Pandas, or around 20% of the Chinese total.

this is a map showing the reserve, and how it compares to the whole of China.

This Giant Panda national park will include 70.25% of known Panda habitat 87.5% of the Pandas currently living in the wild.

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