Category: Asia

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Translocating Cheetah from South Africa to India : update

I wrote back in November about plans to move African cheetah from South Africa to India. Should you wish to read this original article, I have linked it below.

https://seeanimalswild.com/2021/11/17/south-african-cheetah-to-be-introduced-into-india/

There has been an update. The first batch of cheetah will be moved to Kuno reserve, in August, 5-6 Cheetah will be moved to Kuno reserve in the first batch.

Kuno reserve was supposed to be the place that Asiatic lions were due to be moved to before Gujarat claimed exclusive ownership – and therefore refused to translocate the lions. The fact that cheetah are being introduced to Kuno should not rule out lions following, though Gujurat is still behaving badly on this front.

What should we make of this? Well in theory, Iranian cheetah would be far better. Unfortunately the cheetah is doing so badly, that it would be impossible to translocate cheetah to India, without risking eliminating the cheetah in Iran. African cheetah are very similar, and I would argue that a similar animal is better than none filling this ecological niche.

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A study found that 3/4 of oil palm concessions in Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo certified by RSPO were forest or wildlife habitat just 30 years ago!

It seems that so long as the initial cause of the deforestation was not palm oil (or perhaps not the current owners of the palm oil farm?), then even if it is immediately converted into palm oil plantations, it can be counted as sustainable.

I think that few people would claim that practices like this are sustainable

This is absurd. It should obviously be the case that if an area is deforested illegally, then it should be reforested, not get the right to permanently become part of the crop areas.

Not really good.

It essentially means that the RSPO affiliation means nothing, as those of us concerned about the destruction of the rainforest and the loss of the biodiversity that it contains cannot trust them at all. I have written in the past, about Newquay zoo getting its signs wrong on avoiding palm oil. What is clear, is that almost none of the palm oil from Indonesia can claim to be avoiding deforestation as you’d expect. Has the RSPO destroyed their authority for ever? Time will tell.

What is clear is that this is not a new thing. Back in 2016 the Huffington post wrote an article “RSPO: Completely Worthless, or Just Mostly Worthless? (UPDATED)” (click the article to read it in another tab) in which it basically outlines many of the points from this latest assessment. This study was more thorough, so can tell us the extent of the problem, but what is clear is that it is not new.

Should the RSPO be given a second chance? I would argue not. If they have not cleaned up shop in 6 years, then there is going to be little rainforest left before they actually get their act together. Can it be done? Ferrero is ranked number 1 out of 173 by WWF on sustainable palm oil sourcing. Clearly it can be done – However, brands that hold onto RSPO may well start being avoided by the eco-concerned. If they are that useless then why even look for their mark

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In an effort to deal with encroachment into national parks Indonesia is trying a new policy

Many of the Indonesian forest reserves, have become paper parks, with much or most of the forestation and other vegetation lost. They clear land in the hope that they will eventually be given the title to the land to make their seizures legal.

Under their new program “conservation partnership”, the settlers acknowledge that they cannot claim the land, and they have to help restore the land to how it was before they damaged it. The are then allowed to remain on the land and cultivate traditional crops and harvest non timber products like rattan and honey – but importantly, not palm oil.

This model has grown, and now 177,000 hectares is under this form of management (about 700 square miles.

It continues to be a hard balance between the protection of the forest, and allowing the people who live in these areas (both native, and those who move from elsewhere), to be able to better their lives through work. If work exists that both benefits them and the ecosystem then this is likely to succeed.

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The absurd case of a local mayor being imprisoned for trying to stop illegal deforestation, and how this happens all over the world

Often concessions that are granted to groups overlap with protected reserves. Obviously this should not be allowed, yet it continues. Often the company can then do great environmental damage before the error is rectified.

Ipilan Nickel Corporation began felling trees in its concession area in Brookes point Palawan, Mary Jean Feliciano moved to stop them. After sending cease and desist orders that were ignored (during which time 7000 trees were cut down) she used her authority to shut down the companies operations and demolish their onsite facilities. The company fought back, and the Philippine Ombudsman sided with the company and Feliciano was suspended for a year without pay.

By the time that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued a stoppage order 7000 trees in the village protected area, which operates as their water catchment area, had been cut down. This aea fell within the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscapes which is a recognized protected area.

The cutting started on May 2017. The village knew what was going on, but the mining company security guards would not let the village authorities in to stop the illegal deforestation.

What is more ridiculous is that the Companies environmental compliance cirtificate was rescinded on december 14th 2016, and on may 17, 2017 it was confirmed that the firm no longer had the permit to cut down any trees.

In July of 2017 hte Palawan Council for Sustainable Development reviewed a petition by Feliciano, recalled the clearance it had issued, and bowing to public pressure the council recongized that 80% of the mining companies claims fell within “core zones” of the protected forest – clearly illegal to cut down.

Civil rights groups praised Feliciano, but the Philippine Ombudsman found her “guilty of oppression or grave abuse of authority” and served her a year long suspension without pay. They claimed that while the EEC of the company had been revoked, they still had an appeal which needed to run its course before she undertook any action.

This suit brought by the company is a clear form of SLAPP litigation – the aim is to make everyone too fearful to try to get in their way.

Around the world companies are using legal actions to delay orders to stop damaging the environment. In many cases including deforestation, by the time an order comes through to stop cutting down forests, all the damage is done. There are places where companies will have to pay large reparations, as well as reforesting more land than they illegally deforested – this process must be rolled out worldwide.

It must become too expensive to risk damaging the environment. Another requirement is for these countries to put a system in place which stops companies delaying the answer why they carry out the work that environmental action is trying to halt.

How can we help? it is hard, but we must make our voices heard over the noise that comes from all around us.

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Forest elephants have been found to be more closely related to an extinct Asian elephant than to African Savannah elephants

The first analysis of the genome of the Straight-tusked elephant (a long extinct species) may well rewrite the elephant family tree – while at the current time there are 3 species of elephant (African forest, African bush and Asian Elephant) there are many more long extinct species.

It also suggests that the straight tusked elephant, long thought to be closely related to the Asian elephant, is actually an African elephant species. It does perhaps give another warning, to not classify animals by how they look but by their genes – convergent evolution can often mean species that look similar have little recent genetic links at all.

There has been much argument about whether the African forest is indeed a separate species. This debate must now be over. 2/3 of the African forest elephant has been lost in the last 15 years, we must stop arguing about its genes and get down to the work of saving this species.

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Cheetah trade continues despite the CITES ban on their trade.

Trade of wild cheetah from east Africa (including the horn of Africa) to be kept as status symbols in the Arabian peninsula has thankfully declined, but has not been eradicated. Indeed, this decline may well be more down to better policing on the smuggling route and less down to a change in circumstance. All of the problem countries have laws banning the keeping of these animals yet these are not effectively enforced – when a cheetah or other exotic animal arrives in the Middle east it is likely too late, they are probably never going to be able to be returned to the wild. If as is usually the case, it is a cub, it is highly likely that the mother was killed in the cubs capture.

Reports of cheetahs for sale occur almost every week in the gulf states. In many states, keeping cheetahs as pets only became illegal in recent times UAE for instance only banned cheetahs as pets in 2017.

The problem is that (as readers of this blog will know) cheetah live in small and isolated populations – as a result, taking just 10 cheetah from a reserve could lead to the local extinction of the animal.

Other animals including chimpanzees orangutans and gibbons also enter these countries. It is essential that proper education of populations in countries like this is undertaken, so that they know these animals were not bred in captivity. Many of the owners would be horrified to learn that their action is causing these animals to be wiped out in the wild.

Global work on wildlife smuggling is far from over, and becomes only more and more urgent. There are many species that could be wiped out if we fail.

If you have friends looking for exotic animals as pets do encourage them not to, or we will find that our children will never be able to see cheetah in the wild where they belong.

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Can the Malaysian tiger be saved?

If is easy to think that we should not be saving subspecies, but instead investing money in conserving other animals that are still threatened.

Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to look at it. Malaysia tigers only exist in a small strip between Malaysia and Thailand. The dense rainforest here has been standing in its current form for longer than the Amazon or the Congo.

In the 1950s there were 3000 tigers, yet in just 70 years this number has been reduced to just 200.

Subspecies are different – obviously, and their differences actually make a difference in the species survival, as well as its success. Introducing a subspecies from another area can have unexpected effects. If the subspecies is lost, then a different subspecies is likely to fill the niche better than none.

Tiger subspecies while extremely closely related, have evolved for millennia to be suited to their environment. If we take this to its extreme can you imagine reintroducing Sumatran tigers into the frozen wastelands of Siberia? The Amur tiger can measure 3m from head to end of tail, where as a Sumatran tiger only measures 2.4m

My feeling is that we should be moving from concentrating on specific species to ecosystems. it is certainly harder to generate the interest, but by looking at it on the ecosystem level we recognize that we need the apex predators for that ecosystem – whether they are a subspecies version of the tiger leopard or something else.

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Saving the Persian leopard

Leopards once roamed through Africa and Asia and even up into parts of Europe. Now their range is diminished and many of the subspecies are either endangered or critically so.

The Persian Leopard (also referred to as the Anatolian leopard and the Cascina Leopard)  Iranian Plateau and surrounding areas encompassing Turkey, the Caucasus (Armenia Azerbaijan and other parts of southern Russia), Iran, Israel, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan.

These ancient Iraqi forests are under threat, and with it the last stronghold of the Persian Leopard

Today it is thought that the population only consists of 1000 adults, though their population is highly fragmented. One of its strongholds is the Iraqi Kurdistan forests, unfortunately as much as half of these forests has been lost to illegal deforestation.

Unfortunately if the Persian Leopard cannot hang on here there is little hope elsewhere. Numbers have roughly halved (as habitat has similarly halved).

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Tigers are still moving between reserves, we must make it easier

Tigers once numbered 100,000 in India. My great great grandfather spent time in India, and I grew up hearing my great grandmother talking about the time that she went with her father on her pet elephant (as you do) to find a tiger that had been maimed during a failed hunt. This was essential, as a maimed tiger (or indeed lion leopard or jaguar) is of great danger to those living nearby. A maimed tiger cannot hunt as it normally would, and humans are far easier prey.

We have never learnt to live alongside tigers. As a result, as the human population has grown, the tiger population has been squashed into less and less land. If a healthy population can survive for the next century the human population may fall again and allow the tiger to thrive once more

These days the situation is very different. Currently there is a little over 3000 tigers living in the wilds of India, a number that has doubled in a surprisingly short period of time.

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