tagged w/ Illegal Wildlife Trade
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Tina, Jewel and Queenie are three wild-caught Asian elephants who have endured a lifetime of ill-treatment at the hands of the circus industry.
These elephants spent 2008 being trucked around the country with Circus Vazquez.
Shockingly, current "owners" of these elephants, the notorious Davenport circus family, have been allowed to continue to exhibit them despite the egregious violations of federal law committed by the Davenports.
The severe weight loss that led to Tina and Jewel being ordered off the road in 2007 has never been diagnosed, and the elephants are again losing an alarming amount of weight – 1800 pounds between them.
Will Davenport, their 'trainer' is a chronic violator of federal animal welfare law. The USDA received so many calls that it set up a special team to handle them. The pressure we are generating is surely helping to bring attention to the plight of these elephants. We are confident that only a little more pressure is necessary to achieve our goal: confiscation of the elephants and transfer to a sanctuary.
After their scheduled engagements with the Shrine Circus in Idaho were cancelled (thanks to letters from IDA and our loyal members), the elephants returned to their home base in Leggett, Texas. There they reportedly remain while undergoing tuberculosis testing and veterinary evaluation.
Yet, every day that the USDA leaves these elephants in the hands of a trainer that the agency itself has documented to be UNTRAINED and INCOMPETENT, is another day that the lives of these magnificent animals are endangered.
All three elephants have suffered from severe weight loss, Tina and Jewel for the second time in as many years. A just-released USDA inspection report from June indicates that Jewel lost 740 pounds and Queenie (aka "Boo") lost 520 pounds, while Tina has lost 640 pounds in less than a year.
Please follow the links for more information -
https://secure2.convio.net/ida/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1307Tina, Jewel and Queenie are three wild-caught Asian elephants who have endured a... more
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IFAW - 70 elephants could be executed if we don't move them immediately.
WE MUST ACT NOW to save a large herd of elephants - adults and babies - that face the firing line in the southeast African country of Malawi.
http://https://www.ifaw.org/ifaw_asia_pacific/donate_now/malawi_elephant.php?msource=DR090504002#x
YouTube VIDEO link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNSQBZIlpyIIFAW - 70 elephants could be executed if we don't move them immediately.
WE MUST... more
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Pierce Brosnan on Capitol Hill Asking for Your Support
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Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust's pre-release breeding dacility in Madagascar.
Thieves have stolen four of the world's rarest tortoises from Durrell Wildlife Conservation. Critically endangered Ploughshare tortoises stolen from breeding facility
June 2009.
Trust's pre-release enclosures inside Baly Bay National Park, Madagascar. The theft took place during the night on the 6th May and comes as a major blow to the conservation of the Ploughshare tortoise, a species that is on the edge of extinction and classified as Critically Endangered.
Conservationists believe the four tortoises are destined for private collections in Europe, USA or Asia unless they are found quickly.
Overseas collectors - Baly Bay is an extremely poor region and traffickers pay local people to find the animals. However, the real problem lies with the buyers and the collectors who encourage the illegal trade in endangered animals with no thought for the conservation of the species. Durrell hopes law enforcement agencies in Madagascar and abroad will do more to clamp down on this global trade.
While attempts have been made by the Madagascan government to try to halt the smuggling, the recent political unrest in the country has enabled international dealers to increase their efforts to profit from Madagascar's natural heritage. A tough stance is needed both within Madagascar and in the countries where illegal animals are sold before another species is sent to extinction by the greed of the illegal trade of biodiversity.Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust's pre-release breeding dacility in Madagascar.... more
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Recently, eleven smuggled orang-utans were seized by Thai officials in the southern province of Phuket. DNA tests are being conducted in a bid to help the apes be returned to their place of origin.
It was a chaotic scene as wildlife officials and veterinarians helped each other separate the orangutans from the cages for medical check-ups and blood tests for DNA identification.
The primates are seven times stronger than humans and more than five people were required to overpower just one orang-utan. Chloroform was needed for the bigger apes to reduce their pain and stress.
The DNA identification process will take at least one month to identify the orang-utans’ origins. It will help determine whether the apes are native to Indonesia’s Sumatra island or to Borneo, an island shared by Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.
"Orang-utans are a protected animal in Indonesia and Malaysia. So it is illegal to import such an animal into Thailand,"said Pornchai Patumrattanathan, Chief of Khao Prathap Chang Wildlife Breeding Research Station.
In all, 12 orang-utans underwent DNA testing, the 11 dumped on Phuket by the smugglers in fear of being caught and 1 confiscated at a resort in southern Chumphon province.
"Once we have the orang-utans’ blood, we’ll extract their DNA. We’ll then multiply the DNA to decode the genetics. Then, we will find out whether or not they are of Borneo or Sumatra breed, so we can return them to their home of origin," Asso Prof Theerapol Sirinarumitr, a Forensic Veterinary Expert from Kasetsart University.
The confiscated orang-utans are between 4 to 8 years old. Normally, their life span is around 40 years in the wild and 50 years in captivity.
All the 12 orang-utans are currently at Khao Prathap Chang Wildlife Breeding Research Station in Thailand’s central province of Ratchaburi, until the case is concluded.Recently, eleven smuggled orang-utans were seized by Thai officials in the southern... more
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Humane Society of United States
Primate Investigation | Undercover Investigation at Research Lab
February 2009: An undercover investigation by The Humane Society of the United States reveals psychological suffering of primates in research laboratories.Humane Society of United States
Primate Investigation | Undercover Investigation at... more
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Prince Charles has an idea: He thinks that rich countries should pay annual “bills” to stop destruction of the rainforest. This would eventually create a market for “rainforest bonds” that would help with the protection of the natural habitat.
Another idea: Poor nations should be paid NOT to cut down trees as a way to reduce their pollution.
The Prince says, “These emergency funds could be provided directly by developed world Governments, perhaps from expanded development aid budgets, from surcharges on activities which cause climate change or from the auction of carbon market emission allowances.”
But some environmentalists think this will cause corruption in developing countries.
FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/11/03/eacharles103.xmlPrince Charles has an idea: He thinks that rich countries should pay annual... more
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Gorilla.cd - Protecting the Mountain Gorillas of Virunga
2008 Filed under (Rangers) by Norbert Mushenzi @ 5:33 pm
Our Ranger Louis Kabwana passed away in the early hours of the morning. He had been ill shortly before the evacuation on 10th October. We had taken him to the clinic in Goma, but providing adequate treatment has been incredibly difficult in recent weeks. He was carried by our Rangers on his final journey, accompanied his family and by myself and the Director, and all the members of our refugee camp in Goma. It was a simple, dignified occasion.
Louis Kabwana dedicated his whole life to the mountain gorillas of Mikeno. He joined the Park in 1971 as part of the team protecting the gorillas, and had worked there ever since. He leaves a widow and 9 children. Gorilla.cd - Protecting the Mountain Gorillas of Virunga
2008 Filed under (Rangers)... more
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Whale Wars premieres Sunday Nov. 9 on Animal Planet Canada at 8 ET/9 PT.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. • In the early 1970s, environmental activist Paul Watson served in the Canadian Coast Guard off the B.C. coast, handling weather ships, buoy tenders and search and rescue hovercraft.
He co-founded the Greenpeace Foundation in 1972, then founded the breakaway group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977. While on a campaign against Russian whalers, Watson came up with the novel idea of placing a himself between whalers' harpoons and their prey.
None of that, though, quite prepared Watson for last December's seagoing stunt off Antarctica, where he sailed a crew of greenhorns and first-time mariners out of Melbourne, Australia to the chilly waters off the end of the world.
There, they spent three months pursuing, hounding, harassing -- and being harassed by -- Japanese whalers determined to fill their "research'' quotas.
--For Watson, the issue is simple. The International Whaling Commission passed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, he patiently explained to a small but curious crowd.
"So what the Japanese are doing is targeting an endangered species in a whale sanctuary, in violation of that moratorium,'' Watson explained, warming to his subject. "Their argument is that they're doing it for scientific research purposes. However, they've killed more whales in the past 20 years than they killed in the previous 50. It's illegal, and it's deemed so by international law.''
Watson is grateful for the publicity Whale Wars will bring.
"It shows everything that happens on the ship, from our daily activities, cooking up vegan food in the galley and doing our laundry, to how we sleep and play poker at night,'' Mann said. "And seasickness. Serious, serious seasickness.''
Watson makes no apologies, even now, for his hands-on approach to environmental activism.
"I left Greenpeace a long time ago because I got tired of seeing whales die, '' Watson said. "Since the day I left Greenpeace, I have not seen a single whale die. When we show up, they stop killing whales. It's really as simple as that.''
"This movement is a movement of diversity,'' Watson continued. "Our niche is direct intervention. What we do, we do on the high seas. There are other organizations involved in litigation, legislation, lobbying, that sort of thing. We are an interventionist organization. That's what we do.''
If Whale Wars does nothing else, Watson hopes, it will be to show viewers how lawless the Antarctic frontier really is.
"It's a free-for-all out there. Whaling is illegal, but every time we try to bring that up with the international regulatory bodies, it just degenerates into conversations that go nowhere. The problem is that international law is unenforceable.
"So, we're going back there again. And the Japanese have promised to be even more aggressive with us. I don't know what's going to happen next. We're just going to have to test the waters, as we go forward.''
Whale Wars premieres Sunday Nov. 9 on Animal Planet Canada at 8 ET/9 PT.
BEVERLY... more
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'Souvenir' Campaigns
Shop Carefully! video produced by the TRAFFIC East Asia office in Taipei to encourage responsible buying of souvenir items
Several TRAFFIC campaigns have focused on the souvenir trade - and encourage tourists to be aware of what goods they are purchasing.
Wildlife awareness campaign, China:
In 2007, TRAFFIC, WWF, the conservation organization and Ogilvy, an advertising agency, launched an advertising campaign in mainland China aimed at changing consumer attitudes towards unsustainable wildlife trade.
The campaign, consisting of creative print, video and online advertisements in Chinese, is part of an awareness-raising project to inform urban consumers about the environmental harm that illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade causes, and by providing guidance on what actions they can take to help protect species.
The full online campaign (in Chinese) can be viewed at www.traffic-china.org
Awareness materials, Vietnam:
Public Service Announcements (PSAs) produced by the WWF and TRAFFIC Greater Mekong Programmes pertaining to wildlife consumption - in particular of of civets, pangolins, and king cobras.
follow the link to other countries listed on this page...'Souvenir' Campaigns
Shop Carefully! video produced by the TRAFFIC East Asia office... more
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The program began under her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, and continues with her support. Private citizens are permitted to shoot wolves from the air or conduct land-and-shoot hunting of wolves in five rural areas of the state. More than 700 wolves have been killed since the program began almost five years ago, state officials say.
Last year, Palin's office announced the state would offer cash to kill wolves. Incentives included offering volunteer pilots and aerial gunner teams $150 for turning in the forelegs of freshly killed wolves.
The state said the legs could help biologists determine a wolf's age, while the money helped hunters and aerial teams pay for gas and expenses. A Superior Court judge later blocked the payments after conservation groups argued the money amounted to an illegal bounty.
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, which has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president, is a nonprofit 501(c)4 corporation that can operate outside the strict limits governing political action committees. It can raise money in unlimited amounts from individual donors and can run ads that refer to political candidates as long as they don't specifically advocate their election or defeat.
The ad has received widespread notice on the Internet and has been an effective fundraising tool for Defenders of Wildlife. The group says it raised $600,000 in the six hours after it was released in mid-September and says it now has raised $1 million.
The group is aiming the ad at suburban women and moderate independent voters.
The ad follows closely on the heels of a McCain commercial that depicted Obama researchers and investigators combing through Palin's background as a pack of wolves.
Hunter or hunted, it all depends on the ad.
On the Net:
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: http://www.defendersactionfund.org/
The program began under her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, and continues with her... more
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On-the-spot report from Kumudini Hettiarachchi in Uda Walawe, Pix by M.A.Pushpa Kumara
Absolute stillness, the stillness of the jungle, accentuated only by the call of birds from the lotus-studded wewa. Suddenly a humming and whining begin, shattering the stillness. A bulldozer is at work………up and down, leaving a large swathe of land cleared of everything.
What is left is only a trail of destruction – giant trees such as weera and myla on their sides, the scrub jungle no more and the tall grasses cleared. Some of the trees and shrubs have been set ablaze, with patches of areas still smouldering.
This is the fate, since Monday, of part of the Dahaiyagala sanctuary and animal corridor, covering about 2,685 ha, on the northern border of the Uda Walawe National Park, in clear violation of the large green boards of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWLC). See pic of board.
For, this is where the elephants including four majestic tuskers (one being ‘Walawe Raja’) the sloth bear, the leopard and the sambhur roam. ‘Walawe Raja’, the tallest of the tuskers in the area graces the posters of the DWLC and has also been portrayed in a BBC documentary titled, ‘The Last Tusker’.
“People have been brazenly clearing the sanctuary in violation of the law,” lamented a wildlife official, pointing out that the culprits want to put up a barrier, blocking the animal corridor on the boundary of the Uda Walawe National Park.
The Dahaiyagala corridor links the National Park with Bogahapattiya described by conservationists as the “last remaining savannah (talawa) and intermediate zone forest to remain intact in the southern part of Sri Lanka”.
For, this is where the elephants including four majestic tuskers (one being ‘Walawe Raja’) the sloth bear, the leopard and the sambhur roam. ‘Walawe Raja’, the tallest of the tuskers in the area graces the posters of the DWLC and has also been portrayed in a BBC documentary titled, ‘The Last Tusker’. “People have been brazenly clearing the sanctuary in violation of the law,” lamented a wildlife official, pointing out that the culprits want to put up a barrier, blocking the animal corridor on the boundary of the Uda Walawe National Park.
The Dahaiyagala corridor links the National Park with Bogahapattiya described by conservationists as the “last remaining savannah (talawa) and intermediate zone forest to remain intact in the southern part of Sri Lanka”.
The blocking of the Dahaiyagala opening into the National Park (see map) will prevent the elephants, the sloth bear, the leopard and the sambhur whose home range is Bogahapattiya, from accessing the National Park. Dahaiyagala also has many wewas including Pokunutenne which has water throughout the year, which the animals use. The smaller ones which are seasonal dry up during the drought
The other tanks which do not run dry are Uda Walawe and Mau-ara which are within the National Park itself.
The stories doing the rounds in Uda Walawe are that a few politicians in the area, along with some officials, have unlawfully taken the lead in efforts to shut the animal access point through Dahaiyagala into the National Park.
for the rest of this story, please follow link: http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080928/Plus/sundaytimesplus_00.html
On-the-spot report from Kumudini Hettiarachchi in Uda Walawe, Pix by M.A.Pushpa Kumara... more
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Maverick conservationist, Richard Leakey, writes that "commercial bushmeat hunting has become the most significant immediate threat to the future of wildlife in Africa and around the world" in an article on Wildlife Direct. Founded by Leakey, Wildlife Direct is a nonprofit allowing researchers and wildlife organizations in Africa and Asia to connect directly with supporters through blogs.
A paper recently released by the Centre of International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biodiversity (CDB) argued that legalizing bushmeat trade is the only way to ensure species survival and provide protein needs to impoverished people. Leakey disagrees: "legalizing this multi-billion trade will not help the wildlife. It will instead exterminate what remains, species that we are working so hard to preserve." Leakey has spent two decades working to conserve wildlife in his native Kenya.
"CIFOR argues that since up to 80 percent of the rural households in central and western Africa already depend on bushmeat for their daily protein requirements, a blanket ban on the trade would endanger both humans and wildlife " Leakey writes. "They call for regulated but legal uptake of wildlife protein. Maybe, but just how can this be done? There are no mechanisms to regulate this even with the best legislation."
Leakey says that CIFOR and CDB's idea of legalizing the bushmeat trade "shows remarkable naïveté and totally fails to understand the realities on the ground. A hungry population is never going to practice conservation of food, especially where it can be had free from the forest."
Comparing legalizing the bushmeat trade to legalizing drugs, Leakey writes that there are other ways in which to provide poor communities with protein. "Why don't people encourage the rearing of chickens, fish or cane rats to alleviate their protein deficiency? This will bring development and a better and healthier existence."
According to Leakey a number of species that have experienced local extinctions or drastic declines due to the bushmeat trade in Africa, including elephants, chimpanzees, gorillas, pangolins, bush pigs, duikers, and monitor lizards. Numerous primate species are especially susceptible. The bushmeat trade is also a threat to many species in Asia.
Richard Leakey, son of famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, is known for his bold conservation views and his long career in politics, anthropology, and conservation in Kenya.
Maverick conservationist, Richard Leakey, writes that "commercial bushmeat hunting has... more
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MEXICO CITY – A five-ton elephant escaped from a circus and wandered onto a busy highway, where it was hit by a bus and died on Tuesday.
State officials say bus driver Tomas Lopez, 49, also was killed and at least four passengers were hospitalized after the pre-dawn collision in Ecatepec, just north of Mexico City.
Mexico State police spokesman Juan Sanchez said the elephant escaped from its cage at the Circo Union, but he declined to give any other details. He said officials were investigating.
The state-funded Notimex news agency reported that the elephant named Indra escaped as its keeper arrived to feed it, knocking down a metal door that led to the street and wandering through two neighborhoods before trying to cross the highway.
Small circuses have used the name "Circo Union" in Mexico and it was not immediately clear which was involved.
Last month, a 500-pound lion escaped from a private zoo owned by a local lawmaker in southern Mexico. The animal killed two dogs and a pig and attacked a woman and child on a donkey before it was sedated and caught.
For more information on elephants... please visit:
http://www.elephant-news.com/linkto.php
http://tinyurl.com/4lpe36MEXICO CITY – A five-ton elephant escaped from a circus and wandered onto a busy... more
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HELP SAVE THE ELEPHANT - STOP THE BLOODY IVORY TRADE
Elephants. Condemned by CITES. Annihilated by poachers. Hacked to pieces for their ivory.
I write this with a heavy heart. A death knell has sounded for elephants. I was there as the bell tolled, but can scarcely believe it’s true.
Elephants – most intelligent, most sensitive of creatures – have been condemned to a bloody death. Other even more ominous sounds have quickly followed… The deafening crack of an automatic weapon; the mechanical drone of a chain-saw; the rhythmic chopping of an axe. The sickening sound of terrified elephants being brutally killed, then butchered for their tusks.
Unbelievably, ivory is big business once again. A savage new bloodbath is underway by ruthless poachers. The international ivory trade is supposed to be illegal. But China has been given the green light to purchase ‘stockpiled’ ivory. Make no mistake what this means. Poachers have been given the green light to slaughter more elephants
During a recent meeting in Geneva, the CITES¹ Standing Committee, including the UK, voted to allow China to buy ivory from four southern African nations - South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. China can now bid for 108 tonnes of stockpiled tusks.
It is just disastrous. China is the centre of the world’s illegal ivory trade. For example, 790kg of illegal ivory was seized in China earlier this year. Also, just one day after the Standing Committee’s ruling, three Chinese nationals were arrested in Kenya attempting to smuggle ivory. Carved ivory is a thriving business in China and hugely lucrative.
Japan had already been approved by CITES as a licensed buyer in 2006. Now China and Japan will bid against each other for this ‘legal’ ivory. I predict the price of the ivory will go sky-high, stimulating the already massive black market in illegal ivory. So more elephants will die. The incentive to kill elephants and smuggle ivory will be heightened still further.
This new decision is like pouring petrol on an open fire. It is naïve and deadly. Already more than 20,000 elephants are estimated to be illegally killed and dismembered every year by poachers. That’s 55 every day. That’s two every hour.
There were around one million elephants in 1979. Now that number has fallen to 475,000. Small, vulnerable elephant populations in West and Central African countries are most at risk. Large parts of Africa are running red with elephants’ blood.
Pause for a moment. Consider what this means. Elephants… immense, sentient, gentle creatures, who display awareness and understanding, with intricate social lives and complex culture passed through generations. Reduced to massive, bloody corpses for people’s greed.
HELP SAVE THE ELEPHANT - STOP THE BLOODY IVORY TRADE
Elephants. Condemned by CITES.... more
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This July 2008, at a CITE'S Standing Committee meeting, China was approved to buy
"legal ivory" from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Japan has
already been approved, with the one-off sales likely later this year. The
approval was opposed by many countries, most notably the African Elephant
Coalition, a group of 19 elephant Range States. But their concerns were ignored
by those countries which voted in favour of China, which included the UK.
Lifting the strict ban on the sale of ivory and permitting legal imports is likely to
facilitate laundering of illegal ivory and will therefore increase elephant
poaching. Yet poaching has already reached crisis point, particularly in West and
Central Africa. More than 20,000 African elephants are estimated to be killed
every year. But there may be as few as 7,500 elephants remaining throughout
West Africa and just 475,000 across the continent.
Now that China and Japan have been approved to purchase stockpiled ivory,
the situation can only get worse. It is a death sentence for elephants.
Unscrupulous criminal networks are taking advantage of the legal trade to
launder illegal ivory into the poorly regulated markets. Urgent funds are
needed to protect the remaining elephant populations.
Shelley Waterland,
International Trade Specialist, Born Free Foundation
Stop the bloody ivory tradeElephant poaching and the illegal trade in ivory is a multi-million pound business
often run by highly organised criminal networks. Every dead elephant can yield
10kg of ivory, worth possibly thousands of pounds. It is usually the most
vulnerable elephant populations that are targeted for this poaching, particularly
in West and Central Africa. For some elephant populations there is still time, but
we have reached crisis point in many countries and funds are urgently needed
to equip rangers and train enforcement officers.
In 2004 there were thought to be around 4,000 elephants in Zakouma National
Park in Tchad, in Central Africa. Today they number less than 1,000. Similarly the
Central African Republic is estimated to be losing around 500 elephants a year
from poaching. If elephant poaching in West and Central Africa is not brought
under control very quickly, there will no longer be any elephants left to protect.
Wildlife rangers are risking their lives every day to protect elephants from
armed poachers. Can you help them? The rangers urgently need better
equipment and training.
http://www.bornfree.org.uk/give/autumn-appeal/ivory-report/
http://www.bornfree.org.uk/give/autumn-appeal/
Will Travers, Chief Executive, Born Free Foundation
This July 2008, at a CITE'S Standing Committee meeting, China was approved to buy... more
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Illegal Wildlife Trade - Too Cute for Their Own Good
Cotton-top tamarins are smaller than spider monkeys, but they are equally charming, with outsize feet and shocks of wild white hair. They, too, are losing habitat at an alarming rate.
According to Anne Savage, Senior Conservation Biologist for Disney's Animal Programs, cotton-tops can survive in degraded forest but not isolated forest, island, that are disconnected from other kinds of habitat. Once, Savage recalls, she received a phone call from field staff saying that worker were cutting down trees [at the same time] as they were trying to count monkeys.
Between 30 and 70 percent of original habitat [has] disappeared she continues, due to deforestation for agricultural purposes, clearing land for cattle grazing or using trees for building materials and firewood.
Cotton-tops have also been taken for the biomedical trade. And as pets. They shoot the mother with a slingshot and take the young off her back when she falls to the ground says Savage.
Being cute is prized among humans, but for primates such as the variegated spider monkey (Ateles hybridus) and the cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus), the trait can be costly.
Alba Lucia Morales, of CI-partner Fundac in Biodiversa Colombia, admits to thinking the spider monkeys are the most wonderful in the forest. They are big and noisy the pregnant females are beautiful and the babies are gray and very cute.
But beauty in these animals is both blessing and curse. Deforestation and illegal wildlife trade threaten many animals, and these monkeys have an added challenge. No one is entirely sure exactly how many are taken each year for the illegal pet trade.
More Info:
http://www.conservation.org/FMG/Articles/Pages/colombia_threatened_tamarin_spider_monkey_IPS.aspx
Illegal Wildlife Trade - Too Cute for Their Own Good
Cotton-top tamarins are smaller... more
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Conservationists were thrilled last month that thousands of African Western Lowland gorillas - 125,000 by head count estimates - may have found a safe haven in a mud swamp and probably escaped predators.
This could have doubled the number of the endangered primates thought to survive worldwide.
But it never dimmed the fact that the great apes are still heading toward extinction if the activities of mad rebel groups operating with abandon in the forests and mountainous regions of Africa continue unchecked.
Mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei) are the worst hit among the three subspecies according to their habitant in different parts of Africa. Others are the Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and the Eastern
The Congolese government has consented to remove its forces from the Virunga National Park, an enclave of about 72 mountain gorillas out of a total of 700 worldwide, in spite of an ongoing conflict to help protect the park’s valuable natural resources.
Yet gorillas still have more enemies. They are food to many communities within Equatorial Africa despite the inherent heath risks.
The Ebola virus, among other diseases, is also bearing its toll on them. Conservationists think the disease that causes massive hemorrhaging and organ failure resulting in death in a number of species, including humans, has killed up to 95% of the gorillas in some areas.
Human commercial activity that endanger these animals are the timber trade and the bush meat trade, both of which feed markets in Europe and other parts of the world. But habitat loss due to land clearance for subsistence farming that drives the gorillas further to areas where they are susceptible to numerous physical risks is also to blame.
Ironically, researchers who found the gorillas in their swamp haven were tipped off to their sight by hunters and trekked through mud for three days to reach them.
This does not, however, change the bad news that almost 50% of the world’s primates, including colobus and bonobo monkeys, chimpanzees and orangutans, are in danger of extinction.
Conservationists were thrilled last month that thousands of African Western Lowland... more
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Abbey, one of the ‘Taiping Four’ gorillas, has found new meaning to life as she became surrogate mother to a newly arrived orphan gorilla at the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon.
The following update is provided by The Pan-African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) and IFAW’s partner the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon.
Abbey recently became the surrogate mother to Bolo, a one-year old orphan, at the Limbe Wildlife Center in Cameroon.
Bolo arrived after being confiscated from poachers in December, and it was feared she might be too young to ever integrate safely into Limbe’s 14-member gorilla social group.
But another adult female, Brighter, showed interest and seemed willing to take on the role of caring for Bolo.
Abbey had other ideas, however.
“Very surprisingly, Abbey, who is not a dominant female, went up to Brighter and gently took Bolo off her and placed her on her chest,” said Felix Lankester, manager of the Limbe Wildlife Center. “What was surprising was that Brighter didn’t try to take Bolo back. It was obvious to everyone that Abbey was much more protective than Brighter ever was, and that was the kind of protection we were looking for.”
The Limbe staff had spent months patiently developing the relationship between Brighter and Bolo, and even separated the pair temporarily from the other gorillas in order to foster the bonds of care. But Abbey’s willingness to take responsibility for Bolo proved irresistible.
Snatched from their mothers when they were just babies, the ‘Taiping Four’ gorillas were smuggled from the forests of the Cameroon and taken to a zoo in neighboring Nigeria. From there they became pawns in the murky world of the illegal trade in endangered species. As wild-caught animals they could not be traded legally, so forged documentation described them as “captive bred” allowing them to be sold to a zoo in Malaysia.
But the sudden arrival of four young gorillas on the international zoo scene was bound to raise suspicion, and it didn’t take long for animal welfare investigators to uncover and make public the illegality of their capture and export.
CITES regulations clearly state that, wherever possible, confiscated animals are to be returned to their native land, and so they did, thanks to IFAW’s supporters, the Taiping Four Gorillas arrived to their new home in Limbe, Cameroon on November 30, 2007.
Abbey, one of the ‘Taiping Four’ gorillas, has found new meaning to life as she... more
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