Meghan Mogensen, director of a zoo in Reston, Maryland was recently convicted of animal cruelty and sentenced to 30 days in jail for drowning an injured wallaby named Parmesan in a plastic bucket.
Meghan Mogensen. (photo: Fairfax County Police)
Source: Washington Post
Cheetahs in Iran!
Asiatic Cheetah in the Bafgh Protected Area of Yazd Province in Iran.
(Photo: Wildlife Conservation Society)
Before World War II, the cheetah numbered around 400, ranging in almost all of the steppes and desert areas of the east of the country and a few habitats near the Iraqi border. The war marked the widespread slaughter of their essential prey species, the gazelle, resulting in a devastating decline in the cheetah population.
The last cheetahs in India were shot in 1947. Since then, the Asiatic cheetah has disappeared from most of its former range. In the last 20 years Iran has been the final stronghold for the Asiatic cheetah, known in Iran as yuz, although there have been occasional reports of cheetahs in Pakistan.
In 1956, the gazelle was protected by law and the cheetah followed in 1959. The gazelle and cheetah population recovered in many areas. Cheetah sightings increased in different localities and by the late 1970s cheetah numbers were estimated to be 200-300.
The 1979 revolution interrupted wildlife conservation for a few years, and many areas were occupied by armed 4WD vehicles and motorbikes that chased desert species, such as gazelles, onager and the cheetah. As gazelle populations declined, the cheetahs moved toward the foothills and mountainous habitats to find new food sources such as wild sheep and goats, and to avoid human predation.
With their retreat they disappeared from much of their former range and were limited to a few remote areas with a reliable prey population and relative safety from humans
Iranian Cheetah (Photo: Kavi)
Source: wildlifeextra.com
received, thanks to a generous donation. The staff at Centre de Rehabilitation des Primates de Lwiro (CRPL) in the Democratic Republic of Congo says “thank you.”
Centre de Rehabilitation des Primates de Lwiro
As the only chimpanzee and monkey sanctuary in the kivu region, the CRPL acts as a crucial resource for all conservation organizations working in the area.
CRPL has experienced tremendous growth over the past several years. With this growth, the Centre has embarked on large scale infrastructure development and creative ways to accommodate the vast influx of animals.
They could use your help. To donate go to their website.
A Review of Autopsy Reports on Chimpanzees in or from U.S. Laboratories, compiles data from 110 autopsies performed in the last 10 years on chimpanzees who died in or were from laboratories.
For more info go to ReleaseChimps.org
The Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories in Everett, Washington, is the third largest importer of primates into the U.S., annually importing 3,000 monkeys.
Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratory. (Photo: PETA)
Whistleblowers have reported that employees used excessive force in their handling of monkeys, to the extent that monkeys suffered from bloodied noses, broken fingers and toes, and bruises to their bodies. Careless workers frequently injured monkeys by slamming the cage doors onto their tails. Some tails would become bent or deformed, and would be left that way, while other tails were broken so badly that they had to be amputated.
In one set of experiments, monkeys were attached to their cages with a metal tether which was surgically attached to their bodies, through which ice cold saline solution and test compounds were continuously infused into the monkeys’ veins. They were hooked up this way for months. This can be seen at :50 in on this videoreleased by PETA>
Use of animals for testing of new drugs and other medical applications is legal in the U.S. but is subject to the strict health and safety provisions of the federal Animal Welfare act, enforced by the Department of Agriculture, which is perennially underfunded to perform its job of protecting research animals.
Police inhabit a dangerous world. But they could use training in areas where restraint may often be needed. Dealing with people with mental health issues is one. Dealing with non-humans is another.
Paxton isn’t the first dog owner whose pet has been shot to death by police. A search of news articles from the past year shows many many incidents.
The sites “Dogs That Cops Killed” and “Dogs Shot by Police” describe new incidents and allow grieving owners to share stories.
Effective October 20, the Supreme Court in India has lifted a ban on tiger tourism in Indian reserves that it imposed in July.
Protected parks in India offer the opportunity to spot the elusive cats.
The court also announced harsh penalties against six states who had not introduced ‘buffer zones’ around tiger habitats in their parks. For background on this see ANIMAL POST, August 31, “Sanctuary War.”
New guidelines will now permit tourism in 20 per cent of core areas for ‘regulated low impact tourist visitation’. The court also ruled that no new tourism infrastructure should be developed in and around the reserves.
The rules further prescribe a minimum distance of more than 20 metres from all wildlife for visitors and 50 metres for vehicles.
Thanks to mythical claims of its medicinal value in traditional Asian remedies, rhino horn has become an incredibly valuable commodity at some $45,000 per pound.
(Photo: Act for Wildlife)
Heightened demand for horn has had stark consequences for the recovering rhino populations of Zimbabwe which has seen 300 dead rhinos because of poaching over the last 5 years. To try and halt the slaughter, conservationists have added de-horning to their toolkit. The following photos were taken on the Chishakwe ranch.
Dehorned rhino. (Photo: LJ Campbell – Chishakwe Ranch)
A spotter plane locates the rhino and passes the location to a ground crew. Once the ground crew is in place a chopper is called in.
Chopper carrying vet. (Photo: LJ Campbell – Chishakwe Ranch)
A vet darts the rhino from the chopper and the ground crew drives to the downed animal. The vet quickly moves in to keep a close watch. Speed is paramount.
The darted animals are blindfolded to avoid distraction which can stress them, and propped-up so the 8,000 pound beasts are not lying heavily on one side which might affect their circulation. They are sprayed with mist to keep them cool. The upper horn is removed with a chainsaw, leaving a ‘bed of horn’ to ensure that no pain is caused.
Not as painful as it looks. (Photo: LJ Campbell – Chishakwe Ranch)
Lowveld Rhino Trust team at work. (Photo: LJ Campbell – Chishakwe Ranch)
Finally the rhino is marked with paint so that they can be spotted easily from the air during the operations period.
On the go again. (Photo: LJ Campbell – Chishakwe Ranch)
Rhino team (Photo: LJ Campbell – Chishakwe Ranch)
Chishakwe ranch is part of a group of conservation ranches found in the Save Valley Conservancy which has responsibility for conserving rhinos across 1.3 million acres of southern Zimbabwe. The de-horning is done by the LowVeld Rhino Trust.
Source: earthtimes.org
Black rhinoceros in Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. (Photo: LWC)
Last year saw the official extinction of two rhino subspecies: the Vietnamese rhino, a subspecies of the Javan, and the western black rhino, a subspecies of the black.
There is one place where rhinos still thrive, however. The Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, which has found itself with a unique, but happy, problem: they have so many black rhinos, which are considered Critically Endangered by the IUNC Red List, that LWC needs to move some to stop rhino-fights. In other words, their rhino population has hit its limit for the 25,000 hectare (62,000 acre) nonprofit protected area.
Source: Mongabay.com
Josh Fields with wolf he took while elk hunting in the North Fork.
Rhino poaching is big business in Nepal, with hundreds killed every year for their valuable horns. The international demand for these animals is what is keeping the trade and the poachers going. To fight the problem, the country’s national parks have started using drone technology to stop the illegal trade. Al Jazeera’s Subina Shrestha reports from Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal.
Talks are underway to introduce them to Malaysia and Tanzania. Small-scale and remote-controlled, the drones are still being refined. They are light enough to be launched by hand and fly a preprogrammed route of up to 12 miles, filming the ground below with a stills or video camera.
Drones may also help with another serious problem facing endangered species: habitat destruction by monitoring changes to park boundaries and fight against encroachment.
Source: Animal Law Blog.
Another animal from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s “Rarest of the Rare” list of critically endangered species 2010.
White-headed langur. (Photo: Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute)
(Photo: Peking University Chongzuo Biodiversity Research Institute)
Source: 10awesome.com/
Twice a year in the Gulf of Mexico Golden Cow-nose stingrays swim from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to Florida in the spring and back in the fall.
Dogs attack sheep, kill 44
Oct 11, 2012 – From staff reports
The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the death of 44 sheep that reportedly were killed by dogs running at large north of Riverton. Deputies were notified of the issue at about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, when the owner of the sheep reported finding 50 to 75 of the animals dead or injured in their corral at 39 Jennings Road.
“It appears the dogs entered into a feed lot and ran the sheep against the outer railings,” Lee said. “Some sheep appeared to have died due to being trampled while others were directly attacked by the dogs.”
He said more may die as the result of injuries. The sheep owners are estimated to have lost more than $6,000 of livestock.
Two dogs have been identified as “responsible” for the killings, Lee said, but he guessed that more were involved.
“We have had this problem in the past in this same area,” Lee said. He warned dog owners to keep their animals at home.
“If you own a dog and fail to keep the dog from running at large, you have committed a criminal offense,” Lee said. “Dog owners are held criminally liable for damages to persons or livestock.”
Fines may be assessed to dog owners, Lee said, and their pets may be put down if the animals are determined to be vicious.
A blogger comments:
Dogs kill 44 sheep in Wyoming. Ho hum, but what if it had been wolves?
Oct 13, 2012
Story is of little interest to Wyoming media-
Dogs running loose have killed 44 sheep north of Riverton, Wyoming. Perhaps a score or more were injured. The incident has received minor attention from the Wyoming media. The story got more attention than a story about a bar fight, but not much, but what if wolves had killed 44 sheep? This is close to the average number of sheep killed in the state as a whole by wolves in the average year. For that, there is no end of complaining about wolf attacks here and there by ranchers who say they can tolerate no more, psychologically or economically.
Not to worry though, the sheriff sternly chided local dog owners.
Established by the Center for Biological Diversity in 2007 as a way to spotlight those who do their very worst to destroy wild places and drive species to extinction.
Montana Senator Jon Tester.
The bill marks the first time that politicians, rather than scientists, decided when a species should lose its protections. Since Tester’s bill, more than 600 wolves in the West have been killed by hunters, trappers and government agents. And Tester just added another provision to another bill, aiming to ban the government from saving thousands of eagles, condors, swans and other birds from being lethally poisoned by lead hunting ammunition left in the wild.
Cast your vote here.
The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and one of the largest found in the wild in the Western Hemisphere. The magnificent cats with their distinctive rosette markings once roamed from South America and Central America through the southern and central United States, but lost habitat and were killed off in the east in the 1700s.
According to recent estimates, there may be as many as 30,000 jaguars total across their range, with between 3,000 and 4,000 in Mexico. Populations thin out toward the northern end of the range to the border with the U.S.
Individuals from Mexico—where the cat is known as el tigre—have reappeared sporadically in the U.S. in the last several decades. While no one knows exactly how many jaguars are here, or how long they hang around before sneaking back to their breeding grounds in Mexico, their presence has set off repercussions on both sides of the border.
In 1915, in response to the general threat of livestock predators in the western U.S., primarily wolves, Congress funded the US Bureau of Biological Survey, previously an agency devoted to scientific research, to implement a program of predator extermination. The Biological Survey killed its first jaguar in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson three years later.
A jaguar along an isolated canyon in Sonora State in Mexico. (Photo: Earth Island Institute)
By 1972, with the jaguar presumed extinct in the US and declining elsewhere in the western hemisphere, the USFWS listed it as endangered, but only south of the border. Fifteen years later, a jaguar was tracked by hounds in the Dos Cabeza Mountains of Arizona and shot by a hunter. The slaying did not violate the Endangered Species Act because U.S. jaguars were still considered extinct rather than endangered.
Whatever they were designated they kept showing up. Ten years later two separate parties of cougar hunters photographed jaguars that their hounds had treed in the Peloncillos Mountains, in New Mexico near the Mexican border.
Using photos of the two cats as evidence, the Center for Biologic Diversity filed a lawsuit that forced the federal government in 1997 to list the jaguar as endangered in the United States, a move the USFWS had long resisted fearing that listing of the jaguar’s range as “critical habitat” could lead to new limits on cattle ranching on public lands and hunting in Arizona and New Mexico.
The cats kept on coming. Trap cameras set by a non-profit conservation group called the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project captured images of a male that was dubbed Macho A. In 2004, trail cameras set by a biologist named Emil McCain working with the Borderlands Jaguar Project captured images of a second cat in the Coronado National Forest, whom they called Macho B. When McCain analyzed Macho B’s spots, he discovered that this was one of the jaguars that that had been treed and photographed eight years earlier.
Macho B wandering the border in southern Arizona. (Photo: Emil McCain)
Border King in the Animas Mountains, March 7, 1996. (Photo: Warner Glenn)
In an attempt to appear it was doing something, the Jaguar Conservation Team made plans to capture a jaguar to affix a radio-collar for research. Conservationists warned of the potential risks and questioned the purpose of such a plan and how it fit into protecting the big cat’s future. Non-intrusive methods of research were available, but the Jaguar team swept both objections and suggestions aside. They wanted to capture a jaguar and that was it. Yet, as an endangered species, to make capturing a jaguar legal, USFWS first had to issue a permit authorizing such “take.”
Macho B.
On February 18, 2009, Arizona Game and Fish Department biologists found Macho B captured in a wire snare.
The snare had been set by biologist Emil McCain, who was working as a subcontractor for Arizona Game and Fish Department capturing mountain lions and bears for radio-collaring. Ostensibly, snaring a jaguar was a happy accident. The biologists tranquilized, radio-collared and released the cat.
Twelve days later, after he did not move as far or as frequently as expected following his capture and after he was observed ailing, Macho B was re-captured, diagnosed as terminally ill from kidney failure, and euthanized.
Macho B snared, Feb. 18, 2009. (Photo: AZ Dept Fish and Game)
Game and Fish said the capture was accidental, occurring as part of a bear-lion study. The Center for Biological Diversity called for an independent medical investigation, which revealed that the jaguar’s death was at least in part due to agency mismanagement.
Investigating Macho B’s death, the Interior Department’s inspector general concluded that Arizona Game and Fish did not have a permit for the capture, and stated that skinning the jaguar to preserve the pelt, undertaken instead of a necropsy because a Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor was unfamiliar with the word “necropsy,” resulted in loss of information and left doubt as to what had ailed Macho B. Although the entire corpse was not made available for a necropsy, some organs were preserved. A veterinary pathologist who examined the jaguar’s kidneys, but whose report was never released, told the Arizona Daily Star that the organs appeared healthy and that Macho B may have just suffered from dehydration.
In January 2010, the Interior Department’s inspector general released a report concluding that Macho B’s capture had been intentional—and that Game and Fish had no permit to capture jaguars, either intentionally or incidentally.
In May, 2010, Emil McCain admitted in federal court that he deliberately and without a permit captured Macho B by baiting a snare set in a canyon that he knew Macho B traversed and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor crime: illegal take of an endangered species. (McCain had convinced a female co-worker to plant the bait, and she was sentenced as well.) McCain said he knew there had been recent evidence a jaguar had appeared in the area of the snares as photographs of the cat had been taken near the capture site months earlier. He was sentenced to five years’ probation and fined $1,000.
Twelve years after it was created, and with little else to show for its efforts, the Jaguar Conservation Team and its powerbroker the Arizona Game and Fish Department, had killed, for scientific purposes but absent the rigor of real science and outside the constraints of federal law, the last known wild jaguar in the United States.
In November, Donnie Fenn, a mountain lion guide based in Benson, Ariz. was taking his 10-year-old daughter out on her first lion hunt in a mountain range in Cochise County when his pack of eight hounds treed a jaguar “twice the size of a big mountain lion.” Feen said that his dogs were scratched pretty badly by the cat. He made sure to confirm his run-in with the jaguar with photos and a video. Experts believe it was an adult male about 200 pounds.
In September of this year a trail camera took this picture.
Trail camera photo taken southeast of Tucson, Arizona in September, 2012, identified by Arizona state game officials as a jaguar. (Photo: Arizona Game and Fish Dept)
In 2000, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) seized 288 chimps from a failing private laboratory, The Coulston Foundation, and held them as a “research reserve colony” at the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) on Holloman Air Force Base, in New Mexico. All of these chimps have spent long and difficult years in laboratories, but since 2001 have been free from invasive tests and have seen their day to day lives slowly improve.
The NIH recently announced plans to move this group of mostly elderly, chronically ill chimpanzees to another lab for use in further research.
One of the chimps slated for transfer is Flo, currently the eldest surviving chimp in the Alamogordo colony. Flo was acquired from a zoo in Memphis, Tennessee in 1972. Her records (partial notes focusing on potential traumatic or stressful events, received via Freedom of Information Act) hint at what she has been subjected to over the years.
The last few years she has lived at APF with other elder chimpanzees with indoor-outdoor access, fresh fruit, and enrichment. The expected captive chimpanzee lifespan is 50. Flo turned 53 last month. Why subject her to this move? Why put her at risk for further invasive studies? What she deserves is release to sanctuary, where she can roam with other chimps.
According to National Institutes of Health records, the Alamogordo Primate Facility today holds 169 chimpanzees.
Contact Congress today and ask for support of the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (S. 810/H.R. 1513). This bill would end government testing on chimpanzees and retire federally-owned chimps, like the Alamogordo Primate Facility chimpanzees, to sanctuary at last.
First Light Productions 