Nature Ramble

How the threat to lions, leopards and wolves endangers us all

Though fearsome killers, big carnivores are also a precious resource, as their feeding habits keep many delicate ecosystems in balance. But too many predators are now facing extinction

Lions kill a buffalo in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve. Photograph: Jonathan & Angela Scott/Getty Images/AWL Images RM

They are the planet’s most prolific killers – and also some of nature’s most effective protectors. This is the stark conclusion of an international report that argues that lions, wolves, pumas, lynxes and other major carnivores play key roles in keeping ecosystems in balance. It also warns that the current depletion of numbers of major predators threatens to cause serious ecological problems across the globe.

The paper, written by a group of 14 leading ecologists and biologists from the US, Europe and Australia and published in the journal Science, calls for the establishment of an international initiative to conserve large carnivores and help them to coexist with humans. Failure to protect our top predators could soon have devastating consequences, they warn.

“Globally, we are losing our large carnivores,” said William Ripple, the report’s lead author. “Many of them are endangered and their ranges are collapsing. Many are at risk of extinction, either locally or globally. And, ironically, they are vanishing just as we are learning to appreciate their important ecological effects.”

The report has been produced, in part, to show that the classic vision of a large predator, such as a lion or a wolf, being an agent of harm to wildlife and a cause of widespread depletion of animal stocks is misguided. Careful analysis of predators’ food chains reveals a very different picture. “In fact, the myriad social and economic effects [of large carnivores] include many benefits,” it states.

Ripple, a professor at Oregon State University’s department of forest ecosystems and society, and his colleague Robert Beschta, have documented the impact of wolves in Yellowstone and other national parks in North America. When wolf numbers have been reduced, usually by hunters, this has led to an increase in numbers of herbivores, in particular the elk.

Elks browse on trees such as aspen, willow, cottonwood, and various berry-producing shrubs, and the more elks there are, the more browsing damage is done to these trees. The knock-on effect is striking, says the report.

“Local bird populations go down because they have fewer berries to eat,” added Ripple. “The same is true of bears, which also eat berries. Beaver populations are also affected. They have less plant life to eat and less wood for making their dams.

“For good measure, the roots of the willow and other shrubs help to hold the soil of river banks together, so they do not get washed away. This does happen, however, when you have no wolves, lots of elks and, therefore, poor levels of vegetation. So you can see that the wolf – which sits at the top of the food chain in midwest America – has an impact that goes right down to having an effect on the shapes of streams.”

Yet wolves were once considered to be such a menace that they were exterminated inside Yellowstone national park in 1926. The park’s ecology slowly transformed with their absence until, in 1995, they were reintroduced.

“Very quickly, the park’s ecosystems returned to normal,” said Ripple. “I was impressed with how resilient it proved.”

Another example of the ecological importance of large carnivores is provided by lions and leopards. Both animals prey on olive baboons in Africa, and as numbers of these key predators have declined, numbers of olive baboons have increased. The population of lions in particular has been so reduced that it now only covers 17% of its historical range, while numbers of olive baboons have risen in direct proportion.

The consequence of this increase has been significant, say the authors. Olive baboons are omnivores and eat small primates and deer. When olive baboon numbers rise, populations of local monkeys and deer plummet. There is also an effect on human populations.

“Baboons pose the greatest threat to livestock and crops in sub-Saharan Africa, and they use many of the same sources of animal protein and plant foods as humans,” states the Science paper. “In some areas, baboon raids in agricultural fields require families to keep children out of school so they can help guard planted crops.”

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Nature Ramble

India, Bangladesh and Africa this week.

Regal species are losing ground.

I’m talking about Bengal tigers and African lions.

Tigers under threat from disappearing mangrove forest

Report shows vast forest, shared by India and Bangladesh, is being rapidly destroyed by environmental change

A tiger roams within the Sunderban, some 140 km south of Calcutta. Photograph: EPA/Piyal Adhikary Photograph: Piyal Adhikary/EPA

A vast mangrove forest shared by India and Bangladesh that is home to possibly 500 Bengal tigers is being rapidly destroyed by erosion, rising sea levels and storm surges, according to a major study by researchers at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and others.

The Sundarbans forest took the brunt of super cyclone Sidr in 2007, but new satellite studies show that 71% of the forested coastline is retreating by as much as 200 metres a year. If erosion continues at this pace, already threatened tiger populations living in the forests will be put further at risk.

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Big cat crisis: Africa’s lions being crowded out by people

Satellite survey shows farms and settlements eating up open savannah, especially in west Africa where only 500 lions remain

The lions that roam Africa’s savannah have lost as much as 75% of their habitat in the last 50 years, a study has found. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

African lions are running out of room to roam and some local populations, especially in west Africa, are heading for extinction, a new study warns.

New satellite data, studied by scientists from Duke University, found about three-quarters of Africa’s wide open savannah had disappeared over the last half century, broken up into farms or engulfed by development.

“The reality is that from an original area a third larger than the continental United States, only 25% remains,” Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Lion populations have dropped by two-thirds over the last half century – down to as few as 32,000, confined to isolated pockets of land. Only 10 of those 67 lion areas are stable and well-protected – lion “strongholds”. Other populations, especially in west and central Africa, were so small and so threatened – by poachers, disease, or inbreeding – they may not survive for long into the future.

The study estimates that more than 6,000 lions are in populations with a very high risk of local extinction.

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Comment:

So sad to see these, amongst the most regal animals, are threatened by man’s progress.

What a high price we pay.

 

 

Monday Moaning

Man is the only beast that kills for sport!

‘Canned hunting’: the lions bred for slaughter

Canned hunting is a fast-growing business in South Africa, where thousands of lions are being bred on farms to be shot by wealthy foreign trophy-hunters

Lions bred to be shot in South Africa’s ‘canned hunting’ industry – image The Guardian

They are adorably cute, with grubby brown fur so soft it seems to slip through my fingers like flour. It is only when one of the nine-week-old cubs playfully grabs my arm with its teeth and squeezes with an agonising grip that I remember – this is a lion, a wild animal. These four cubs are not wild, however. They are kept in a small pen behind the Lion’s Den, a pub on a ranch in desolate countryside 75 miles south of Johannesburg. Tourists stop to pet them but most visitors do not venture over the hill, where the ranch has pens holding nearly 50 juvenile and fully-grown lions, and two tigers.

Moreson ranch is one of more than 160 such farms legally breeding big cats in South Africa. There are now more lions held in captivity (upwards of 5,000) in the country than live wild (about 2,000). While the owners of this ranch insist they do not hunt and kill their lions, animal welfare groups say most breeders sell their stock to be shot dead by wealthy trophy-hunters from Europe and North America, or for traditional medicine in Asia. The easy slaughter of animals in fenced areas is called “canned hunting”, perhaps because it’s rather like shooting fish in a barrel. A fully-grown, captive-bred lion is taken from its pen to an enclosed area where it wanders listlessly for some hours before being shot dead by a man with a shotgun, hand-gun or even a crossbow, standing safely on the back of a truck. forHe pays anything from £5,000 to £25,000, and it is all completely legal.

Like other tourists and daytrippers from Jo’burg, I pay a more modest £3.50 to hug the lions at Moreson, a game ranch which on its website invites tourists to come and enjoy the canned hunting of everything from pretty blesbok and springbok – South Africa’s national symbol – to lions and crocodiles. After a cuddle with the cubs, I go on a “game drive” through the 2,000 hectare estate. Herds of blue wildebeest, red hartebeest and eland run from the truck, then stop and watch us, warily: according to the guides, the animals seem to know when visitors are not carrying guns. At the far end of the property is an abandoned farm, surrounded by pens of lethargic-looking big cats. One pair mate in front of us. Two healthy looking tigers tear at chicken carcasses rapidly rotting in the African sun.

The animals look well cared for. But Cathleen Benade, a ranch assistant who is studying wildlife photography and is devoted to the cubs, reveals that they were taken away from their mothers just an hour after birth and bottle-fed by humans for the first eight weeks of their life. After dark, as the lions roar in the cages below the pub veranda, Maryke Van Der Merwe, the manager of Lion’s Den and daughter of the ranch owner, explains that if the cubs weren’t separated from their mother – by blowing a horn to scare the adult lion away – the young lions would starve to death, because their mother had no milk. She says the mother is not distressed: “She’s looking for the cubs for a few hours but it’s not like she’s sad. After a day or two I don’t think she remembered that she had cubs.”

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Opinion:

Nothing sickens me like this!

 

Nature Ramble

This week we are going for a look at cats…

Yes, but look at the size of the cats, they’re not your average moggy.

“Kevin Richardson, animal behaviorist, works with some of the most dangerous animals known to man. He sleeps with lions, cuddles newborn hyenas and swims with lionesses.” The Lion Whisperer

Source: Glenn Folkes, thanks for the heads up

Visit Kevin Richardson – The Lion Whisperer site

Even though I am a dedicated cat person, I am not even close to this guy’s league. Oh, to have this dom (gift).

Amazing.

I saw this during the week and was fascinated by the playfulness of the big cats, just thought I would share it with you.

Saturday Satire