The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) are requesting that the Government of Tanzania reconsider the proposed construction of a commercial road through the world’s best known wildlife sanctuary — Serenget…
Why did the deer cross the road? It didn’t. And neither did the bear, fox or coyote, according to a new study by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society that says wildlife underpasses designed to keep wildlife off the New York Thruway are not working.
Lesson one: don’t steal a bear’s dinner. Last week, a wolverine – a ferocious member of the weasel family able to kill a caribou – learned this the hard way, according to a team of researchers from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Scientists Kristine and Bob Inman, while tracking the wolverine as part of a WCS study of these rare carnivores, discovered that the animal’s radio collar began emitting a “mortality signal,” indicating it hadn’t moved in several hours. They later found the wolverine’s carcass, showing clear evidence that it had been killed by a bear. Nearby, they discovered the carcass of an elk, along with additional evidence that the wolverine had attempted to drag it away from the bear, thus instigating the fatal encounter.
A recent study warns that a proposal to remove grizzly bears and wolves living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem from the Endangered Species List is premature, because neither species may be fully recovered. Federal officials are now moving to delist the largest carnivores of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, citing rising population levels of grizzly bears and wolves as evidence of conservation success. However, the authors of the study say that a simple increase in numbers of wolves and bears does not necessarily mean full ecological recovery. The authors looked at how these formerly absent predators are interacting with moose populations, and found that predator/prey relationships in GYE may show signs of dysfunction.
It’s been called “The Last Place on Earth” by National Geographic magazine, and Time describes it as the “Last Eden.” The Goualougo Triangle, nestled between two rivers in a Central African rain forest, is so remote that primate researchers who traveled 34 miles, mostly by foot, from the nearest village through dense forests and swampland to get there, have discovered a rare find: chimpanzees that have had very little or no contact at all with humans. The chimpanzees’ behavior when first coming in contact with the researchers was a telltale sign of lack of human exposure — the chimpanzees didn’t run and hide.
A remote camera clicked the first known photograph of a wild Siberian or Amur tiger in northern China last week, providing strong evidence that tigers are crossing from the Russian Far East to repopulate previous tiger strongholds. The tiger was photographed in Jilin Province’s Hunchun Nature Reserve. Staff members at the reserve set up the camera-trap after a local farmer reported that a predator killed a mule. The next day, they retrieved the film and discovered the image of an adult tiger feeding on the carcass.
An immense grassland in Mongolia ? an area likened to the long-gone prairies of the American West, complete with staggering migrations of hundreds of thousands of animals ? is threatened by a proposal to build a road through its center, according to scientists with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society. The road proposal is part of the “Millennium Highway,” which plans to connect Mongolia to China and the Russian Far East.
A rare dolphin species known for assisting fishermen by driving fish into their nets may soon disappear from the great Asian river for which the animals are named. According to a recent scientific survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its partners, the Irrawaddy dolphin may vanish from the Ayeyarwady River (formerly Irrawaddy) without efforts to protect these aquatic mammals from human activities along the river.