Blood does not buy goodwill

In the paper published Guillaume Chapron and Adrian treves in Proceedings B of the Royal Society (Blood does not buy goodwill: allowing culling increases poaching of a large carnivore), the authors looked at whether removing protection for large carnivores would decrease illegal hunting. This idea is supported by many governments. Does it work as expected? Find out by watching this video and by reading the paper available at http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/283/1830/20152939.

Abstract of the paper:

Quantifying environmental crime and the effectiveness of policy interventions is difficult because perpetrators typically conceal evidence. To prevent illegal uses of natural resources, such as poaching endangered species, governments have advocated granting policy flexibility to local authorities by liberalizing culling or hunting of large carnivores. We present the first quantitative evaluation of the hypothesis that liberalizing culling will reduce poaching and improve population status of an endangered carnivore. We show that allowing wolf (Canis lupus) culling was substantially more likely to increase poaching than reduce it. Replicated, quasi-experimental changes in wolf policies in Wisconsin and Michigan, USA, revealed that a repeated policy signal to allow state culling triggered repeated slowdowns in wolf population growth, irrespective of the policy implementation measured as the number of wolves killed. The most likely explanation for these slowdowns was poaching and alternative explanations found no support. When the government kills a protected species, the perceived value of each individual of that species may decline; so liberalizing wolf culling may have sent a negative message about the value of wolves or acceptability of poaching. Our results suggest that granting management flexibility for endangered species to address illegal behaviour may instead promote such behaviour.

Large carnivores’ tough life: Lion and Buffalo fight to death

I usually hear people saying that herbivores are prey and are vulnerable to be killed at any moment. They have fear, and while grazing/browsing are vigilant and ready to run if anything similar to a predator has been spotted or smelled in the surroundings. They are seen as the weakest against the powerful predators armed with sharped claws and muscled jaws that hold an army of threatening canines.

From my point of view, the truth is slightly different. Predators do not have an easy life neither. They have to compete with other powerful and armed carnivores of their same and other species for food, space, access to reproduction, survival, etc. They also have to cope with diseases, human persecution (their biggest challenge in life!) and always have to be in good shape. They must be successful hunters which required skills and techniques that need to be constantly improved throughout their life.

Quite a difficult task too… who is afraid now?

Next pictures were published in the Daily Mail two weeks ago. They were taken by Matt Armstrong-Ford, who works as a safari guide in the South Luangwa National Park, Zambia.

I thought interesting to share them as they well illustrate the predators’ tough life.

Desesperate six-year-old male lion suffering from mange was waiting nearby a waterhole for a meal when the lone female buffalo appeared in the scene.

The feline is tossed around in the air as he attempts to mount his adversary.

The amateur photographer said that the fight lasted up to an hour. The buffalo managed to shake the lion itself off several times but instead of trying to escape just stood there. Both animals stared at each other both too exhausted to move. After a few minutes of rest the lion then went for the buffalo and another ten-minute battle ensued.

As it looked like fortune was favouring the exhausted but ravenous lion a member of the buffalo’s herd came to its aid and delivered a deadly blow.

After this the lion managed to drag himself under a bush to lick his wounds. Both animals were covered in blood by the end. Two days later the lion succumbed to his injuries, while the buffalo’s carcass was found two weeks later having failed to fight off infection

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2945904/Battle-death-Buffalo-lion-endure-epic-hour-long-fight-leaves-animals-fatal-injuries.html

Vanishing Kings – the desert adapted lions of Namibia’s Kaokoveld

Namibia’s Desert Lion Conservation Project was started by Dr Flip Stander in 1998. One of the prides is subject of a documentary by Will and Liane Steenkamp, “Vanishing Kings”, due for release in 2015.

A king without a kingdom…

Public Domain Public domain

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has been labelling the iconic lion as ‘vulnerable’ since 1996. Various estimates show that populations have been going down by about 30–50% over each 20-year period of the second half of the 20th century. Starting with a population of around 400,000 in 1950, lions are now down to around 16,500-47,000 living in the wild based on estimates from 2002–2004 (certainly less than that now).

What’s happening? Mostly habitat loss and conflicts with humans, as well as some disease outbreaks.

The best way to illustrate just how much things have changed for lions is with the map above. The red areas show the species’ historic range, while the blue areas show where they can be found today… Sad, isn’t it?

For more on this, see our previous article about the “catastrophic collapse” of lion populations in West Africa.

Personal comment:

I trully hope that this beautiful animal will not be devanished one day. Theere is nothing like hearing the lion roaring from your tenth. I had this amazing feeling both in Botswana and Namibia and there is nothing compaable to it!

To end this post, some lion pics from my last trips

Lion, Botswana. Photo: Rubén Portas

Lion, Botswana. Photo: Rubén Portas

lion cub, Namibia. Photo: Rubén Portas

Collared Lioness, Namibia. Photo: Rubén Portas

Lion, Namibia. Photo: Rubén Portas

Dingos May Have Outfoxed Tigers

New evidence suggests that thylacines were driven to extinction on the mainland by dingo attacks rather than competition for food, as previously thought.

Thylacines flourished widely until around 3500 years ago. Their disappearance from areas other than Tasmania co­incided with the arrival of the dingo, which never reached Tasmania.

It is common for predators to kill smaller species that might represent competition. However, this was once dismissed as a possible explanation for the thylacine’s mainland disappearance since the Tasmanian tiger was larger than dingos.

Dr Mike Letnic of the University of NSW says this view ignores Bergmann’s Rule – the observation that animals are larger in colder climates – so Letnic and colleagues at the University of Sydney compared the size of thylacine and dingo bones from similar areas. They found a substantial overlap in size, but some adult thylacines were much smaller than any dingoes.

Evidence from Tasmania shows that thylacines were highly sexually dimorphic, with the females much smaller than the males. Although it is not possible to identify the sex of most of the fossils, it seems likely that male thylacines were of similar size to dingoes while females were not much larger than foxes.

“Recent studies have shown that foxes are suppressed in areas that have many dingoes, and it appears that the dingoes kill the foxes. Hence we believe that the same mechanism occurred 3500–5000 years ago with dingoes killing thylacines,” says Dr Mathew Crowther of Sydney University’s School of Biological Sciences.

Male thylacines may have been large enough to fight off dingos, but the females would probably have succumbed, leaving the species unable to breed.

In PloS One the researchers argued that direct attacks by dingoes may have wiped out the thylacines. “Recent analysis has found the evidence for competition as a driver of extinction is weak,” Letnic says. “It can have a big effect on abundance, but usually a species can find a location in which it can survive. Direct killing is harder to avoid, particularly with an introduced species, which the smaller animal may lack adaptations to avoid.”

Letnic acknowledges that the theory lacks direct evidence, such as dingo bite marks on thylacine fossils. However, he says finding this would be “like looking for a needle in a haystack”.

The paper also raises the possibility that changes in Aboriginal culture and economy, coinciding with the dingo’s arrival, may have contributed, as might the dingo’s greater tendency to hunt in packs.

Source: http://www.australasianscience.com.au/article/issue-julyaugust-2012/dingos-may-have-outfoxed-tigers.html

Paper conclusion:
Dingoes were similarly sized to male thylacines but were considerably larger than female thylacines on mainland Australia during the Holocene. Small size may have made female thylacines particularly susceptible to direct killing by dingoes and such killing could have driven thylacines to extinction. Due to their lower metabolic rate and convergent morphology, thylacines would have also been susceptible to resource competition with dingoes, but competition is generally thought to be a weaker extinction threat than predation. Our results provide support for the hypothesis that direct killing by larger dingoes contributed to the extinction of the thylacine on mainland Australia. However, attributing the extinction of the thylacine to just one cause is problematic because the arrival of dingoes coincided with another potential extinction driver, the intensification of the human economy.

Access to the paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034877&representation=PDF

Saving More Than Just Snow Leopards

By PETER ZAHLER and GEORGE SCHALLERFEB. 1, 2014

The cold and rugged mountains of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and China seem an unlikely place to find a flourishing combination of new community institutions and international diplomacy. Few people live there. Those who do are mostly desperately impoverished livestock herders. They have been largely isolated from the rest of humanity on these enormous mountains where the Indian subcontinent once crashed into Asia, buckling the earth’s crust and raising peaks over 20,000 feet.

However, despite its isolation — or perhaps because of it — something fascinating has been happening in this cold mountain landscape. Communities are coming together to manage this fragile and unforgiving place, where people scrape a living from sparse alpine pastures. At the same time, neighboring countries are finding ways to cooperate across borders that in recent history have become almost as hostile as the rugged terrain. As odd as it may seem, a big cat is helping to lead the way.

Once largely ignored because of its nearly inaccessible habitat and secretive behavior, the snow leopard has slowly gained notice as studies have found that it is increasingly threatened, with likely fewer than 7,000 animals left across its enormous range in Asia. In turn, this interest in the cats has drawn attention to the human communities of these mountains and the fragility of their ecosystem, particularly their watersheds, which are crucial to the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people in the lowlands.

Elusive Cats and Their Endangered Prey

Threats to leopards’ prey vary widely over remote areas, where research is difficult at best. Here are three prey species known to be in decline.

In this wilderness above the tree line — where Marco Polo sheep with horns six feet from tip to tip crash heads and the magnificent ibex scales cliffs as if they were stairs — the smoke-colored snow leopard glides silently and nearly invisibly as the top predator. The cat is what biologists call an “indicator species” of the health of the overall ecosystem. Efforts by scientists and local and national governments to save the snow leopard are rooted in the idea that, like the big cat, environmental threats are not confined to political boundaries.

It was not until the 1970s that wildlife biologists began to roam the mountains in search of clues about the snow leopard’s mysterious existence. Sometimes going months without a sighting, biologists used indirect evidence — tracks, droppings, stories from local herders — to deduce details of the cat’s life.

It turns out that snow leopards face several major threats: poaching, both for their skins and body parts, sought after by the traditional medicine trade; the decline of prey such as wild sheep and goats; retaliatory killings by shepherds and villagers for livestock lost to snow leopards; and shrinking wild habitat.

As these threats grew in both clarity and immediacy — with snow leopards having been exterminated in some mountain ranges and decimated in others — it became clear that this iconic big cat could disappear entirely if immediate action was not taken. Conservation organizations turned from research to focusing on helping local villagers manage their land and wildlife.

Protecting ecosystems can be a complicated undertaking. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, disease is a serious threat to livestock. Vaccinations have reduced livestock losses and made villagers less inclined to retaliate against the cats for the few sheep and goats they kill. The problem is that vaccinations can result in a rapid increase in livestock numbers — and to overgrazing, habitat destruction, the disappearance of wild prey and, perversely, an increase in the number of domestic animals killed by snow leopards. So villagers must agree to limit their livestock numbers in return for vaccinations.

However, after years and in some cases decades of hard work and trial and error, real successes are being seen. For example, 55 communities in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan and 65 in northern Pakistan (where the Himalayas, Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Pamir mountains come together) have recently formed committees to safeguard their resources. These committees now deploy almost 200 volunteer community rangers to monitor snow leopards and their prey and enforce anti-poaching regulations. In northern Afghanistan, community rangers have helped capture four snow leopards and fit them with GPS tracking collars to better understand their ecology.

Governments have been supportive of these efforts and are working to strengthen local groups. For example, in Afghanistan, two new protected areas — the second and third in the country’s history — are being developed in tandem by communities and the national government, with the expectation that they will be co-managed by both to protect snow leopards, Marco Polo sheep and ibex.

In Qinghai Province on the Tibetan Plateau, considered the “water tower of China” because the headwaters of the great rivers — the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong — are there, the Chinese government has initiated a major bottom-up community-based conservation program to train local people to monitor the health of the habitat and create an “ecological civilization,” as they call it. Certain communities have been given rights by the government to protect and manage their own land, and some areas have even set up their own conservation organizations, as have some Buddhist monasteries.

Recent meetings among Asian nations have led to proposals for sharing data, coordinating research and creating a large protected area for snow leopards across China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. China and Pakistan are working cooperatively to manage the adjoining Taxkorgan Natural Reserve in China and Khunjerab National Park in Pakistan. And government officials from all 12 snow leopard range countries met in Kyrgyzstan last fall to join in a declaration to better protect the snow leopard.

Even so, huge challenges still exist. The region will always be physically isolated and difficult to reach. Local poverty remains a significant problem that can slow or even impede change. In some areas security is a real concern, and events at the regional or international level can threaten to derail progress.

But one thing is clear: Changes are afoot in the high mountains of Asia. And a mysterious, secretive and snow-colored cat appears to be leading them.

Peter Zahler is deputy director for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Asia Program. George Schaller is a senior conservationist at the society and vice president of Panthera, a conservation group focused on saving the world’s wild cats.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/saving-more-than-just-snow-leopards.html?

RELOCATING HUMANS FOR TIGER CONSERVATION IS A WIN FOR BOTH

Humans and large carnivores tend not to get along very well. When there’s not enough for hyenas to eat in Ethiopia, they turn on donkey herds. If a few sharks come a bit too close for comfort, governments institute sanctioned culls. In some parts of Europe, bears are killed in retaliation for livestock depredation.

There are only three possible solutions for any sustained clash between human communities and large carnivores. One, the needs of our species can be put first, to the detriment of the predators and the ecosystems in which they live. Two, conservation organizations can promote “peaceful coexistence,” which often includes education about the important role that apex predators play in maintaining an ecosystem, and monetary compensation for livestock losses. Three, the needs of wildlife can be put first, and humans can be removed from their habitat.

The problem with the first solution is obvious, and was seen following the complete removal of wolves from Yellowstone National Park. In most cases, a plan for peaceful coexistence is probably preferable: humans are taught how to avoid interacting with large predators, and receive payment to offset any income losses from slaughtered livestock. However, there are some extreme situations in which human relocation is the best option. Could resettling human communities away from critical tiger habitat along the Nepal-India border benefit both groups? Research published this week in Biological Conservationsays yes.

Tigers (Panthera tigris) in the Terai Arc Landscape can inflect both economic losses on impoverished pastoral communities, via livestock depredation, as well as human losses. The TAL is a region comprised of eleven Nepalese and Indian protected ecosystems along the Himalayan lowlands and foothills, and is home to nearly 7 million people. Most of the area is also critically important habitat for tigers. Historically, a people known as the Gujjars lived in the area where they grazed their livestock in the lowland forests during the winter and in the higher-elevation alpine meadows in the summer. The seasonal movement of the farmers and their livestock meant that their grazing was sustainable, but in recent years sociopolitical pressures have forced the Gujjars to reside year round in the foothills and lowlands. As a result, the lands have become overgrazed, resulting in a deteriorated ecosystem not just for the farmers and their livestock (mainly buffalo) but also for the rest of the wildlife that shares it, including tigers.

Tigers are also fairly finicky creatures who require vast amounts of land in order to feed adequately and to find enough safe places to breed. As the researchers, led by Abishek Harihar, put it, “securing and strengthening protected areas or breeding sources in exclusion of anthropogenic disturbances, while ensuring that the larger landscape matrix is permeable to movement of tigers between the embedded source sites have become the cornerstones of tiger conservation.” In other words, the best way to help tigers is to stay out of their way.

Starting in 1984, 1125 Gujjar families were resettled away from critical tiger habitat. It cost just $360 USD per household, which paid for agricultural land, houses, and livestock sheds. The resettled Gujjars “have adopted an agro-pastoralist lifestyle and gained access to amenities such as education, medical services, veterinary care for their livestock,” and as a result, the vacated lands have witnessed increases not just in the tiger population, but in the ungulates that they hunt.

Now, Harihar and colleagues interviewed the heads of 158 Gujjar dera still in the tiger zone, resulting in data for 2237 individuals. (A dera is comprised of 2-6 households belonging to a father and his married sons; only the head of each dera, usually the father, was interviewed.) They found that most of the Gujjars – 156 of 158 interviewed – were unhappy in their current situation and were eager to be relocated with government assistance. On average, 89% of a household’s income came from milk production meaning that livestock losses, whether to disease or depredation, were particularly problematic for them. They believed that at least one quarter of all deaths was due to predation, either by tigers or leopards. And while those deaths led to some $45,000 dollars in lost revenue, only 10% of households received compensation. The researchers think that this is in large part attributable to the Gujjar’s 9% literacy rate, which impedes their filing of paperwork.

A map of tiger occupancy across the Terai Arc Landscape, with locations of the households interviewed during this study.

While large carnivores are not the primary driver of livestock losses for this community even in areas of extreme tiger density, such kills may be particularly salient and be more easily remembered. As a result, the occasional predation coupled with a low rate of governmental compensation “has resulted in incidences of retaliatory poisoning” and “involvement of community members with organized poachers,” the researchers say. Still, tigers and leopards rate low on the list of reasons that they want to move.

Most said instead that the “forests are no longer productive enough to graze and raise livestock for milk,” reflecting the problems with overgrazing. Many also referred to the lack of access to education and health facilities. Indeed, their desire to shift to a mixed agricultural/pastoralist lifestyle in a new place suggests a desire to diversify their income streams away from an increasingly unsustainable milk-based economy. “Being a largely illiterate community,” Harihar says, Gujjars are aware of “how the lack of education is hindering their ability to adapt to an increasingly monetary economy.” Resettlement would also bring them closer to veterinary facilities, an important benefit since three quarters of their livestock are lost each year to disease or injury.

Conservation organizations and local governments might therefore take advantage of the fact that many from the Gujjar community are ready to be relocated if only they had the resources to do it; such resources could be preferentially allocated towards those in critical tiger habitats, which need to be free of anthropogenic disturbances to allow the tigers to thrive. In lower-priority areas, the emphasis could be placed on peaceful coexistence by eliminating barriers towards receiving compensation for livestock depredation, and by providing better education on livestock husbandry and management to the farmers. In that way, both the Gujjars and the tigers could maximally benefit, a distressingly rare outcome in the world of wildlife conservation. – Jason G. Goldman | 5 February 2014

Source:
Harihar A., Ghosh-Harihar M. & MacMillan D.C. (2014). Human resettlement and tiger conservation – Socio-economic assessment of pastoralists reveals a rare conservation opportunity in a human-dominated landscape, Biological Conservation, 169 167-175. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2013.11.012

http://conservationmagazine.org/2014/02/relocating-humans-tiger-conservation-win/

 

Over 75 percent of large predators are declining

The world’s top carnivores are in big trouble: this is the take-away message from a new review paper published today in Science. Looking at 31 large-bodied carnivore species (i.e those over 15 kilograms or 33 pounds), the researchers found that 77 percent are in decline and more than half have seen their historical ranges decline by over 50 percent. In fact, the major study comes just days after new research found that the genetically-unique West African lion is down to just 250 breeding adults.

“Globally, we are losing our large carnivores,” says lead author of the study, William Ripple, with Oregon State University. “Many of them are endangered. Their ranges are collapsing. Many of these animals are at risk of extinction, either locally or globally. And, ironically, they are vanishing just as we are learning about their important ecological effects.”

The story of the world’s large carnivores is a largely bleak one. In the not so distant past, most people—even scientists—largely viewed large carnivores as competitors, pests, and deadly threats. Such views led to conflict and even extermination campaigns that killed-off many of the world’s top predators in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and North Africa, and decimated populations elsewhere. In fact, the study finds that 66 percent of the 31 biggest carnivores are currently listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List.

The leopard has lost 35 percent of its historical range and is decreasing. Photo by: Kirstin Abley.

“These carnivores often require large prey and expansive habitats,” write the scientists. “It is these food requirements and wide-ranging behavior that often bring them into conflict with humans and livestock. This, in addition to human intolerance, renders them vulnerable to extinction.”

In many parts of the world, top predators are still shot, trapped, poisoned, or even speared. Even where they are not directly targeted, big predators are rapidly losing both their habitat and their prey base, leading to a trend of vanishing top predators even in protected areas.

According to the study, the major trend underpinning this global decline in big predators is the rapidly-rising population of another predator: humans.

“An increasing human population and subsequent rate of urbanization inevitably means many habitats will be further reduced or modified. This will place top predators at increased risk of extinction,” co-author Euan Ritchie with Deakin University in Australia told mongabay.com., adding that “the issue of an increasing human population poses challenges well beyond just maintaining top predators in the environment. How we are going to produce enough food while still maintaining the biodiversity we are so dependent upon is arguably society’s greatest challenge.”

However, even as most big-bodied predators continue to decline, popular views of these megafauna are slowly shifting. Large-bodied predators now have many conservation champions, and elucidate passionate responses from advocates. These animals are also often seen as key symbols for global conservation efforts, and in some parts of the world (notably the U.S. and Europe) a few big predators are staging mini-comebacks. But perhaps, more importantly, scientists are just beginning to understand the outsized role of big carnivores in the world’s ecosystems.

Sea otters play a major role in the health of kelp forests. Photo by: Norman S. Smith.

“There is now overwhelming evidence from around the world that we are better off with top predators in the environment because of the many important roles they perform, such as reducing overgrazing of vegetation by herbivores which increases the carbon sequestration capabilities of habitats and in turn assists with ameliorating the impacts of climate change,” says Ritchie.

In fact, scientists have long theorized that big predators exert a powerful ecological influence on the foodchain by keeping herbivore populations low, but now they are discovering additional avenues in which big carnivores impact ecosystems. For one thing, top predators also keep mesopredators (medium-sized predators) in check via harassment, intimidation, and sometimes downright killing. Losing big predators can mean a sudden explosion of mesopredator abundance, impacting species all down the line. For example, Australia has built a massive fence that keeps the dingoes (Canis lupus dingo) out of sheep grazing areas. However, in these same areas, red fox—an invasive predator—runs amuck, leading to increased pressure on native mammals.

“Overall, the suppression of dingoes has probably contributed to the endangerment and extinction of small marsupials and rodents over much of the continent,” the scientists write.

The unmistakable importance of predators is not regulated to the land alone. Research has shown that sea otters (Enhydra lutris) exert a huge influence on their environment by keeping urchin populations in control. When sea otters are killed off, sea urchin populations explode, decimating kelp forests. The researchers write that sea otters “[enhance] the abundance and distribution of kelp and other fleshy macroalgae in coastal inshore ecosystems.”

Gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park: the top predators were reintroduced into the park after a 70 year absence. Photo by: Doug McLaughlin.

Probably the most famous example of the importance of top predators comes from Yellowstone National Park. The reintroduction of wolves into the park in the 1990s has had massive impacts on the ecosystem. With the return of the wolves, elk behavior changed significantly: instead of browsing out in the open, they took to the forests for protection. This allowed trees to grow unimpeded in many parts of the park where they had been overgrazed for decades, including along river and stream beds. The impacts spread to songbirds, beavers, fish, overall biodiversity and even carbon sequestration. In a roundabout way, wolves became the true aborists of Yellowstone.

The American black bear is the world’s only bear species whose population is on the rise. Photo by: Public Domain.

The American black bear is the world’s only bear species whose population is on the rise. Photo by: Public Domain. “I am impressed with how resilient the Yellowstone ecosystem is. It isn’t happening quickly everywhere, but in some places, ecosystem restoration has started there,” says Ripple. “Nature is highly interconnected. The work at Yellowstone and other places shows how one species affects another and another through different pathways. It’s humbling as a scientist to see the interconnectedness of nature.”

Given this changing understanding of predator importance, Ritchie says many of the world’s governments are woefully mismanaging their predator populations.

Gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park: the top predators were reintroduced into the park after a 70 year absence. Photo by: Doug McLaughlin.

“In the case of wolves in North America and dingoes in Australia, their lethal control often fractures social structures leading to more not less wolves and dingoes and often increased not decreased attacks on livestock,” says Ritchie, who argues that policies of culling predators “potentially [exacerbate]” human conflict with predators” and undercut ecosystem services.

“Governments should instead promote policies and actions such as using guardian animals for protecting livestock, as this will lead to improved and sustained environmental and economic outcomes,” he adds.

But how many predators are needed to fulfill their ecological role? In many cases, scientists aren’t wholly certain, but Ritchie says the answer is actually more complex than a simple number.

“It’s not just how many predators there are but the age and sex of individuals is important. When predator populations are greatly reduced and interfered with through lethal control, relationships between individuals breakdown and predators can behave in unexpected and sometimes very negative ways,” he notes. In many predatory species, infants and adolescents learn from older individuals. When mature individuals are killed-off, young predators are left without their mentors, often leading to more erratic behavior and posing a higher risk both to livestock and people.

Despite growing knowledge about the importance of top predators, the ecological role of most of the world’s large-bodied predators remains unknown. Perhaps more alarming still, scientists lack good data on the population sizes of many of the world’s top predators, leaving conservationists guessing. But where information is available: it is disheartening. Lion populations have fallen from an estimated 100,000 in 1960 to 15,000-35,000 today. There are currently more captive tigers in the U.S. alone than there are tigers in the wild worldwide (about 3,200). The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) has lost 98 percent of its historical range and sports a total population of less than 500.

Not all the news is bleak: wolves are returning to long-lost habitats in the U.S. and Western Europe, conservationists have launched a massive campaign to double tiger numbers in the wild by 2022, and the world’s rarest big predator—the red wolf (Canis rufus)—is bouncing back after once being thought totally extinct. However, the bad news—and the relentless pressures—very much outweighs the good for the world’s big predators.

“Promoting tolerance and coexistence with large carnivores is a crucial societal challenge that will ultimately determine the fate of Earth’s largest carnivores and all that depends upon them, including humans,” the scientists conclude.

The dingo fence is one of the longest structure on the planet, stretching for 5,614 kilometers (3,488 miles).

Wolves killed in Russia. In much of the world, governments still practice massive culling measures to manage carnivores.

The Javan tiger, a distinct subspecies, went extinct in the 1970s. Photo by: Public Domain.

Citations:

• W.J. Ripple, R.L. Beschta, M.P. Nelson, et al. Status and Ecological Effects of the World’s Largest Carnivores. Science (2014) Vol 334.

This article was written by Jeremy Hance for Mongabay.com

Source: http://focusingonwildlife.com/news/over-75-percent-of-large-predators-declining/

The world’s top predators are in decline, and it’s hurting us too

Humans have an innate fear of large predators, and with good reason. Nobody wants to be a shark or a lion’s next meal.

But new research in the journal Science shows that our inability to live with these animals is putting their survival in great danger, and doing untold damage to the environment.

Through modifying the habitats of large predators or killing predators more directly, we are greatly compromising the ecosystems that they help to keep in balance — free of charge. In turn this environmental degradation creates many problems that have severe consequences for humans.

 

We ain’t lion, this predator stuff is a big deal. Flickr/Derek Keats

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Top dogs (and cats) under threat

For the first time, a team of researchers from the United States, Australia, Italy, and Sweden, and led by Professor Bill Ripple at Oregon State University, have analysed the effects of threats such as habitat loss, human persecution and reduced prey on the world’s 31 largest mammalian carnivores.

The species studied include lions, tigers, African wild dogs, leopards, cheetahs, wolves, lynx, otters, bears, hyenas and dingoes. Together they span all continents except Antarctica.

Alarmingly, more than three quarters of the 31 large carnivores are in decline, and 17 species occupy less than half of their historical distributions. The Red Wolf in the southeastern United States is now found in less than 1% of its historical range, and theEthiopian Wolf in just 2%.

Hotspots of carnivore decline are southeast Asia, southern and East Africa, and the Amazon, where several large carnivores are declining. And in the developed world there are now few places where large carnivores remain.

 

In Australia, dingoes help keep introduced predators at bay. Flickr/Ars Electronica

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Aside from the intrinsic tragedy of losing any species, what should perhaps concern us even more is that we are only just beginning to understand and appreciate just how important large predators are to maintaining healthy ecosystems, and our dependence on the ecosystem services they deliver.

Ripple effect

Seven carnivore species in particular have been shown to have profound effects on the environment and cause what is known as “trophic cascades”. A trophic cascade is a ripple effect, where one species’ influence spreads through multiple levels of a food web.

Species for which this effect is most well-known are African lions, leopards, Eurasian lynx, cougars, gray wolves, sea otters and dingoes.

 

It’s hard being a VIP (very important predator). Flickr/Mike Baird

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In Australia dingoes greatly reduce kangaroo and red fox numbers, which in turn reduces grazing of vegetation and predation of native animals, helping to conserve and protect biodiversity.

In coastal North America, sea otters keep sea urchin numbers in check, which helps maintain kelp forests and benefits other marine species dependent on this habitat. But in this case otters might also offer a defence against climate change, as healthy kelp forests can grow rapidly and store large amounts of carbon.

And in Africa, a decrease in lions and leopards has coincided with a dramatic increase inOlive Baboons, which threaten farm crops and livestock, and spread intestinal worms. Baboons even impact education, as children have to stay home to defend their farms from raids.

 

Without lions and leopards, there’s no telling what baboons will do. Flickr/JustinJensen

Click to enlarge

 

Clearly predators have far-reaching ecological, economic and social benefits that are grossly underappreciated. There is no doubt predators pose challenges too, such as wolves attacking livestock. But education and new management practices offer ways forward. For instance, we could use guardian animals to protect livestock from predators.

Together we call on governments to end policies and management practices that are responsible for the ongoing persecution and loss of predators from our planet. Western Australia’s new shark plan is an example of management that fails to account for the science of big predators. Instead we need an international initiative that aims to conserve large predators and promote their coexistence with people.

Source: https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-top-predators-are-in-decline-and-its-hurting-us-too-21830

Hunters or Hunted? Wolves vs. Mountain Lions

Posted by Mark Elbroch of Panthera in Cat Watch

F109, a six-year-old cougar, nursing three three-week-old kittens. She wears a Vectronics satellite collar which allows researchers to follow her movements in near real time and study the secret lives of mountain lions. Photograph by Mark Elbroch/Panthera

Wolves are coursing, social predators that operate in packs to select disadvantaged prey in open areas where they can test their prey’s condition. Mountain lions are solitary, ambush predators that select prey opportunistically (i.e., of any health) in areas where slopes, trees, boulders, or other cover gives them an advantage. Thus, wolves and cougars inhabit and utilize different ecological niches, allowing them to spatially and temporally coexist; nevertheless, in the absence of wolves, cougars utilize areas traditionally assumed to be the sole dominion of coursing wolves. This suggests that where wolves are sympatric with cougars, wolves limit mountain lions.

In fact, wolves kill mountain lions. This has never been disputed. Wolves are considered the dominant competitors in most interactions between the species. Take for instance, the Hornocker Institute study of mountain lions in Northern Yellowstone led by Dr. Toni Ruth, in which researchers discovered the remains of three mountain lions killed by wolves. What is contentious is the idea that mountain lions might kill wolves.

Look carefully for the mountain lion in the background, pushed off its kill by a large wolf caught on remote camera. Photograph courtesy Teton Cougar Project/Panthera

Liz Bradley, a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wolf biologist, reports that she has discovered five wolves killed by mountain lions in three years—all bearing the characteristic canine punctures in their skulls betraying the identity of the perpetrator. Some dispute her claims and point out that wolves fight each other too, especially adjacent packs, and that they also attack the head; skeptics believe a canine puncture in a wolf skull could be made by another wolf just as easily as a mountain lion.

The Teton Cougar Project operates in the Southern Yellowstone Ecosystem, and is one of very few long-term studies of mountain lions. Since the start of the project, wolves have trickled into the area, established territories and reproduced. In 2001, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service surveys estimated that there were about 10 wolves in our study area, and that number steadily increased to as high as 91 in 2010. To date, we’ve documented five lions killed by wolves, all kittens, and all less than six months old while they were still relatively slow to climb and less than fully coordinated. But it was just last October that we finally documented the contrary. For the first time, a mountain lion we were tracking killed a wolf.

She’s a particularly feral mountain lion, F109, an adult female with three three-month-old kittens. All cougars are feral, of course, but there’s something unique about F109. She has “crazy” eyes, and always wanders the most rugged, inhospitable terrain. She was near impossible to catch in the first place. She’s a survivor.

We can’t tell you exactly what happened, but we can describe what we deciphered from the clues left behind in the snow. F109 was up high traversing steep, barren slopes, where we expected there was little game. Nevertheless, her location data indicated that she’d stopped and we suspected she’d made a kill. We slogged up the mountain to investigate, the ground bare of snow adjacent the road, but as deep as our thigh in the high bowl where she lingered. The entire area preceding her position was a mosaic of wolf tracks and trails. A wolf pack made up of adults, subadults and pups had criss-crossed the area, leaving barely a patch of snow without their sign.

Perhaps the wolves had challenged F109, or perhaps just one of them wandered too close to her kittens, or perhaps a pup felt like exploring on its own—trying to decipher the absolute pandemonium of tracks was beyond us. Whatever the circumstances, F109 captured and killed a pup born this year just above the chaos of wolf activity. By this time (November), wolf pups are sizable, their skulls larger than those of coyotes. We discovered the signs of struggle, the telltale blood in the snow, and the pup’s remains beneath a lonely subalpine fir: a pile of coal black fur, bone shards from the legs, and the skull, skinned but completely intact. F109 and her kittens had consumed the pup completely.

Thus far, our research has supported exactly what everyone  expected: Wolves dominate mountain lions in most encounters. But, this recent exchange is particularly exciting. No longer can we say that wolves dominate mountain lions in all encounters. What circumstances led to F109 turning the tables, we do not know. Perhaps F109’s predecessors served as naïve intermediaries relearning to coexist with a dominant competitor, a species absent since 1926, when the last wolf was killed in Yellowstone National Park. Perhaps F109 is evidence that lions learn quickly and adapt, and that mountain lions will successfully coexist with wolves in the Yellowstone Ecosystem for generations to come.

Source: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/04/hunters-or-hunted-wolves-vs-mountain-lions/

Find more on: http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/researchers-find-evidence-mountain-lion-predation-wolves/