Zoos : When Babies Don’t Fit Plan, the Questions begin ….
Olek, The Lion of Copenhagen Zoo (Photo credit: Mollenborg)
As a keeper at Wellington Zoo, New Zealand for a short time, I can appreciate some of the many complex issues that face zoos regarding look after their animals. This from the International Herald Tribune
Zookeepers around the world, facing limited capacity and pressure to maintain diverse and vibrant collections of endangered species, are often choosing between two controversial methods: birth control and euthanasia.
In the United States, the choice is contraception. Chimps take human birth control pills, giraffes are served hormones in their feed, and grizzly bears have slow-releasing hormones implanted in their forelegs. Even small rodents are included.
centre (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Cheryl Asa, who directs the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Wildlife Contraception Center at the St. Louis Zoo, said euthanasia was not a comfortable fit for zoos here. “On an emotional level, I can’t imagine doing it and I can’t imagine our culture accepting it,” she said.
Dr. Asa sees contraception as a better approach. “By preventing the birth of animals beyond carrying capacity,” she said, “more animals can be well cared for.”
But in Europe, some zookeepers would rather euthanize unneeded offspring after they mature than deny the animal parents the experience of procreating and nurturing their young.
“We’d rather they have as natural behavior as possible,” said Bengt Holst, director of conservation for the Copenhagen Zoo. “We have already taken away their predatory and antipredatory behaviors. If we take away their parenting behavior, they have not much left.”
So he and many of his European counterparts generally allow animals to raise their young until an age at which they would naturally separate from parents. It is then that zoo officials euthanize offspring that do not figure in breeding plans.
This spring, the Copenhagen Zoo put down, by lethal injection, two leopard cubs, about 2 years old, whose genes were already overrepresented in the collective zoo population. Leopards are considered near threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. But as part of a breeding plan to maintain the genetic diversity of this species, the cubs’ fate was determined before they were born.
“We promised the species coordinator that the offspring would never leave the zoo,” Mr. Holst said, meaning they would not be bred with leopards from other zoos. The Copenhagen Zoo, he said, annually puts to death some 20 to 30 healthy exotic animals — gazelles, hippopotamuses, and on rare occasions even chimps.
The thinking is that this strategy mimics what would have occurred in the wild, where some 80 percent of feline offspring die from predation, starvation or injury, he said.
Terry Maple, the former director of Zoo Atlanta and co-editor of “Ethics on the Ark,” said that while he knew of no studies assessing the importance of raising young to animals’ health or well-being, observation indicated that most zoo animals are motivated and protective parents that play frequently with offspring.
He acknowledged that American zoos once focused more on the intricacies of breeding endangered species than on their day-to-day well-being, but said this was changing. In meticulously planning their populations, Mr. Maple said, zoos will eventually avoid a surplus of animals and ensure that most breed and raise offspring. “I am not saying management euthanasia is wrong,” he said. “It is just not the best solution.”
International guidelines on the ethics of breeding zoo animals have been elusive, in part because philosophies vary, said Dave Morgan, chairman of the Population Management Committee at the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The African association of zoos lists euthanasia as a population management tool, whereas the precepts of Hinduism and Buddhism make the killing of even terminally ill animals difficult.
Both the United States and Europe tolerate the euthanasia of feral cats and dogs. Euthanasia is permitted under the American zoo association’s regulations, but is mainly reserved for ill or elderly animals, said Steve Feldman, the association’s spokesman.
Although reliable data on the use of contraception is not kept by zoo associations, officials say that it is much more prevalent in North America but that it is starting to expand in Europe.
American zoos began developing contraception for highly fertile animals like lions in the 1970s, after breakthroughs in human birth control. Contraception use then expanded as it became quite difficult for zoos to sell or give away animals they could no longer accommodate.
This kind of family planning meant males and females no longer had to be kept apart to avoid unwanted pregnancies, which was ideal for the transition to more natural zoo environments. There were benefits, too, for zookeepers: hormones in contraceptives given males can take the edge off aggressive behaviors surrounding competition for a mate, which can result in mayhem and unsettle visitors.
There was a time when no one could have imagined that contraception would be needed for the Mexican wolf, a species hunted nearly to extinction in the 1970s. Zoos began with only seven survivors and bred a captive colony of nearly 300 wolves, saving the species. Ninety-two were reintroduced into the wild by the federal government starting in 1998, but then four years ago, the government used up the limited space that had been allotted for the program in New Mexico and Arizona.
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Wildlife Update : Shark-Fin Vote Adds to Pressure on Hong Kong
Image via Wikipedia
From The International Herald Tribune ….
As Elisabeth Rosenthal reported in Sunday’s Times, the battle to protect the world’s endangered shark population has passed another major milestone with a California Senate vote that bans the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins.
Last week’s vote was greeted with much delight by environmental campaigners. The global shark population has been decimated over recent years, largely because of soaring demand for shark fin soup among the newly wealthy in China, Hong Kong and other Asian nations. Soup made from shark fins is considered a delicacy and a status symbol in Chinese culture and commands hefty prices that make finning highly lucrative.
The California bill now awaits Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature. If he follows through, California will become the largest economy in the world to take a strong stand against the shark fin trade so far, according to the New York-based group Shark Savers. Hawaii, Washington and Oregon have also banned imports of shark fins, which means that the measure could officially close down shark-fin traffic in all remaining ports on the West Coast.
Elsewhere in the world, Chile and the Bahamas recently banned shark fishing in their waters, and Taiwan introduced legislation in July to regulate the trade by requiring that fins be landed with the full carcass attached. (Fins, the most lucrative part of the animal, are frequently cut off by fishermen while the shark is still alive, leaving it to die a painful death with no means of swimming.)
The pressure is now on Hong Kong, where I live, to follow suit -– if not with an outright ban, then at least with much clearer action to discourage the consumption of, and trade in, fins.
Hong Kong is believed to handle at least half the global trade in shark fins, making it the shark-fin capital of the world, so what happens here matters.
But to date, not much is happening -– at least not on the legislative front.
Asked whether the California decision might prompt action here, the Hong Kong government simply referred me to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Yet that agreement protects just three shark species rather than the many more that environmentalists say are now endangered.
The authorities seem out of step with many in the West and possibly with public opinion in Hong Kong itself: slowly but surely, awareness has risen, and the list of companies that have pledged not to buy or sell or buy shark fin soup as part of their corporate activities keeps growing.
The last time I queried the Hong Kong government on the issue, for a columnback in April, it response was, “We do not think it is appropriate to lay down guidelines to regulate the kind of food to be consumed in official banquets and meals.”
Yet the California decision has galvanized campaigners here. Six environmental organizations in Hong Kong issued a joint statement calling on the government to follow the state’s lead. “All eyes are now on Hong Kong,” it warned.
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Wildlife Trade : Russia Seizes Animal Parts
Image by noodlepie via Flickr
The International Herald Tribune reports on the trade that literally killing creatures
MOSCOW — The 26 elk lips were just the tip of the pile. The items the Russian customs agents reported seizing Tuesday were exotic even by the standards of Russia’s border with China, where wildlife smuggling is rampant: 1,041 bear paws, lynx fur, unspecified claw parts and five tusks from the extinct woolly mammoth.
Officials said they discovered the cargo after a dog alerted them to the contents in the bed of a Chinese driver’s seemingly empty truck. On closer examination, officials found a secret compartment with the cache of contraband.
“The illegal cargo weighing almost 1.4 tons was detained by border guards and customs officials” a statement explained. The items were individually wrapped, the statement said, though it did not say if the compartment was refrigerated. The elk lips alone weighed 143 pounds.
Smuggling is generally blossoming in Russia’s Far East. The long border with China, closed for decades, is now open for travel and trade.
“China is a vacuum cleaner for Siberian wildlife,” said Aleksei L. Vaisman, a senior coordinator for Traffic Europe-Russia, which is sponsored by the conservation group WWF, which monitors trade in wild animals. The largest cache of bear paws he knew of previously was 787 paws (one paw shy of 197 full sets of four).
As Russian border agents using dogs have become more adept at catching small-time traffickers, smugglers have been compelled to risk large shipments, he said. The large number reported Tuesday (from about 260 bears) were most likely accumulated by brokers who bought them from hunters over the winter, he said. A set of four brings the hunters about $50.
Bear paws are a ritual dish for Chinese, elk lips a delicacy. Also smuggled daily, for food or medicine, are bear gallbladders, frogs, deer antlers and the genitals of spotted deer. The bones of highly endangered Amur tigers are sought for their aphrodisiac qualities.
The mammoth ivory poses an unusual set of legal and ethical issues.
The tusks are more abundant than many people in the West realize. Encased in an upper layer of Siberia’s permafrost are the remains of an estimated 150 million mammoths that lived from 3,600 to 400,000 years ago. The parts surface in the spring thaw across vast stretches of Russia’s far north and are routinely collected. Most are exported — legally — to China, South Korea and Japan to be carved into personal stamps used in place of signatures on documents.
Russia, though, requires an export license. This is intended to ensure that traders send tusks with possible scientific value — like prehistoric slaughter marks or signs of ancient disease — to researchers. Generally, conservationists concerned about the illegal ivory trade from Africa into Asia encourage buyers to turn to the legal trade from Siberia of ivory from mammoths.
Still, it was unclear how the tusks were hidden in the truck intercepted at a border crossing in the town of Blagoveshchensk or how the smuggler had obtained them. The tusks are often cut up and sold by the kilogram.
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- Over one ton of smuggled animal parts intercepted in Russia’s Far East (rt.com)
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Climate change making life worse ? Americans Still Split …
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Judging from an annual survey by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities, the American public is roughly as fractured in its attitudes toward climate change today as it was last year. In the first of four reports based on the poll, the researchers estimate that 64 percent of American adults now believe that the planet is warming, up slightly from 61 percent last year. When asked to assume that global warming is happening and to ascribe a cause, only 47 percent said that it was caused mostly by human activity, however, down from 50 percent last year. Roughly mirroring last year’s results, 52 percent of Americans said they were either “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about the warming trend, while 48 percent said they were “not very worried” or “not at all worried” about it. Most Americans seem unaware of the broad consensus among scientists that global warming is under way. Only 39 percent of the respondents agreed that “most scientists think global warming is happening,” and 40 percent agreed with the statement, “There is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening.” Eighteen percent said they did not know enough to say one way or the other. When questioned about flooding, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires, roughly half the adults surveyed strongly agreed or agreed somewhat that global warming was making such events worse, however. All the same, despite the frequency of such events recently, only 12 percent said they had been thinking “a lot” about global warming, versus 18 percent last year.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/category/science/
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After Disaster Hit Japan, Electric Cars Stepped Up
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WITH deep-tread tires and ample ground clearance, a rugged 4-wheel-drive Hummer or Jeep might seem the best choice for navigating through the wrecked cities of northeastern Japan. The areas pummeled by the earthquake and tsunami in March would surely be inhospitable for anelectric vehicle.
Yet in the days and weeks after the horrific one-two punch of natural disasters, wispy battery-electric cars — engineered for lightness and equipped with tires designed for minimal rolling resistance — proved their mettle.
These welterweight sedans, including models from Mitsubishi and Nissan, turned out to be the vehicles that got through — not because of any special ability to claw their way over mountains of debris, but because they were able to “refuel” at common electrical outlets.
With oil refineries out of commission and clogged roadways slowing deliveries, finding gasoline had become a challenge. Shortages were so acute that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces had to truck in gasoline; donations of diesel fuel were accepted from China.
Yet in Sendai, about 250 miles northeast of Tokyo, and other cities ravaged by the earthquake, electricity returned within days. Taking stock of the situation, the president of Mitsubishi Motors, Osamu Masuko, offered dozens of his company’s egg-shaped i-MiEV (pronounced “eye-meeve”) electric cars to affected cities.
Despite their image as light-duty runabouts best suited for trips to a nearby shopping mall, the electric vehicles were immediately put to use. They were pressed into service ferrying supplies to refugee centers, schools and hospitals, and taking doctors, city workers and volunteers on their rounds.
While the i-MiEVs could not help out with tasks like hauling building materials or towing stranded vehicles, the assistance from Mitsubishi was much appreciated. In all, 89 i-MiEVs went to the recovery effort, including 34 to Miyagi Prefecture, 33 to Fukushima Prefecture and 18 to Iwate Prefecture.
“There was almost no gas at the time, so I was extremely thankful when I heard about the offer,” said Tetsuo Ishii, a division chief in the environmental department in Sendai, which also got four Nissan Leaf electric cars. “If we hadn’t received the cars, it would have been very difficult to do what we needed to.”
Mr. Ishii and other officials in Sendai assigned the cars strategically. Two were used to bring food and supplies to the 23 remaining refugee centers in the city, while two others served doctors. Education officials have been using another two vehicles to inspect schools for structural damage. Others helped deliver supplies to kindergartens around the city or were loaned to volunteer groups.
Once the most pressing needs are met, the city may use the cars to help in the cleanup of damaged homes, as fuel shortages still limit the availability of trucks. For now, though, the cars are driven an average of 30 to 45 miles each day, about half the distance that they can be driven on a full charge.
“One charge is perfect for us, because it allows us to drive around during the day with no trouble,” Mr. Ishii said. “We’re not that big of a city.”
Most of the cars, he said, returned each night to city hall, where they were recharged at 200-volt outlets. Fast-charging stations, which replenish batteries to 80 percent of capacity within 30 minutes, are used where available. Standard 100-volt outlets can also be used, but the recharge then takes more than 12 hours.
Slightly over five feet high and less than five feet wide, the i-MiEV is cozy, to say the least, and at just 2,400 pounds it is relatively light. Its battery, the size of a tatami mat and weighing about 400 pounds, is under the floor, which helps give the car a lower center of gravity.
The cars’ unexpected sturdiness and utility has pleased Mr. Masuko, who, like other automobile executives, has been battling skeptics who see electric vehicles as expensive and impractical.
“I am most impressed when I hear the words, ‘I felt electric vehicles were unreliable at first, but now, the vehicles are being integrated into daily life,’ ” he wrote in an e-mail. “I am so glad I heard that our electric vehicles are contributing to the recovery of the affected areas.”
WITH deep-tread tires and ample ground clearance, a rugged 4-wheel-drive Hummer or Jeep might seem the best choice for navigating through the wrecked cities of northeastern Japan. The areas pummeled by the earthquake and tsunami in March would surely be inhospitable for anelectric vehicle.
Yet in the days and weeks after the horrific one-two punch of natural disasters, wispy battery-electric cars — engineered for lightness and equipped with tires designed for minimal rolling resistance — proved their mettle.
These welterweight sedans, including models from Mitsubishi and Nissan, turned out to be the vehicles that got through — not because of any special ability to claw their way over mountains of debris, but because they were able to “refuel” at common electrical outlets.
With oil refineries out of commission and clogged roadways slowing deliveries, finding gasoline had become a challenge. Shortages were so acute that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces had to truck in gasoline; donations of diesel fuel were accepted from China.
Yet in Sendai, about 250 miles northeast of Tokyo, and other cities ravaged by the earthquake, electricity returned within days. Taking stock of the situation, the president of Mitsubishi Motors, Osamu Masuko, offered dozens of his company’s egg-shaped i-MiEV (pronounced “eye-meeve”) electric cars to affected cities.
Despite their image as light-duty runabouts best suited for trips to a nearby shopping mall, the electric vehicles were immediately put to use. They were pressed into service ferrying supplies to refugee centers, schools and hospitals, and taking doctors, city workers and volunteers on their rounds.
While the i-MiEVs could not help out with tasks like hauling building materials or towing stranded vehicles, the assistance from Mitsubishi was much appreciated. In all, 89 i-MiEVs went to the recovery effort, including 34 to Miyagi Prefecture, 33 to Fukushima Prefecture and 18 to Iwate Prefecture.
“There was almost no gas at the time, so I was extremely thankful when I heard about the offer,” said Tetsuo Ishii, a division chief in the environmental department in Sendai, which also got four Nissan Leaf electric cars. “If we hadn’t received the cars, it would have been very difficult to do what we needed to.”
Mr. Ishii and other officials in Sendai assigned the cars strategically. Two were used to bring food and supplies to the 23 remaining refugee centers in the city, while two others served doctors. Education officials have been using another two vehicles to inspect schools for structural damage. Others helped deliver supplies to kindergartens around the city or were loaned to volunteer groups.
Once the most pressing needs are met, the city may use the cars to help in the cleanup of damaged homes, as fuel shortages still limit the availability of trucks. For now, though, the cars are driven an average of 30 to 45 miles each day, about half the distance that they can be driven on a full charge.
“One charge is perfect for us, because it allows us to drive around during the day with no trouble,” Mr. Ishii said. “We’re not that big of a city.”
Most of the cars, he said, returned each night to city hall, where they were recharged at 200-volt outlets. Fast-charging stations, which replenish batteries to 80 percent of capacity within 30 minutes, are used where available. Standard 100-volt outlets can also be used, but the recharge then takes more than 12 hours.
Slightly over five feet high and less than five feet wide, the i-MiEV is cozy, to say the least, and at just 2,400 pounds it is relatively light. Its battery, the size of a tatami mat and weighing about 400 pounds, is under the floor, which helps give the car a lower center of gravity.
The cars’ unexpected sturdiness and utility has pleased Mr. Masuko, who, like other automobile executives, has been battling skeptics who see electric vehicles as expensive and impractical.
“I am most impressed when I hear the words, ‘I felt electric vehicles were unreliable at first, but now, the vehicles are being integrated into daily life,’ ” he wrote in an e-mail. “I am so glad I heard that our electric vehicles are contributing to the recovery of the affected areas.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/automobiles/08JAPAN.html?ref=japan
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