Category: Big Game

Bad Bloomberg Bit

Bad Bloomberg Bit

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

rhinoFive years ago I suggested the only way to save the northern white rhino was “DNA deep-freeze.” This week scientists agreed and Bloomberg confused the world.

The media was abuzz this week with reports that the remaining five “northern white rhino” in existence might now be saved by invitro fertilization, a report widely circulated by Bloomberg News.

If only the world had disseminated Nairobi’s Daily Nation report
instead:

“Past attempts at artificial insemination of northern white rhinos… have failed… Stores of frozen sperm and eggs could be used to revive the animal [in the future] artificially, but ….the northern white rhino will likely disappear, at least for a while.”

Let’s try to parse the facts. Stick with me.

The first is that many of the repeats of the Bloomberg Bit were so short and so incomplete that people started to think the news was about all rhino:

We aren’t discussing all the critically endangered rhino in general, which definitely includes at least five gene-separated anatomical cousins:

There are about 5000 black rhino (Diceros bicornis) left in the world. Very few are actually wild. Numbers are hard to come by, but probably less than 500. The others are mostly in private protected sanctuaries and reserves in sub-Saharan Africa and in zoos.

There are over 20,000 white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) mostly in heavily protected wilderness in southern Africa like the completely fenced-in Umfolozi-Hluhluwe national parks in South Africa, or in private reserves and sanctuaries and zoos. Like the black rhino very few actually live in the wild or unfenced national parks.

More critically endangered are the remaining three species, all of which live in near fortress protected sanctuaries: 44 Javan Rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus) found only in Indonesia’s Ujung Kulon National Park; less than 100 Sumatran Rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) in disconnected wildernesses in Indonesia; and the 3300 Greater One-horned Rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) found in eastern India and Nepal.

My first trek with this week’s media blitz was that many publications didn’t make the differentiation above and the suggestion hung out there that only a half dozen rhinos were left in the world.

This story is not about all rhino but about a possible subspecies of one of the five species of rhino: the “northern” white rhino (ceratotherium simum cottoni).

By the way some scientists do want to call this animal a separate sixth species, rather than a subspecies, for the astoundingly absurd reason that this animal might soon go extinct.

So whether this animal is actually the 6th species of what we commonly refer to as “rhino” or whether it is a subspecies (ceratotherium simum cottoni) of the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum), it is anatomically different enough that its loss would be another extinction catastrophe.

In 2009 four of the remaining 8 still alive in the world were shipped to Kenya from a Czech zoo, and I was critical of that. At the time, two remained in that Czech zoo and two in San Diego’s Wild Animal Park. One animal has died since in both those places, leaving the four sent to Kenya, one in the Czech Republic and one in California.

I was critical at the time because I felt there was so much poaching in Kenya that it was a death sentence. Wildlife managers obviated that by cutting off their horns, a very controversial strategy that had not been announced prior to the relocation.

I understand why dehorning wasn’t announced at the time, since it’s extremely controversial. Particularly in Zimbabwe dehorned rhinos contracted massive infections that often killed them, and when they survived, the horn often grew back. There hasn’t really been sufficient time in the last five years for a large enough horn to grow back on the ones dehorned in Kenya.

So for the moment we can recognize the strategy as being successful.

The reason for the risky move to Kenya was the hope the rhinos would breed once they were in a more natural habitat. Many of us knew they wouldn’t. Rhinos held in captivity for long periods of time don’t breed no matter where they’re moved. (Wild rhinos relocated into large wild reserves like Lewa Downs in Kenya are another matter, and often then breed well at least at first.)

These relocated rhino had been in a less than stellar zoo for decades.

They haven’t bred in Kenya.

In vitro fertilization was tried and hasn’t worked, either. Bloomberg News got it wrong:
“A Kenyan wildlife conservancy said it’s considering using in-vitro fertilization to try and save the northern white rhino from extinction, after an attempt to get them to breed naturally failed.”

BBC – as usual – got it right:
“The eggs will be stored with a view to being used for IVF in the future.”

Bloomberg and thousands of outlets re-reporting them suggested a simple dairy cow procedure. It’s been tried and it’s failed. So the only hope now, as I suggested 5 years ago, is the “DNA-deep freeze” where eggs, sperm, and embryos from combined eggs and sperm, are all frozen until scientists can figure out how to take these to the next level, a fetus.

In vitro fertilization doesn’t work with these animals possibly because there’s a physiology that’s reflected in their lack of interest to mate, a chemical if you will prevention not of fertilization but of subsequent pregnancy.

The bad Bloomberg bit disseminated round the world generates very long and often boring explanations like this. Does that move learning forward? Which really helps the rhino? Which helps Bloomberg?

Lion Realities

Lion Realities

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Excellent photo by Rich Mattas on my March Great Migration Safari.
Excellent photo by Rich Mattas on my March Great Migration Safari.
Never ‘in my life’ would I have expected to be concerned about declining lion populations in Africa, but despite grossly misunderstood and badly used statistics, they are definitely in decline.

I always thought of lions, I suppose, like kitty cats: They’re ubiquitous! In fact, they are more of them than my birder friends think there should be, and where I live feral cats likely outnumber deer.

At the top of the food chain, what could possibly threaten lion?

The framing of my question reveals the mistaken notion of trying to figure out what’s happening to a wild animal strictly by what’s happening in the wild.

What threatens lions is development: people, roads, buildings, dams … all the things that make for a modern world.

Development impinges on lions directly, but by also constricting the freedom and growth of lion food – other animals – it’s a doubly whammy.

I’m astounded by the inability of research organizations to get a firm number on lion declines in Africa. It ranges from popular charities like NatGeo’s low balling to many others suggesting twice the number. Either way it’s a serious, rapid decline, but why no consensus on actual numbers?

The best researchers, like Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota, refuse to deal with the issue in the aggregate, assuring me that compiling trusted aggregate numbers is too difficult.

LionAlert was my guide for many years, but they’ve been unable to make a prediction beyond the 35,000 they published for 2012.

NatGeo among many other organizations is appealing to your pocketbook to fund their missions to stem the decline. It’s a waste of money.

Although the actual numbers in decline might not be known, the reasons are.

Craig Packer’s many scholarly articles and popular publications sum it all: His 2004 study in Ngorongoro started the news that lions were in serious decline, building on an earlier 1996 study about how lions were growing increasingly vulnerable to viruses.

By 2005 Packer had the lions in the Serengeti well understood, and it’s really on the basis of this detailed although localized research that I think we can generalize to the continent as a whole.

Subsequent reports and studies would confirm that serious human/animal conflict was the driver of decline, not just building roads.

By 2009 researchers were no longer reticent about blaming the Maasai’s poisoning of lion as a major contribution to decline in East Africa.

Don’t put too much emphasis on that, though, because it’s really all a part of the same problem. Lion attacking livestock occurs not simply because lion have decided it’s easier than pulling down a wildebeest.

It’s as much because there are fewer wildebeest and the lion’s range is declining because of overall human spread.

Maasai poisoning lion is identical to Montana farmers poisoning wolves.

This decline will not stop by contributing to NatGeo, and once again I’m infuriated by so-called conservation organizations driving their general fund with appeals of imminent catastrophe that they claim to know how to stop.

Much better to support the more difficult-to-understand but lasting attempt by Kenya to list lions as an endangered species.

That was set back this summer when efforts to do so were curtailed, in this case mostly by NRA-driven hunting groups that would be most effected immediately. As a result, South Africa – a powerhouse in determining African conservation policy but also one of the last easiest places to arrange a lion hunt – declined to support the listing.

But Kenya battles on and so should we. I can’t suggest that human development be held hostage to protecting lions. But I can definitely tell hunters to go take a walk.

Finding 2 Million

Finding 2 Million

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

GolApr8The great wildebeest migration is the greatest wildlife spectacle left on earth and the main reason that visitors come to East Africa. Things are changing.

“The wild beest migration is unexpectedly … back around Central Serengeti,” Tanzania Adventure Safaris newsletter reported a few days ago.

“As there have been good rains this year… the herds [are] moving all the way down to the short grass plains … when they would not be expected.”

The migration occurs in the Ngorongoro/Serengeti/Mara ecosystem, roughly a 200-mile vertical oval east of Lake Victoria. About 3/4 of this area is in Tanzania, and the remainder in Kenya as the Mara.

There are now numerous wildebeest migration watcher sites, such as “Herdtracker,” all of which I’ve found biased, incomplete or irregular at some point when I checked. Geared mostly to the particular camps or companies with which the site is associated, a snippet of where the migration is, is generally truthfully reported, but the overall picture is never explained.

With two million animals involved, there really isn’t a focal point for the migration. Moreover, at various times during the annual year’s migration, the great herds may be cleaved into halves or quarters traveling sometimes in nearly opposite directions.

Predicting where and when a safari can intersect the great migration was never an exact science but always a pretty good bet. The two million migrating herbivores involved eat virtually nothing but grass and grass grows when it rains and rain cycles were quite predictable.

In the north, in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, it rains almost every day of the year except in October and the beginning of November. The grass, though, in the higher elevations of the Mara isn’t quite as nutritious as the grass in the far south of the Serengeti. So even though grass is growing almost all the time in the Mara, if there is better grass to the south, that’s where the herds will go.

The circle of rain is like a big hula hoop with Lake Victoria as its center. The great herds move with the edge of that circle as it contracts into Lake Victoria until finally they get diverted to the last place in the area where it’s raining, the north of the ecosystem, Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

Sounds simple, eh? All you have to do is predict when the rains will stop. The herds then move north, sometimes frantically depending upon how quickly the rain turns off down south.

So a really safe bet was to visit Tanzania’s Serengeti really any time in the first half of the year (although February and March were always a sure bet), and Kenya’s Maasai Mara in July – October (although August and September were considered the best).

Didn’t happen this year.

This October much of the central and southern Serengeti received up to four inches of rain. Normally there would be no rain at all.

Two things are happening:
AnnualRain20141NOA
First, rains are much heavier than normal during the historically normal rainy season. You can see that from the NOA chart to the right. Green is a 100% increase over normal, so twice as much as usual.

Second, the rainy season itself is growing. You can see that from the second NOA chart just below the first. Green is a 50% increase over normal. Blue, which shows through much of the equatorial region, is a 100% increase.
RainySeaonRain2014

More rain and a longer season is going to keep the wildebeest for a longer time in Tanzania’s Serengeti and delay their arrival and hasten their departure from Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

Is this a trend, or just something unusual for these past few years?

According to the Stockholm Environment Institute (weADAPT), one of the few professional meteorological organizations to study East African climate:

“…there has been an increase in the number of reported hydrometeorological disasters in the region, from an average of less than 3 events per year in the 1980s to … 10 events per year from 2000 to 2006, with a particular increase in floods.”

weADAPT and most organizations are concerned mostly by how this effects people, and the news in that regards isn’t good. Malaria, for one thing, will increase with increased temperatures and precipitation.

But the wildebeest and zebra love it. Their numbers are increasing, more and more grass is growing, and with time they’ll be spending more and more of their time in Tanzania rather than Kenya.

But at the same time as the rains increase there will be less of a need “to herd.” The animals may just start wandering, because wherever they wander, there will be food to eat.

The hard-wired aspect of wildebeest migrating — which we normally see as files of running animals — isn’t going to change or adapt as fast as global warming. We’ll always see them running, and it’s a magnificent sight!

But as it rains more and more, they might not have to.

When Night is Day

When Night is Day

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

aardvarkinsunAnecdotal evidence that global warming has caused a decline in African animals is slowly but surely being confirmed by field science.

No one argues that Africa abate its growth, and it comes as no surprise that this growth is directly linked to global warming. Industry is mostly fired by fossil fuels: CO2 heats the atmosphere while more wealth builds Africa.

The immediate benefits to Africans are indisputable. But the ecology of the continent is suffering greatly and more quickly than we ever imagined.

The World Wildlife Fund’s “Living Planet Report” contends that nearly half of the world’s animal species have been lost since 1970.

This is beyond astounding. My children’s children will have a planet with only an eighth of the animal species around when I was born.

One irony for African wilderness is that some of its better known areas, like East Africa with its great national parks like the Serengeti, show visibly improved biosystems. This, too, is directly linked to global warming.

The great East African wilderness lies on the equator. One of the effects of global warming has been increased rain as the melting of the poles increases ocean levels and precipitation worldwide. One result in part coupled with an early management approach to the Serengeti has been to nearly triple many of the larger animal species like wildebeest and zebra.

But move hardly 200 miles north or south of these equatorial wildernesses and the story dramatically changes.

Increased global precipitation is not falling equally across Africa or anywhere else but as torrents as extreme weather events even while global warming burns deserts into many other areas.

Global weather has become a nightmare, as the American Meteorological Society recently documented. The band along the equator seems to be handling this pretty fortuitously, but nowhere else.

Travel south and wildlife populations in places like Kruger National Park, the Okavango Delta and many private reserves are falling precipitously.

While elephant populations in East Africa are probably too large, in southern Africa they’re dangerously small. Buffalo and other large herding animals like eland are declining, and rarer antelope like nyala, sable and roan are also in decline.

Exact science on large animal decline is difficult, because much of it is human caused through poaching. But go down a notch to slightly smaller animals, and the science is becoming compelling.

An excellent indicator species is the anteater, or aardvark. A study recently concluded by scientists from Johannesburg’s prestigious Witwatersrand University claims that only animals whose behavior can accelerate adaptation will survive.

“Many species will not be able to evolve fast enough to adapt to the rapid rate of current climate change… most large mammals simply don’t reproduce quickly enough to allow for adaptive traits to be selected,” the report explains.

Aardvark are the focus of the study not just because of demonstrable changes in their own behavior, but because so many other endangered animals depend upon them.

The report found that aardvark are trying to adapt their behaviors to an increasingly hot and dry environment caused by global warming.

In one astounding finding, the scientists show that aardvark are now foraging in daylight hours as well as through the night as usual. It had previously been presumed that their eye physiology would not allow this, but as their food sources dwindle they’re forcing it.

The unstated implication is that this won’t work in the long term, and that eye physiology will stop any long term behavioral change.

Aardvark holes are used by scores of other animals and birds, and as the number of dens decline so will populations of anteater chats, porcupine, warthog, pole cat, meerkats and others.

The WWF report focuses heavily on human/animal conflict as probably the single greatest factor effecting the planet’s decreasing biodiversity. This is certainly, for example, the reason lions are declining so quickly continent wide.

But studies as those from The Wit on aardvark complement this understanding with recognition that as adaptive as world creatures are, behavioral adaptation will simply not be quick enough.

The WWF along with many other organizations believe there is a path out of this through management of global warming with the technologies like solar energy that we already possess.

I don’t see it. Frankly, I can imagine a future world adequately under control for human development. But I just can’t see a path that will retain our current magical biodiversity.

Dangerous Plays

Dangerous Plays

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

stupidtouristwithlionAs access to Africa’s wildernesses develops and improves, visitors are becoming less respectful and careful. This puts everything in jeopardy.

The photo above of a self-drive tourist in Kenya’s Maasai Mara game reserve last Sunday “posing” in front of a pair of lions was taken by a film crew at some distance from the tourist. Presumably the tourist didn’t notice the film crew.

The series of photos was first published in London’s Daily Mail. Click here for the full sequence.

The tourist spots the lions, which seem to be about 15-20 meters away. He stops the car then exits the passenger’s side (right side) which is the opposite side to the lions.

He then races around the car to place himself between the car and the lions, leans back with a thumb’s up obviously posing for another person in the car who probably takes a picture. He then runs back around the car and gets back in.

The photos capture no reaction from the lions other than an occasional glance at the tourist.

These are certainly wild lions, and why they didn’t react is impossible to say. They appear to be a mating pair as it is unlikely to see only one male and one female alone together.

Lion mating is pretty routine: It lasts about three days during which time the pair often can’t be roused by anything, not even hunger. But not always, and it’s impossible when first encountering them to determine at what stage in the three-day mating process they are.

I’ve encountered a mating pair when the male charged our vehicle. There is often a vicious fight between males for the right to mate prior to the mating commencing, so it was possible we arrived just as that altercation had ended.

I’ve also seen mating lion break apart to join a kill. Once again such an anecdotal encounter could be nothing more than having happened to arrive just at the end of the mating process.

I don’t think it’s possible to conclude why these lions were so passive in this case. I suppose an equally cogent argument to my own anecdotal experience is the clear fact that more and more tourists are seen by lions, now. Generations of lions in places like Kenya’s Maasai Mara are becoming more used to people and learn that they aren’t threatening.

That, of course, is a degradation of the wilderness but one that I can hardly oppose. Without tourists — at least in Kenya — there would be little wilderness left.

We are at an interesting crossroads in the development of African wilderness for tourism. As so clearly illustrated in this example, wilderness is taking on the characteristics of a theme park, one that definitely has elements of danger in the experience which seem precisely to be one of the main attractions.

And at least in this case flirting with that danger is apparently one of the selling points.

There are dozens of stories of tourists going too far and paying the price. Just google “tourist killed by lion” or “tourist killed by buffalo” for a tidy wrap-up.

Many of these tragedies aren’t quite as wanton stupidity as evidenced in the photo above, but many are.

What concerns me most is that as more and more of these incidents occur, lions and other wildlife will grow more and more accustomed to man and his peculiarities. This seriously jeopardizes their own wild behavior.

There are many people in Africa who consider lion in the same regards as Montana ranchers consider wolf. A tamer lion is much easier to kill.

And there will be more and more tourists injuries and deaths as well. These two ends of the stick will burn right through to the middle, and tourist parks like Kenya’s Maasai Mara will either have to become far more restrictive or will simply be sold to wheat farmers, or both.

The result is that there will be less wilderness for us all to enjoy.

OnSafari: Dispatch from Ethiopia

OnSafari: Dispatch from Ethiopia

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

dispatchfromethiopiaBleeding heart baboons, some of the rarest animals on earth and some of the most stunning scenery, together with Africa’s very ancient culture. That was Ethiopia hosted by EWT owner, Kathleen Morgan, completed today.

They then spent two days in the very remote Simien Mountains.

“The Simiens were wonderful. Incredibly beautiful scenery,”Kathleen emailed.

The group had a “wonderful” experience with the Geladas, the rare (although not endangered) “bleeding heart” baboon found only in these mountains. The EWT group basically sat in a field amongst them, taking pictures and watching them interact.

They also saw the endangered walia ibex and perhaps the rarest of all, the Simien Fox!

Few visitors ever see this rarest of the world’s wolves. There are fewer than 400 and, in fact, most of those are actually found in a southern Ethiopian range, the Bale Mountains, so this group was particularly lucky!

There is only one lodge in the Simien. “The lodge is ok, but it was absolutely freezing. The water heater and underfloor heating are charged by solar panels. Only two rooms had hot water, one had warm water, and the others had only cold water. Everyone’s floors were freezing. We had lots of blankets and duvets and hot water bottles! The food was ok,” Kathleen reported.

While there are not safari vehicles in Ethiopia of the sort common in East Africa, it was necessary to use 4-wheel drive Nissans to climb the 11-12,000′ into the high roads of the Simiens which Kathleen described as “awful!”

“Narrow, barely allowing two normal cars to pass, and all this with a steep drop at the edge of the road – thousands of feet down to the bottom of a valley. The drivers were incredible.”

“The drive out of the park and to Axum is stunningly beautiful,” she continued. They stopped to photograph colobus and vervet monkeys on the way. EWT guest Joan Lieb who is a veteran traveler of Africa and wild parts of the world, said the villages along the road were the poorest she had ever seen.

Ethiopia was the only country in Africa never colonized, and so it retains absolutely intact its ancient culture. That culture is eclectic, a mixture of very ancient Christianity and animism.

The common “cultural triangle” begins in the city on the southwest tip of the great Lake Tana, where ancient Coptic island monasteries are still overseen by native priests who speak and write a language, Gheez, that has existed for more than a thousand years.

On the northeast corner of the lake is Gondar, where some of the first European settlements (in this case, Portugese castles and churches) built as 15th and 16th century missionary priests, mostly from Portugal, tried to find the mythical Prester John.

After the Simien Mountains, the group spent two days in Axum. The priests who oversee the Church of St. Mary’s claim to be stewards protecting the Arc of the Covenant. When Kathleen’s group arrived, the choir was singing and chanting with their drums and sistra because it was a holy day.

The EWT group was beckoned forward into the choir area. The women sat off to the side, but they motioned Ed Walbridge over to a bench amidst the singers. They gave Ed a prayer stick (those tall ones you can lean on) and a sistrum. He stood and swayed and paid very close attention and swung his sistrum at all the right times.

“Everyone thought it was wonderful!” Kathleen emailed, although Joan Lieb and Kathleen expressed serious disappointment when the priests brought out a precious 500-year old Bible to show them and seemed not to treat it with the care of an antiquity.

After Axum the cultural tour ends with its climax at Lalibela. In the 13th century the dynasty of kings in Ethiopia changed when the rebel Lalibela successfully came to power, claiming he was actually more closely related to the Queen of Sheba than the previous kings.

In thanks to god he vowed to build a new Jerusalem in Ethiopia. This was Lalibela. It took 32 years and begins at the top of the ground and goes down as far as 80 feet, eleven churches carved out of a single massive sandstone.

The combination of very rare animals, remarkable scenery and ancient culture is not something easily experienced on an African safari, but Ethiopia is the place to do so!

Kill Mom, Sell the Baby

Kill Mom, Sell the Baby

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

chimpChimps are not as endangered as gorillas, but they are increasingly controversial in developing Africa because they are so human-like.

Most westerners think of chimpanzees as sort of smart dogs. Well, only if the dog is as big as you! That’s right, a full grown chimp averages 5½’ tall and weighs 150 pounds.

This is no monkey.

Chimps are still widespread throughout much of Africa’s great central jungles. But for millennia the jungle peoples, mostly pygmies and settlements at the forest edge, hunted chimps for food. Traditionally chimp meat was an important source of necessary protein.

Babies were never eaten. An adult would be killed and the baby set free, usually to die for being abandoned. As villages and settlements developed, a secondary trade in selling these babies to westerners developed.

Forty years ago in far western Kenya, Kathleen and I had been working for hardly a few weeks when we were offered a baby baboon. I bought and raised it and tried to reintroduce Hamisi into the wild. The baboon’s mother wasn’t killed for food, but because she was raiding a neighbor’s maize garden.

Killing baby anythings seems offensive to most everyone. It was my justification for buying our little baby baboon Hamisi in the first place. But what I didn’t realize then was that a massive trade would develop, a blackmarket in animals like Hamisi, driven by nefarious western and Asian animal traders.

Today there are numerous NGOs across Africa whose mission is to thwart the blackmarket trade in wild African animals. This usually means intercepting the baby taken from the killed mother. And that necessarily means rehabilitating the baby.

One of the more successful organization in the southern edge of chimp habitat is J.A.C.K.. See their video below.

Killing grownup chimps is universally offensive to the developed mind of anyone who has enough food: It approaches cannibalism. Chimps are extremely smart, one of the few animals to actually show emotion, and often mock, taunt, stalk or spy on their human neighbors, the same way people might observe wild animals.

Unlike baboons and gorillas, they don’t raid gardens or kitchens. They’re quite good at finding and in a way nurturing their own food, and they fear humans. I think that their fear is intellectualized very much like human fear is, and very much unlike gorillas and lesser animals that are more reactive.

So I’d venture to suggest that a chimp when coincidentally passing a trader walking through the forest with bananas, that it stops to muse on the consequences of stealing them. A baboon which is much smaller wouldn’t normally challenge a man, but the moment an opportunity arises – the farmer sets down his bag to wipe his brow – the baboon may strike.

The chimp won’t.

Whether this is fanciful or not, the fact remains that chimps don’t raid and pose no threat to humans, other than a reduction of a traditional food source as hunting of them is prohibited.

As Africa develops even rural folks grow more intellectual.

But the need for food is ever present. And the pernicious blackmarket in wild chimps is actually growing. The demand from the west and Asia is strong, as westerners and Asians grow exponentially richer than Africans.

That, today, is one of the major challenges in Africa with regards to chimp conservation. More and more authorities are prohibiting hunting and trading in chimps. Locally authorities justify their action beyond simple conservation – which can be very controversial — although this alternative justification applies more to the lesser primates like monkeys:

Ebola and a number of other viruses, probably like West Nile and flu varieties and possibly even HIV, originated with forest primates, mutated and were transported into the human population through bush meat.

The human/animal conflict is increasingly important throughout Africa as the continent develops so fast. Chimps are at the top of that controversy.

Caring or Counting?

Caring or Counting?

by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

TodaysLionScoreThe ongoing battle to “list lions” as an endangered species is heating up: notably NatGeo in an embarrassing flip-flop and FWS cowering in the shadows.

A year ago the conservation world was rattled when America’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed to consider whether the African lion should be placed on America’s Endangered Species List.

It would be a revolutionary approach to dealing with the decline in lions documented in Africa over the last decade.

Revolutionary, because whatever African animal goes on America’s Endangered Species List means that CITES will definitely consider interdicting it globally as well. And among all the other ramifications, hunters would no longer be able to bring their lion trophy home, and in some cases, not even hunt them.

What is a Big Game Hunter without a Lion?
In my opinion, a Bully without a Victim.

So you can imagine what a storm that decision last year caused. Hunter organizations around the world descended on the FWS like the NRA descended on Congresspeople trying to do something about the Sandy Hook massacre.

So guess what? The normal 90-day review period that FWS imposes on itself once a decision to consider listing is made, has come and gone, come and gone, come and gone… Kudus to FWS for not yet caving, but here’s all they’re saying at the moment: click here …. not 90 days after announcing their decision to consider, but 406 days after.

I guess it doesn’t look good for lions.

Meanwhile, more and more studies are coming out trying to explain the continuing decline. I’ve written about the human/lion conflicts in increasingly urbanized Africa, about increased poisoning by farmers, and even a brilliant scientist’s study that found a virus in buffalo that lions kill to eat was migrating into lions and killing them.

One of the newest and most intriguing studies is that global warming in particular is hitting the population hard.

I imagine it’s a combination of all the above. And when a species decline is attributed to so many separate factors, it doesn’t look good. You can work on one of the problems, then another, and find in the process that the solution to one is exacerbating the other.

Whether or not hunters should be allowed to shoot lion and hang their trophy above their fireplace is, in fact, rather incidental to the problem of saving them. Relatively speaking there are so few lions shot each year compared to those dying of all the other dreaded reasons, it’s fair to recognize this as a distraction.

On the other hand, it is a moral debate that won’t go away.

When a species is in decline, do you allow a recreation that hastens it, however incrementally?

I was appalled last year when National Geographic said YES.

NatGeo has truly morphed from what it originally was. Anyone who flips to their cable television shows about Arizona cops or reality TV understands they’ve moved from caring to counting.

And that backlash that editorial referenced above caused was enormous. So today, guess what? They’ve flipped:

“Why Are We Still Hunting Lions?” a NatGeo editorial of July 31 asks, advocating an end to hunting lion and a listing by FWS.

Well, they could answer themselves with their editorial last year, but I doubt they will.

Here’s a more credible answer: The International Fund for Animal Welfare has just completed an exhaustive study that concludes that the big game hunting of lions contributes meaninglessly if at all to any form of conservation.

The report also shows that the big game hunting industry is actually supported more by hunting species like buffalo than lion, and that any obstacle for hunting lions that would result from FWS or CITES listing lion would be insignificant.

So you have your answer. It’s morally wrong to hunt an animal in decline and economically insignificant to stop hunting them.

So NatGeo, what do you say about this … now … this time?

Massive Rhino Relocation

Massive Rhino Relocation

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

rhinos“Hundreds” of rhino will be relocated from South Africa’s landmark Kruger national park in the continuing struggle against poaching.

The announcement was made this morning by South Africa’s minister of tourism and wildlife. It will be one of the largest relocation of wild animals ever attempted.

The park, which is the size of New Jersey, has just under 8500 white rhino and poaching has escalated throughout South Africa but mostly in Kruger and surrounding private reserves.

Rhino poaching in 2007 stood at 13 in South Africa; last year it was 1,004. So far this year despite massive new efforts to curb the poaching including deployment of South African military, more than 500 have been poached in Kruger.

The “white” rhino is a very separate animal from the “black” rhino and the distinction has nothing to do with color: they are both grey. Both are endangered, but the black rhino is much closer to extinction in the wild than the white rhino which thrives in many reserves throughout southern Africa.

Although much bigger than its rarer cousin, the white rhino is remarkably docile and even in its wildest state is approachable and can often be touched. This makes it an amazingly easy animal to poach.

The horns of both rhinos are used identically in Asia for a variety of medical treatments and superstitiously as powder totems.

Although China has moved fast to curb the demand for wild animal parts by its rapidly increasing middle class, the prices for rhino and elephant parts have continued to escalate.

Kruger is particularly vulnerable because its entire eastern border is adjacent a fairly lawless and unpatrolled part of Mozambique. Mozambique is an easy exit for contraband from southern Africa to Asia.

South Africa’s largest rhino reserves, Hluhluhwe and Umfolozi near Durban, have suffered relatively little poaching in the last few years. The presumption is that by removing heathy animals from this vulnerable wilderness and placing them in areas like these, the continued growth in the rhino population in South Africa will be preserved.

As I’ve often written, our current era’s struggle with poaching is considerably different than 40 years ago, when there was massive corporate poaching centered in the Mideast. Today’s poaching tends to be by ad hoc gangs or single individuals attracted by the relatively large sum they can get on the black market for a single horn or tusk.

Last month, for instance, a gang in southern Texas was convicted of illegal gathering of U.S. antique ivory and rhino parts and sending them to China.

Both species of rhino and the elephant are considered endangered species, but elephants survival in the wild as currently exists is much more certain than rhino.

Urgent Appeal for The Serengeti

Urgent Appeal for The Serengeti

by Arusha ♥ 12 Comments

Dear Grace & Other Careful Readers
Thanks. This blog is in error. The “petition site” (automatically) contacted me (their deadline for the petition is next week, June 1, 2014) and fed me the links that I took to be current. Fellow bloggers did the same and we contributed to each other’s errors. All the news below is one year old. As far as we know the eviction process is on hold as a result of a suit filed by Maasai leaders which is still alive in the Tanzanian courts.

Petition site organizers believe if they reach 34,000 signatures by June 1, 2014, they will continue the pressure needed to keep the evictions on hold, so please proceed reading and sign the petition. But my apologies to all my readers for syncing off by a year.

– Jim Heck

Desperately needed: your signature on and broadcast of a petition to stop Tanzania from giving away part of the Serengeti to Mideast princes.

Sign this petition and circulate it, now, now. We have little time.

Last year I reported that Tanzania President Kikwete announced that he was going to evict 30,000 Maasai from their homeland in Loliondo in northern Tanzania to enlarge an existing hunting preserve owned by potentates in Dubai and Jordan.

As with the stopped Serengeti Highway, the outcry was substantial, especially locally from the Maasai. Nothing more happened. Until now.

Presuming the resistance had died out, Kikwete announced last week the sale was going ahead.

Manipulating Tanzania’s incredibly corrupt laws, Kikwete has decided to designate this area as a “wildlife corridor” which allows hunting but forces the eviction of the Maasai.

Don’t be fooled by this sinister sobriquet. Kikwete and past Tanzanian presidents have close relationships with Mideast potentates, where most of these old politicians’ money is stashed.

This is a land grab if ever there were one.

And this time the impact is actually less on conservationists and tourists than on local Tanzanians.

“My people’s livelihood depends on livestock totally,” a prominent Maasai politician, Daniel Ngoitiko, told the Guardian. “We will die if we don’t have land to graze.”

And don’t think this means there’s a bunch of dirty nomads running around half naked chasing dying cattle. Loliondo has become an important agricultural hub for Tanzania. We’re talking about modern ranching.

Ngoitiko’s comments could just as easily be said word-for-word by any Texas rancher afraid of a government land grab.

I’m infuriated by Kikwete’s dictatorial stance on this, his total disregard for the Maasai community which is trying so hard and doing so well to modernize.

So just as they begin modern farming techniques, he drives a stake through their back forty. There’s everything in his actions to suggest he’d rather send the Maasai back to the Stone Age than help them develop.

Ngoitiko told the Guardian, “We will fight against it until the last person is gone,” he said. More than fifty local Maasai officials said they will resign if the move goes through, effectively leaving a huge area without any local governance.

In an incredibly condescending dismissal Tanzania’s minister for natural resources and tourism, Khamis Kagasheki, was then quoted in the Guardian article as saying: “If the civic leaders want to resign, they can go ahead. There is no government in the world that can just let an area so important to conservation to be wasted away by overgrazing.”

This is equally a blow to the Serengeti, which the area is contiguous with. It’s a wedge between Kenya’s beautifully protected Maasai Mara and the Serengeti National Park.

Inserting hunting this far into the area could disrupt normal wildlife behaviors.

Please help. Sign the petition and circulate far and wide.

On Safari: Botswana’s Big Game

On Safari: Botswana’s Big Game

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

photographingLION.chiefs.640.apr14.jimIt isn’t just game viewing, it’s the extended stories about what you’re seeing that make the wilderness so fascinating.

As expected our best big game viewing in Botswana occurred in the Moremi Game Reserve, for us on Chief’s Island. On our first game drive we encountered a lion kill of a smallish female buffalo.

There were three mature lionesses on the kill with one squealing cub that couldn’t have been more than 2½-3 weeks old. That in itself was interesting, since lion litters are routinely 5-7 cubs of which usually 4 survive for at least a month; plus the fact that normally mothers won’t display their cubs at quite this young an age.

But there was only one cub, and when we arrived all three lionesses were leaving the kill to water, and the poor cub was squealing louder than a pig at slaughter. As the lionesses lumbered through the grass, their distended bellies slowing their gate, the poor cub was jumping madly after them while falling behind.

The mother didn’t seem to care. It was clear which was the mother, since her mammary glands were bursting at the seams: an indication that she’d lost all the others in the litter already, and a further caution that the poor remaining cub could be endangered by her producing too much milk.
BillWatchingEle.Chiefs.640.Apr14.jim
Later she’d try to nurse the cub, but he was as round as balloon and had obviously already had his fill. In such a situation, her glands might infect.

Finally the cub just couldn’t keep up. He turned back into a nearby forest and toned down his whining. The females proceeded to a puddle of a waterhole, probably dug by an elephant, and drank their hearts out.

The cub started to squeal, again, and as the mother got her necessary fill of water, she perked up to listen to him. Either she was sated with water or anxiety, and left the other two lionesses to find her cub and bring him back to the kill.

Several times she tried to pick him up as lions routinely do, but for some reason she’d drop him after just a few short instants. I don’t think it was anything he was doing, because once in his mother’s mouth he went totally limp as cubs are wont to do.

And why she was bringing him back to the kill was another mystery. He was far too young to eat, and the kill was an invitation for battle. The lionesses had carefully buried the intestines in sand to reduce the smell, and they’d pulled the carcass into a bush, but the vultures on the trees were proof their treasure had already been discovered.

At the kill the little tyke rubbed and rolled all over mom, but despite her attempts to get him to nurse, again, he was just too full.

Finally the mother lioness got too nervous and disappeared into the forest with her cub, and the whining stopped.

The background supplied to us by the Chief’s Camp drivers helped enormously to understand exactly what was going on.

The three lionesses were two daughters of one mother, and they had never successfully reared cubs. The daughters were about 4 years old, so that in itself was unusual.

The three were constantly harassed by the males in the area. The current pridemasters, two younger males who we never saw and were reported to be “patrolling” the perimeters of their territory and were unaware of the buffalo kill, had dislodged a single pride master several years ago and killed four of his cubs.

This is common lion behavior: a new pridemaster kills all the cubs of the previous pridemaster.

The current little cub was from the first litter sired by one of the new pridemasters, but one of the guides felt that one of the pridemasters might kill the cub (and might have killed the cub’s siblings already) because he was not the specific one who sired him.

That’s interesting but as far as I know undocumented behavior. Multiple pridemasters are almost always brothers or cousins from the same family, and if the theory of natural selection which explains pridemasters killing cubs really governs behavior, then they would be close enough genetically to accept each other’s progeny.

The first successfully raised litter is always the most challenging for the mother lion. It could be that multiple conditions, including the unnatural floods of the last several years as well as the constant male harassment, just rattled the young mom too much.

On the second day we saw the lionesses finish off the carcass. Killing a buffalo is no small feat even for three lionesses, and their still raw wounds attested to that. But since the pridemasters never found the kill, the females gorged themselves to their hearts content.

We left the scene with the rollie pollie little cub feisty and healthy. But I know his chances of survival aren’t good, given the stress filled scene we’d been so lucky to explore these last few days.
LionKill.chiefs.640.apr14.jim

On Safari: Dangerous Elephants

On Safari: Dangerous Elephants

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leopardintreeThis safari is spending six fantastic days in the Serengeti, traversing it from bottom to top, and guess what’s dominating game viewing.

Lions, leopard and cheetah of course, and with no surprise as the Serengeti is probably the best place in the world for big cats. See Chris Kordash’s photo above.

But what was a surprise is the close second: elephant.

I’m beginning to rethink the “elephant problem” after our experience in the Serengeti and the Crater. I’m convinced now that the ele are acting as if poaching has increased substantially.

While we were at Ndutu, Howard Buffet was, too. He was announcing a $24 million grant to the Tanzanian government for increase elephant anti-poaching efforts, including a new helicopter and the requisite training for rangers to use it.

Charging us near Klein's.
Charging us near Klein’s.
A day or two before, when we were in the crater, I counted 107 very large all male elephants collected on the western side. Although their tusks were not as big as the old tuskers that came down to the crater in the 1970s and 1980s, they were among the larger of today’s.

It was clear they weren’t acclimated yet to the crater, or to each other. I didn’t see them on my last safari, and I’m sure they weren’t here last year. So this is a relatively new development, quite contrary to normal elephant behavior, and almost identical to what the big tuskers of the 1970s and 1980s did.

The crater is not a good place for elephant, because there isn’t a lot of browsing; it’s almost all grazing. But the 1970/80s elephants learned to live with it and were protected from poaching by the unique geography of the crater.

The elephants we saw were fighting, as big bull elephants are wont to do. The old tuskers don’t fight, anymore. They’ve learned to live with one another, and I suspect that’s what will happen with the current crew.

I continue to be very critical of much of the media’s reporting of elephant poaching, however. (Please see my numerous previous blogs.) Recently, for example, Emily Kelting in the Huffington Post misstated the total number of elephant by several hundred thousand and continued the scandalous suggestion that in ten years they will be no more elephant.

It’s that kind of juvenile reporting that further complicates the problem. Yes, poaching is on the increase and my own observations just on this safari support that.

But no, extinction is not imminent, and there is a more serious problem than poaching: regardless of the horrible poaching, there are still too many elephant.

C. Kordash Seronera.
C. Kordash Seronera.

It’s a difficult issue, because poaching must be stopped, and efforts from Buffett and others to do so are exemplary.

But Tarangire is no longer the only place to see huge numbers of elephant whose normal behavior is stressed.

Coming in today to the far north Serengeti near the Kenyan border, we counted over 100 elephant in one mass group, so collected it was hard to discern families. They were at the very edge of the park, adjacent Maasai farms.

These huge numbers seem to be almost everywhere we went on safari: from of course Tarangire, to even Manyara, to the crater, to Ndutu, to Seronera … everywhere. It’s quite possible elephant numbers are seriously declining because of poaching, but it’s also absolutely true that there are too many of them in the space that’s left.

And that distorts their behavior and makes them dangerous.

So let’s try to take a deep breath, thank Howard and others, but recognize the problem is very serious and unsolvable unless the overpopulation of elephants is also addressed.

On Safari: Old Men Star!

On Safari: Old Men Star!

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giant tuskerOf the many animal attractions in Ngorongoro Crater, to me the most precious are the giant old tuskers who will soon be gone.

We saw several of them yesterday and today during our game drives. These are very old men, likely well into their sixties, who descended into the crater during the horrible years of poaching in the 1970s and 1980s.

They came down for the natural protection that the crater afforded them from the well organized and well mechanized corporate poaching of the times that decimated Tanzania’s elephant population in less than a decade.

At the time they were no different than all the rest of the elephant; depending upon how you see it, they were the cowards or the geniuses.

In those horrible years of poaching large helicopters flew over the veld at night with spotlights and bazooka launchers. I would watch them with binoculars from my lodge balcony.

Isabelle & Max watch lions in the crater.
Isabelle & Max watch lions in the crater.
The spots would fall on the veld and a decision would be made that there were enough big tuskers, or not enough. If not enough, the spot went off and the helicopter moved off. If enough, the bazookas were fired, the nets lowered, and the ivory harvested.

It was so regular and routine that in a short time only elephants with no tusks or small tusks were left in the population. Except for the several dozen that went into the crater.

The crater isn’t a good habitat for elephant: there aren’t enough trees and bushes, it’s mostly grass. But over the years the big tuskers learned to survive on that and well after the years of horrible poaching ended, they remained down in the crater.

When finally the poaching had been controlled, other elephants began to descend into the crater as the elephant population rebounded at the same time that their habitat was diminishing.

But, unfortunately, the old men were no longer interested in the females that came down. Their genes weren’t propagated.

Most of the old men have died off, now. Only a few of the sort we were fortunate enough to see remain.

Of course our game drives in the crater included much more than these old guys. We saw a couple dozen lion and lots of cubs, dozens of hyaena, thousands of wildebeest, zebra and gazelle; plus eland, hartebeest, baboon and many birds. A lot of the European migrants have yet to leave.

The crater never fails!

Let the Safari Begin!

Let the Safari Begin!

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment


The safari calendar in East Africa resets each year at the end of November, and the news that has poured in from our safaris just keeps getting better and better. 2014 may be an exceptionally outstanding year for safaris!

The latest bit came from safari traveler Loren Smith traveling on a safari EWT arranged for the Cleveland Zoological Society. You can see Loren’s fabulous video above.

The first is the only disturbing one: there continue to be too many elephants, but let me get that single negative out quickly. I’ve been warning of a growing elephant conflict for more than a decade in East Africa. My blogs are replete with the problems and endless attempts at solutions.

The “elephant problem” has become a political problem in East Africa. Candidates for political office in both Kenya and Tanzania now often have planks in their platform regarding what to do about elephants.

My concern is that there will be overreach. And as I’ve often written, the exaggeration and bad analysis of the elephant poaching problem in the west isn’t helping.

But I can assure you that on safari the effect is nothing less than exhilarating as you can tell from Loren’s video. I show minute:second time points below in the video corresponding to my remarks:

0:10
Loren traveled in the last half of February, which over the last forty years of good climate statistics suggests should be much drier than shown in his first shots in Arusha National Park.

Typically the entire first half of the year is a wet season in northern Tanzania, but in February the precipitation abates at times almost completely. If you were planning your trip strictly by statistics, Loren’s video would have had little green in it.

Global warming has been changing this steadily for almost a decade, and as you can see by the green bushes, it’s not dry.

It’s hard for animals to be affected negatively by too much rain. But it definitely affects people, and that’s been one of the continuing stories in the equatorial regions of the planet as global warming progresses.

0:45
Tarangire is bit drier, which is always the case. Arusha is the wilderness around Africa’s 5th highest mountain and when it’s wet, it’s always wetter there. Tarangire is actually an ecosystem more similar to southern Africa than East Africa and is the only northern Tanzanian wilderness defined by a sand river ecology.

1:04
This lady has just eaten and washed herself off, which is why she is so close to the water in Silale Swamp. We can speculate about the three new lacerations on her hide. Two are just above her left hip and if you watch closely you’ll actually see a larger one on the far backside, middle of her left hip.

Lions gorge themselves when eating. Their very inferior molars are almost useless. They don’t chew much. They tear and swallow huge hunks of meat. A 400-pound male lion can easily chow down 70 pounds in a sitting. That extends the belly and makes it droop and is often confused in females as being pregnant.

So what caused the problem? We can only speculate but I think she was in a tussle with hyaenas, and the lacerations are the hyaena nips. In this area of the Silale Swamp there are four very grand males and for some reason they aren’t very welcoming of females. It could also have been a fight with the males.

Tarangire is actually where I think the best elephant experiences should be had, but Loren obviously had a fabulous one at nearby Lake Manyara National Park!

1:33
Notice the small tusks on this elephant, the legacy of the horrible years of elephant poaching in the 1970s and 1980s. As the video progresses we’ll see some better and longer tusks, because the elephant population is definitely on the increase and growing healthier.

Manyara was where the very first substantial elephant research was carried out in the 1950s by the famous Ian Douglas Hamilton. In those days there was no place on earth with as many and as healthy elephants as Manyara.

3:18
Junior here has a short branch in the back of his mouth. Elephant get a new set of molars about every ten years and like all good kids, he’s got to massage those tender gums!

4:36
What we see in Loren’s video is a large mass of transitory elephants: they’re moving through Manyara. They don’t live here as Hamilton’s elephants did in the last century. You can tell this by the way many multiple families are grouped together.

In a totally calm and balanced system, elephant families tend not to group. But when they’re on the move they do.

Tarangire provides a massive corridor to elephants south into central Tanzania’s great wildernesses of Ruaha and Rukwa. They move northwest from Tarangire into Manyara, and from Manyara they moved in very narrow corridors into Ngorongoro where they can then spread out widely into the Serengeti and Mara.

It isn’t that elephant are breeding so rapidly that their numbers are bulging. Poaching has been on the increase and the growth rate of the population is not high. But human encroachment is on a rapid increase, so their habitat is shrinking.

And more than ever, they have to move. Loren’s video is a magnificent documentary of this.

6:12
Until recently Ngorongoro Crater had the highest density of lion in Africa, but we need new studies since the rapid decline in lion was documented a few years ago. Even so, it is probably still one of the best places on earth to see lion.

These are two juvenile males, and despite their bravado they’re having a hard time. Look at their bellies and then look at their muddy feet. Lion like cats all over hate water.

Something was in the marsh that seemed like easy pickings, but they even missed that.

In a balanced population in the wild there are many fewer males than female lions. This is because so many young juveniles like these die of starvation. Unlike the sisters in their litter, they aren’t taught to hunt by the mothers.

But also unlike their sisters who usually remain with the mothers, the males are kicked out before they’re fully mature. A fully mature male is 50% bigger than a female, and nature’s way among lions to avoid inbreeding is to kick out the teenage males before they get as big as mom.

They have to teach themselves to hunt. Obviously enough learn, but these kids don’t seem to be doing so well. You might think what a pretty mane the one has. What I notice is their ribs and boney haunches. When the one starts to call, I think that’s a real hunger pain or possibly a pointless message to Mom for help.

7:50
The video ends in the central Serengeti and notice how wet the track is. Good for the critters to be sure. Not so good for the farmers.

Thanks Loren for an outstanding quick story of Tanzania’s wilderness in 2014!