Redwoodshen Bengals, who are based in Martinez, California, have a litter of snow spotted and snow marble bengal kittens for sale. They were born on Feb 1, and will be ready to go to new homes on April 15. Kittens will be registered with TCA, vaccinated and come with a health certificate. Further details are available on the main website.
BengalClassifieds would like to welcome Olga, who is advertising with us for the first time this month. Located in New York, Olga has two brown spotted / rosetted bengal kittens for sale from the currect litter. They are now ready to go to new forever homes. Kittens are vet checked / vaccinated etc. See breeder ad for more photos, pedigree etc
We’d like to welcome Solarkatz Bengals who are advertising with us for the first time this month. Solarkatz are located in Augusta, New Jersey. They currently have a litter of brown spotted / rosetted bengal kittens (males and females) for sale. They were born on the 01st November and are now ready to go to forever homes. Kittens come with a health guarantee, kitten starter kit, are vaccinated and wormed. See breeder listing for further info, pedigree, photos and contact details.
A new piece of software which uses 3D coordinates mapped onto a tiger’s body, is able to identify individual tigers by the unique stripe patterns on their coats, similar to a barcode.
Developers say the software will make it easier to estimate tiger populations and aid conservation efforts.
It is also able to match skins sold on the black market to photographs of the animals taken using camera traps.
The team of scientists based in the UK and India report its invention in the journal Biology Letters.
The program was based on software originally designed to scan the markings of grey seals and identify them from photographs.
The researchers adapted this for tiger stripes, and combined it with a 3D map of the surface of a tiger’s body.
This enabled them effectively to unwrap the pattern of stripes from an image of a live animal and match it to picture of the flat skin.
Dr Ullas Karanth, a researcher from the Wildlife Conservation Society India Program, worked on the project with the UK-based company Conservation Research.
“Tigers are very secretive animals and it is a major challenge to estimate their numbers,” Dr Karanth explained.
Over a decade ago, he came up with the idea of using camera traps – hidden cameras operated by trip wires – to monitor tiger populations.
Since then researchers have used a combination of this automated photography – and tagging and tracking the animals – to monitor their numbers.
But each new photograph of a tiger had to be compared with every animal in a database of images. It is a laborious process, Dr Karanth says.
“No piece of software is as good at discerning shapes as the human brain, but we can use this to shortlist the most likely matches, and then eyeball the photos in that shortlist,” said Dr Karanth, “It’s a very powerful tool.”
While they were testing the software, Dr Karanth and his colleagues found images of three tigers that, it turned out, had later been killed by poachers.
This inspired the designers to build in a forensic tool that could be used to trace the origin of any skin to a photograph of the tiger.
They also adapted it for other species with unique markings, including leopards, zebras and salamanders.
Belinda Wright is executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, an organisation that investigates every tiger death in the country.
She says simplifying the process of identifying tigers from camera trap images would be “very beneficial” to conservation research.
But, she warned, opportunities to find the origin of a confiscated tiger skin are rare.
“Skins are often seized in very remote locations, and we often don’t get decent photographs of them,” Ms Wright explained.
Further, camera trapping is not yet carried out continuously in all of the areas throughout India where tigers live.
This will be necessary, she says, to maintain a census of the tiger population.
“Until camera trapping is a regular and ongoing process,” said Ms Wright, “the usefulness of this amazing software will be limited.”
Advertising with us for the first time this month is Cozy Country Cattery, who are based in Killingly, CT. Cozy Country have brown spotted, brown marble, silver spotted and silver marble bengal kittens for sale. Kittens have their initial vaccinations, are wormed, come with a health guarantee and will be TICA registered. See breeder listing on the main website for more photos and contact details.
Jakarta, Indonesia – In the wake of the deaths of six people from tiger attacks in Sumatra’s Jambi Province in less than a month, conservationists are calling for an urgent crackdown on the clearing of natural forest in the province as a matter of public safety.
Tigers killed three illegal loggers over the weekend in Jambi, according to government officials. Three people were killed earlier in the same central Sumatran province. Three juvenile tigers were killed by villagers this month in neighbouring Riau Province, apparently after straying into a village in search of food. And in an unrelated incident, two Riau farmers were hospitalized after being attacked by a tiger last weekend.
“As people encroach into tiger habitat, it’s creating a crisis situation and further threatening this critically endangered sub-species,” said Ian Kosasih, director of WWF’s Forest Program. “In light of these killings, officials have got to make public safety a top concern and put a stop to illegal clearance of forests in Sumatra.”
There is rampant clearing of forests by individuals and corporations in the region for palm oil plantations and pulpwood plantations. This forest loss is one of the leading drivers of human-tiger conflict in the region. About 12 million hectares of Sumatran forest has been cleared in the past 22 years, a loss of nearly 50 percent islandwide. The incidents in Riau occurred in the Kerumutan forest block, a site where many forest fires have been set in the last two months, as well as the location of many plantation developments threatening tiger forests.
Jambi Province is the site of the only two “global priority” tiger conservation landscapes in Sumatra, as identified by a group of leading tiger scientists in 2005. There are estimated to be fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild.
Didy Wurjanto, the head of the official Jambi nature conservancy agency, BKSDA, said his team has increased its patrols following the killings. He is also working with local officials to halt the rampant conversion of forests by illegal loggers and palm oil plantations, which is mostly done by people from outside Jambi.
“The shocking news that six people have been killed in less than one month is an extremely sad illustration of how bad the situation has become in Jambi,” Wurjanto said. “It’s a signal that we need to get serious about protecting natural forest and giving tigers their space, and ensure local governments have sustainable economic development policies in place that include long-term protections for our natural resources.”
Canadian company – Wing Quon Enterprises Ltd., which specialised in Chinese traditional medicines is to pay the bulk of a $45,000 fine for trading illegally in tiger parts to TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network that helped secure its conviction.
The company pleaded guilty to possessing and attempting to sell medicines containing parts from Tigers and other protected species in a Richmond Provincial Court earlier this week.
TRAFFIC, whose expertise helped secure the conviction, are to receive the bulk of this sum, some $40,000.
The company was also ordered to forfeit seized medicines and products made from other endangered species, including costus root, agarwood, bear, pangolin, musk deer and rhinoceros. All are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which imposes strict controls on listed plants, wildlife and their derivatives.
TRAFFIC, which operates globally, was established as a partnership between WWF, the world’s leading conservation organization, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a global consortium of government, scientific and civil society organizations.
Las Vegas – Sunday, 1 March 2009
Illusionists Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn have performed a single final act on stage – with the Bengal tiger which attacked Horn five years ago.
The trio carried out an illusion for a charity event in Las Vegas – their first appearance since the mauling.
The act involved Fischbacher in a cage which was then covered by drapes. When Horn removed the drapes, the tiger had replaced Fischbacher.
Their careers ended in 2003 when the tiger sank his teeth into Horn’s neck. He was dragged off stage by the tiger in front of a horrified audience.
After the incident, Horn claimed that the tiger had tried to move him out of danger after he fainted – a theory which was disputed by animal experts.
In Saturday’s performance neither performer spoke. The Associated Press reported that Horn limped, and had to steady himself on his co-star’s shoulder as they went on stage dressed in cloaks and masks to disguise who was who.
The crowd gave them a standing ovation at the end of the act, when they removed their masks and waved.
This loveable pair were born at Melbourne Zoo 3 months ago to proud parents Meo, 6, and Leon, 7.
They are the first snow leopards born at the zoo in 20 years.
Yesterday keepers took on the tricky task of separating Meo from her cubs so the little ones could be vaccinated against cat flu and feline enteritis.
The cubs, a male and a female, coped well and afterwards they were given a protective sniff by an anxious Meo.
Senior carnivore keeper Adrian Howard said the birth of the cubs had been exciting for the zoo staff and an important addition to the endangered species.
“The female is bigger and quite outgoing, while the male is quite subdued – that is until a feed of meat is involved, when he can become quite feisty,” he said.