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In a report this week, conservationists in Nepal say efforts to save the nation’s dwindling tiger populations are facing a twin attack.
They have recorded a significant decrease in the number of the endangered species in some of the protected areas of the country.
The bad news comes just as concern is growing over the immigration of traditional hunting and poaching communities from neighbouring India.
During the 10-year Maoist conflict, which ended two years ago, poachers were already active in some conserved areas, cashing in on the absence of army personnel who were otherwise engaged in the conflict with the then rebels. Some of these poachers had been identified as Nepalese nationals.
The recent decline in tiger population, however, has coincided with the arrival of the Indian hunting tribes.

A recent count in the western Nepalese Shuklaphanta wildlife reserve, which shares an open border with India, has shown a decrease of about 50% in tiger numbers from just three years ago.

Initial results of a tiger count in another nearby protected area, the Bardiya National Park, are not good either.

“It is very disturbing news,” says Diwakar Chapagain of conservation group WWF, which supported the government in the tiger count.
“More so when there are indications that the tigers did not die natural deaths,” he added.
Following the tiger count in Shuklaphanta wildlife reserve, the report submitted by the tiger task force concluded that there had not been a noticeable decline in the tigers’ key prey species.
“(Therefore) tiger mortality due to natural deaths and through poaching is worth exploring,” it recommended.
But conservationists closely monitoring poaching and illegal trading of wildlife believe they have some explanation for the observed decreases.
They say members of Indian traditional hunting communities – Bawariyas and Beheliyas – have been increasingly moving in after being hounded out by authorities in India.

“From our informers on the ground, we have information that more than 50 Bawariyas and Beheliyas families have entered Nepal and they are now in Nepalese-protected areas and jungles,” says Prasanna Yonjan of Wildlife Conservation Nepal, which has helped officials catch illegal wildlife traders and traffickers.
Hem Aryal, the forest officer in Banke district (where the Bardiya National park is located), says he has been tipped off about the arrival of the hunting communities by Indian authorities.
“In one of our recent bilateral meetings, Indian officials with the border security force told us that they had noticed some movement of these hunting tribes in border areas,” he said. “We are therefore on high alert.”
After arresting an illegal wildlife trafficker recently, Aryal’s team is even more convinced that the hunters and poachers are already active in the Nepalese side.
“This trafficker revealed to us that the leopard skin he was carrying was given to him by Indian hunters; their description perfectly matched with what the Indian officials have told us,” he said.

Some conservationists in India share the same opinion as their Nepalese counterparts about the recent tiger poaching and the arrival of traditional Indian hunters.

Highlands, British Columbia, Canada: Highlands resident Dave Bennett’s plight to save the life of a two-and-a-half-year-old Bengal Tiger has has taken a twist.

Bennett was prepared to adopt Suzy, a 350-pound Bengal tiger, after her owner in Cowichan Lake was told to get rid of her by the end of the month.

“She faces death or life in the cage, she can never be set free,” Bennett said. “I didn’t want to see her dead.”

But when Highlands residents heard of the new addition to their community, mayor and council found themselves answering numerous phone calls and e-mails of concerns.

Bennett does agree tigers should not be kept as pets, but Suzy has never known life outside a cage.

“I don’t think people should catch new tigers,” Bennett said. “I just don’t want to see her dead.”

After researching their options, council held a special council meeting at the municipal hall on Aug. 22. The first three readings for bylaw No. 311 passed, which prohibits residents from having exotic pets.

“I had no idea there even was a meeting until Mark Cardinal called me after and said that they passed three readings,” Bennett said. “I checked out everything (legally) before I did this. I am not breaking any rules.”

“I tip my hat to Mr. Bennett to save the tiger,” said Mayor Mark Cardinal. “It’s unfortunate tigers are in cages, but we have to look after public safety.”

On Aug. 25 another special council meeting was held and final reading of the bylaw passed.

“It’s good the District of Highlands is acting quickly,” said Sara Dubois, manager of Wildlife Services, BC SPCA.

Laura Beckett, District planner, found a tiger sanctuary in Colorado willing to take Suzy. The only cost of admitting the tiger to the sanctuary would be a $3,000 transportation fee.

Council said it was a difficult decision to make, but knowing the tiger would not be put down made it easier.

“I am not paying to have her sent to Colorado,” Bennett said. “A week ago a cougar was walking down Munns Road, that is more dangerous than this tiger. She’ll be in this pen for the remainder of her life.”

Prior the decision from council Bennett spent $10,000 creating a cage for Suzy 50 feet away from his house.

Measuring 30 feet by 60 feet, the cage walls consist of 12-foot metal poles cemented three feet into the ground and covered with chain link fencing. The fence is buried and cemented into the ground a foot deep.

“I’m going overboard on safety,” Bennett said. “Everything is right by the book.”

Bennett planned to line one side of the cage with bamboo plants. It already has running water, a log, tire swing and a pond for the tiger. He would also be installing two video cameras around the cage.

For the past two-and-a-half years Suzy has lived in a 20 by 20 foot pen wrapped in deer fencing. Her pond consisted of an upside down satellite dish filled with water.

“The cage I am making for her is like a resort,” Bennett said.

Bennett said the previous owner contacted some zoos and asked if they would take the tiger to no avail. Suzy is not a pure bred Bengal and there is speculation she could of have some Siberian tiger in her.

“It is in the interest of the species’ survival breeding program that most zoos accept animals who have the best genetic representation of the species,” said Laurie Herron, Calgary Zoo manager of communications.

Zoos face other issues when accepting new animals.

“It is not that we don’t want them, but space and finances are also an issue,” said Jody Henderson, Greater Vancouver Zoo spokesperson.Without a zoo willing to take the animal, Bennett felt he was the only one to care for the animal.

Bennett owns five acres of property off of Millstream Road. His property is also boarded by power lines which add to his seclusion, Bennett said.

Through research Bennett says he is ready to care for the tiger, but some professionals question weather he is certified to do so.

“He’s taking on a big responsibility,” said Helen Schwantje, provincial wildlife veterinarian for B.C. Ministry of Environment. “(Tigers) can live up to 20 years, as long as a domestic cat.”

It’s a responsibility Bennett is up for.

“I’ve lived at this house for the past 19 years,” he said, “and I am going to die here.”

A Thirteen year old boy in in a critical condition in a Johannesburg Hospital and he was among a group which were attacked by a leopard in Dinoka, a village near Zeerust on Wednesday.

Inspector Sam Tselanyane said “The boy, Oageng Mogale, was in his home’s yard when the [leopard] pounced on him. His father rushed to assist him but the animal attacked him too.”

Father and son sustained injuries to the head and body. The leopard went up a hill after “a hassle with another relative in the yard”.

Police and the North West Parks Board were alerted and the community joined in the search for the animal, said Tselanyane.

“While busy searching, the [leopard] emerged from the trees and pounced on the police officers.

“One of the cops fired shots from his rifle and the leopard diverted its attention to a police reservist who also fired a shot from his gun,” he said.

“A reservist was shot twice in the leg by diverted ammunition.”

He said the [leopard] was becoming more and more aggressive, attacking randomly.

However, the officers started shooting it simultaneously and it was killed.

All the injured were taken to the Zeerust hospital. It was not known where the leopard had come from.

Tselanayne said the village was in a very mountainous and bushy area near the Botswana border.

“It might have come from there, we don’t know. The North West Parks Board is conducting investigations”, he added.

Sapa earlier reported that it was a tiger and not a leopard that attacked the village.

Survival of the thirty-five remaining Amur leopards of the Russian Far East has been given a boost following the government’s decision to establish a unified, centrally governed protected area.

The proposal will see jurisdiction of Russia’s oldest nature reserve, Kedrovaya Pad, as well as two adjacent wildlife refuges transferred to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology from the three separate agencies that currently regulate them.

“Decentralised management of the protected areas in the leopard habitat made it impossible to implement a unified program for leopard restoration over many years,” said Igor Chestin, Director of WWF Russia. “Moreover, protection of Red List species, which includes the Far Eastern Leopards, did not fall under the remit of any of the other agencies.”

Russian Vice-Premier Sergei Ivanov served as arbiter in meetings between the agencies, and his support for the proposal was key to enabling all parties to come to an agreement.

“This announcement marks the culmination of five years of hard work by WWF” added Chestin “This is a real opportunity for the leopard population in the region to gain a foothold and pull themselves up from the brink of extinction.”

Once established, the joint protected area will cover about 2,000 square kilometres, and will be home to half of the remaining leopard population.

Discussions at the meeting also turned to other threats to the leopard population, including poaching and construction projects through the protected area.

“Any construction in the region should take into consideration the fragile state of this leopard population,” said Chestin. “Activities undertaken should in no way threaten the existence of the species.”

The agreement also includes a mandate for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to start formal talks with the Chinese Government on an agreement for transboundary conservation of the Far Eastern leopard.

4 kittens born to two pairs of clouded leopards at a wild animal park in Kent are making their public debut.

The two male and two female kittens, who have not yet been named, were born at Howletts, near Canterbury in April.

Fathers Nanyo and Ben were born at the park, which has had clouded leopards since the 1960s.

Their mothers, Nhi-Ha and Mandalay, were introduced as part of a breeding programme designed to help ensure the survival of the vulnerable cats.

“Generally, breeding of these animals is especially difficult in captivity,” said head of the cat section, Jim Hassie.

“But with 23 clouded leopards, Howletts Wild Animal Park is one of the very few zoos to have been successful in its breeding programme with no less than 30 births since 2003.”

The leopard, which is found in the tropical forests of southern China, south east Asia, Sumatra and Borneo, is one of the largest members of the cat family in Asia.

The animal is threatened with extinction in the wild because of destruction of its forest habitat and hunting for its pelt and for use in Chinese medicine.

The leopard is listed as “vulnerable” to extinction on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species.

The Word Wide Fund for nature’s news centre carried a report this week detailing how Indigenous training offers hope of cutting poaching in Primorye:

An indigenous people famed for helping early Siberian explorers survive in the wild are now passing on their knowledge to the guardians of one of the world’s most porous borders.

Leading the training effort in north east Russia is Vasilii Dunkai, leader of the scouting school in Krasnyi Yar in northern Primorye.

The scouting school was originally conceived to teach school children survival skills and pass on ancestral knowledge but the latest batch of students includeds Russian border patrol forces.

Dunkai, who was joined by Pavel Fomenko, WWF biodiversity conservation coordinator in the region, specifically sought to explain how to minimise conflicts between humans and wildlife, such as tigers and leopards native to the region, and to identify signs of human and animal activity.

It is a role recalling the most celebrated of the Nanai people, Dersu Uzala, the hunter who passed into Russian folkore teaching the explorer Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev how to survive Siberia in the early 20th Century.

“All of southwestern Primorye is monitored by the border forces, making them responsible for the protection of rare breeds of species such as the Amur leopard,” explains Pavel Fomenko, WWF biodiversity conservation coordinator for the region.

“I hope that the lessons learnt by the soldiers will help to protect Russia’s valuable biological resources.”

The border patrol plays a key role in seizing and preventing the delivery of valuable animal parts, such as tiger bones used for traditional medicine, across the border into China.

“Monitoring this border region, which stretches for 300 kilometres, is an extremely difficult task,” said Fomenko.

“Annually, thousands of snares are removed, and hundreds of Chinese poachers are detained,” he added.

The Netherlands: A Dutch tabby cat has adopted a red panda cub, which was abandoned by its mother at a zoo.

The adult panda, Gladys, rejected two cubs after they were born on 30 June. The Artis zoo in Amsterdam initially kept them both on an incubator, but the zookeeper’s cat had just given birth to four kittens, and allowed the pandas to join the litter. One of the cubs died last week.

Red pandas are a rare species only distantly related to giant pandas. When fully grown, they are not much bigger than a domestic cat.

“The young panda is doing well in the circumstances,” the zoo said in a statement.

“For it to survive, it is very important that it gets enough food and grows. We will see if this is the case over the next few weeks.”

The cub does not have a name yet, but the zoo says that anyone willing to sponsor her will be allowed to name her.

The red panda is an endangered species that lives in Himalayan regions in China, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and Burma.

West Bengal: An Indian fisherman whose father was killed by a tiger twenty years ago has survived a similar attack.

The Bengal tiger struck on Tuesday as Fatik Halder was crab fishing in the Sunderbans mangrove forest. For 20 minutes he was embroiled in a life or death battle with the animal, which bit and clawed him repeatedly.

Mr Halder then had to survive a traumatic journey to Calcutta to get treatment injuries to his upper body. As Mr Halder fought the tiger he remembered that his father, Gour, had been killed in a similar attack.

“Around 10 o’clock in the morning, when I jumped into the water in Benifeli forest and threw in the [fishing] net, I suddenly felt a searing pain, I didn’t know, for a couple of seconds, what had hit me.”

Realising that he was under attack from a man-eater, Mr Halder decided to fight back. He thought of his two children and wife, who were at home waiting for him to return. He frantically dug his heels into the mud and levered his fingers under the tiger’s jaws.

“The pain was becoming unbearable. I don’t know how I managed to dodge the blows,”  he said.

The animal’s teeth pierced his right shoulder. It tried to wrestle him to the river bed with its paws but the water and mud made it difficult for it to keep its footing and it finally gave up.

Bleeding and traumatised, the injured fisherman then had to survive another ordeal – the 10-hour journey to Calcutta for medical treatment. Fatik’s heroic survival has already passed into local folklore. He now insists that his fishing days are over and that he will be looking for some other job. But perhaps he should consider himself lucky to be nursing his injuries alive. A day before he was attacked another man, Narayan Das, was savaged by a tiger which clawed him in the neck inside the Sunderbans reserve. It happened when Mr Das’ boat became stuck in one of the numerous creeks that criss-cross the mangrove forest and he and other fisherman jumped into the water to push. By the time his friends managed to fend the tiger off using kitchen utensils, sticks and other items, Mr Das was critically injured. He was officially declared dead in the nearest town 100km (62 miles) away. His family will not get any compensation, forestry officials say, because the fishermen were trespassing in the tiger reserve.

A lion cub is being hand-reared by the director of a Cambridgeshire zoo because her mother would not feed her. Zara has been bottle-fed daily by staff at Linton Zoo after her parents struggled to cope with their newborn. She was just 2lb 4oz and would have died without human intervention, but six weeks on she weighs a healthy 10lb. Zara, who lives at Kim Simmons’ home, has also made friends with the family cat Arnie – but it is hoped that ultimately she will be freed in Uganda.

Mrs Simmons said: “We only hand-rear the cubs if it is absolutely necessary, but this was Safina’s (Zara’s mother) first baby and she couldn’t feed her due to her young age and inexperience.”

Mrs Simmons said Zara had become “great friends” with her ginger tom cat Arnie since moving into her home, on the zoo site.

“She’s got an absolutely wonderful personality and is very laid back and affectionate. “Arnie the cat loves having cubs in the house and the two are great friends, but we’ll have to guard him as Zara gets bigger and stronger.”

Zara is the latest addition to a family of five lions’ at family-run Linton Zoo, near Cambridge. Her parents Safina and Zuri and her grandparents Riziki and Karla are all at the zoo which has been operating since 1972.

Safina and Zuri are expecting another litter of cubs in October and Ms Simmons believes their brief experience with Zara will help them to be more able to cope next time.

All lions born at Linton Zoo will be moved to Uganda as part of a joint project between West Midlands Safari Park and Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire.

In Kenya, environmentalists are worried that an insecticide is being used by farmers to kill lions and other big cat predators. Carbofuran is a very powerful and toxic insecticide. When spread in the soil, it destroys bugs in the ground and is drawn up by plants and kills insects which feed on the sap or foliage. It is so powerful and toxic that it has been banned throughout Europe. In the US, it can’t be used in granular form, and the US Environmental Protection Agency is seeking a total ban. But in Kenya, carbofuran can be bought across the counter without restriction. According to world-famous naturalist Dr Richard Leakey, it is being bought not by farmers wanting to control bugs and insects, but mainly by herdsmen who use it to kill lions, leopards and other predators.

Among the latest incidents two lions were poisoned and killed in the Maasai Mara game reserve after eating the carcass of a hippo that had ingested carbofuran. One of the lions was shot to bring a quick end to its suffering. Another lion died a few months ago from carbofuran poisoning on a private ranch in Laikipia. In November last year, a dead camel was apparently found laced with carbofuran near Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. The result was the death of at least two lions and 15 vultures which feasted on the carcass. Also near Lewa, several lions from the nearby Samburu Wildlife Reserve were poisoned; again, it is thought carbofuran was responsible.

There are many other cases throughout Kenya of predators dying after eating meat contaminated with the chemical. Dr Leakey says carbofuran is “deadly poisonous” and he has called for it to be banned in Kenya. “It’s become known in rural communities in Kenya as an easy way to get rid of predators: lions, leopards and hyenas,” he says. Dr Leakey says his research shows that Furadan, the trade name of the biggest-selling carbofuran insecticide in Kenya, is being bought not by farmers but by pastoralists who do not have any land for growing crops, and use the chemical to kill lions and leopards which threaten their herds.

There is no record for the number of predators killed in Kenya by poisoning, but many naturalists believe carbofuran is responsible for thousands of deaths, not just of big cats but all carrion eaters.
Simon Thomsett, a world renowned expert on vultures, eagles and other birds of prey, says there has been a “dramatic drop-off in the number of birds of prey in the past few years”, and the finger of blame is being pointed at carbofuran. He gives the example of 187 vultures that died when they fed on a carcass of an animal that was apparently laced with the deadly poison in an area by the Athi River. Simon Thomsett says the poison cannot be detected when sprinkled on the carcass and is very fast to act. “I literally saw vultures dropping out of the sky just a few minutes after they had eaten the poisoned meat,” he said.

Carbofuran comes in granular form, tiny dust-like purple pellets. The container warns that it should be kept “locked away out of reach of children”, but there is not a word on the label about a potential threat to wildlife. Kenya’s Pest Control and Products Board is carrying out research into carbofuran’s dangers and toxicity, and say it is too early to come to a conclusion.

Dr Leakey says the evidence is there for all to see. His worries are shared by Thomas Manyibe, a vet with the Kenya Wildlife Service who carried out post-mortem tests on the lions that were killed in the Masai Mara. He says evidence shows that carbofuran is being used to target lions and leopards.

On the edge of the Maasai Mara a young herdsman, Ndigwa, said he lost many cows every year to lions and leopards, but he said he would never resort to poison to take revenge on the predators.Others do not hesitate. Carbofuran comes from a number of different overseas suppliers, but the main producer is the US firm FMC Corporation.

The company said in a statement: “We take stewardship of our products very seriously and condemn any intentional baiting misuse of carbofuran. FMC is very concerned about reports of carbofuran (Furadan) being used to bait lions in Kenya and we have offered our services to the Kenya Pest Control Products Board in their investigation.”

Concerns about the use of carbofuran are not new. Fifteen years ago there were a number of cases of mass killings of birds in western Kenya; what is lacking is a comprehensive record of predators killed by poisoning. There is lots of circumstantial evidence but few hard facts. Detailed information is elusive, affected animals often disappear into the bush to die, and the evidence is then eaten by other carnivores.

Vets and wildlife rangers were called to watch the pathetic sight of the lions staggering and weakened from the effects of the poison.