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Panna National Park, one of India’s premier Tiger Parks,  has admitted it no longer has any tigers.

The park, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, was part of the country’s efforts to save the famous Royal Bengal Tiger from extinction.

Rajendra Shukla, the State Minister of Forests, said that the reserve, which 3 years ago had 24 tigers, no longer had any.

A special census was conducted in the park by a premier wildlife institute, after the forest authorities reported no sightings of the animals for a long time.

This is the second tiger reserve in India, after Sariska in Rajasthan, where numbers have dwindled to zero.

Officials from the wildlife department say there is no “explicable” reason for the falling number of tigers.

But a report prepared by the central forest ministry says Panna cannot be compared with Sariska because “warning bells were sounded regularly for the last eight years”.

The report says wildlife authorities failed to see the impending disaster despite repeated warnings, and lost most of Panna’s big cats to poaching.

While this controversy rages, there have been reports that another national park in Madhya Pradesh, Sanjay National Park, which was included in the tiger project three years ago, also has no tigers left.

The park had a population of 15 tigers until the late 1990s.

Of the more than 1,400 tigers in the country, 300 dwell in the state of Madhya Pradesh, which is also called the “tiger state of India”.

But Madhya Pradesh’s forest minister Rajendra Shukla says all the news is not bleak.

“Panna is our only park which has lost on this count,” he says. “Three of state’s reserve forests – Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Pench – have been adjudged among the best managed tiger reserves in the country.”

Mr Shukla has drawn up a seven-member committee comprising the state’s chief conservator of forests and experts, to ascertain why the tigers have disappeared.

The chief conservator, HS Pabla, told the BBC that the report would be submitted some time in August.

The authorities have recently transported two female tigers to Panna from another nearby tiger park, and sought permission from the central administration to bring in four more, two of them males.

India had 40,000 tigers a century ago, but the numbers dwindled fast because of hunting and poaching.

The country banned tiger hunting and launched an ambitious conservation effort named Project Tiger to increase the population of the endangered species.

A number of forest areas were declared national parks and funds allotted for protecting the tigers.

Though the programme bore fruit initially, with the decline in numbers checked because of a hunting ban, recent years have seen a phenomenal rise in poaching, which is now organised almost along the lines of drug-smuggling.

The authorities have not been able to put a stop to it, owing to the ever-changing techniques used by the cartels, and corruption within.

MK Ranjitsingh, a member of National Wildlife Advisory Board, says the authorities must crack down on the poachers by preventing their activities in the parks, and stopping the export of tiger products.

And they must, he adds, lobby for international pressure on the nations of the Far East, which are the main buyers of such goods.

There have been reports that there is a huge demand for tiger bones, claws and skin in countries like China, Taiwan and Korea.

New research has found that the world’s largest cat,- the Amur tiger, is down to an effective wild population of fewer than 35 individuals.

Although up to 500 of the big cats actually survive in the wild, the effective population is a measure of their genetic diversity.

That in turn is a good predictor of the Amur tiger’s chances of survival.

The results come from the most complete genetic survey yet of wild Amur tigers, the rarest subspecies of tiger.

At the start of the 20th Century, nine subspecies of tiger existed, with a total world population of more than 100,000 individuals.

Human impacts have since caused the extinction of three subspecies, the Javan tiger, Bali tiger and Caspian tiger, and world tiger numbers could now have fallen to fewer than 3000.

The Amur tiger, or Siberian tiger as it is also known, is the largest subspecies which once lived across a large portion of northern China, the Korean peninsula, and the southernmost regions of far east Russia. The Amur tiger most likely derived from the Caspian tiger, recent research has shown.

During the early 20th century, the Amur tiger too was almost driven to extinction, as expanding human settlements, habitat loss and poaching wiped out this biggest of cats from over 90% of its range.

By the 1940s just 20 to 30 individuals survived in the wild.

Since then, a ban on hunting and a remarkable conservation effort have slowly helped the Amur tiger recover. Today, up to 500 are thought to survive in the wild, while 421 cats are kept in captivity.

However, the genetic health of the tiger hasn’t improved, according to a new analysis published in Molecular Ecology.

Michael Russello and Philippe Henry of the University of British Columbia, in Kelowna, Canada led a team drawn from universities in Canada, Japan and the US in a bid to analyse the genetic profiles of the remaining wild Amur tigers.

They sampled nuclear DNA found within the scat samples of an estimated 95 individuals found throughout the Amur tiger’s range, likely constituting up to 20% of the remaining population.

The study sampled the amount of variation within the DNA from more tigers, across a broader geographic, than any previous research.

“Although the census population size of Amur tigers is closer to 500 individuals, the population is behaving as if it were the size of 27 to 35 individuals,” says Russello.

That’s the lowest genetic diversity ever recorded for a population of wild tigers.

The effective population of any group of animals will be lower than the number that actually exist, due to factors such as non-breeding individuals or a skewed sex ratio.

“However, what is remarkable about the Amur tiger is how much lower the effective population size is than the census size,” says Russello.

Another important finding to emerge from the study is that the remaining Amur tigers are segregated into two populations that rarely intermingle.

The majority of Amur tigers live among the slopes of the Russian Sikhote-Alin Mountains, with 20 or fewer living separately in Southwest Primorye in Russia.

The two groups are separated by a corridor of development between Vladivostok and Ussurisk, and the genetic analysis showed that perhaps just three tigers had managed to cross the divide, reducing the effective size of the wild population further.

“There is little sharing of genes across the development corridor, suggesting that these two populations are fairly discrete,” says Russello.

“In actuality, it seems that Amur tigers are residing in two, fairly independent populations on either side of the development corridor between Vladivostok and Ussurisk, further lowering the effective size for each from 26 to 28 for Sikhote-Alin and 2.8 to 11 for Southwest Primorye.”

That means more work needs to be done to open up this barrier segregating the tigers.

If that doesn’t happen, then it’s likely that the Southwest Primorye population will continue to dwindle. That could also kill off the prospect of reintroducing Amur tigers to China, as those in Southwest Primorye are living closest to their former Chinese range.

The news is not all bad for the Amur tiger, however. Russello and Henry’s team also analysed the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of 20 captive Amur tigers, to see if they retained any unique genetic features since lost by the wild tigers.

“There are gene variants found in captivity that no longer persist in the wild,” says Russello, which suggests that the captive program has done a good job of preserving the genetic diversity of the subspecies.

“Now that it is known which individuals possess which gene variants, managers will be able to selectively breed to help preserve the unique and rare gene variants,” says Russello.

“The implication is that this variation may be used to re-infuse the wild population sometime in the future if reintroduction strategies are deemed warranted.”

On Saturday 27th June 2009, Tiggy, a small brown spotted Bengal, aged 2.5, went missing. His owners, Dyana and Paul live in Evenjobb, near Presteigne in Powys, Wales. That same evening another cream cat went missing!! and in the last 6 weeks 4 more cats have gone missing with no trace! If you have any information relating to Tiggy’s disappearance, please contact Dyana or Paul on 01547560480 or07816783698 or email: dyana@btinternet.com. His owners are offering a £200 reward for information leading to his safe return.

A recent study has rfevealed that Lions form prides to defend territory against other lions – not to improve their hunting success.

In doing so, they act much like street gangs, gathering together to protect their turf from interlopers, says a leading lion expert.

The bigger the gang, the more successful the lions are, information that could help conserve wild lions.

The discovery helps explain why lions, uniquely among the cat species, live together in social groups.

Lions stand out amongst all the cat species for their gregarious nature.

Across Africa and Asia, lions form prides of varying sizes comprising one or more males and often numerous females and cubs.

But why they do so has remained a mystery. A long-standing idea is that female lions socialise in order to hunt cooperatively. But despite the common sight of multiple females working together to outflank and bring down large prey, there is no clear link between how many lions hunt together and their hunting success.

Another is that lions gather to protect territory. Indeed, a range of animals from social insects to primates form social groups that defend territories against competitors.

But while there has been anecdotal evidence that bigger groups have a competitive advantage, the idea has never been rigorously tested over long periods of time.

That has now changed with a study analysing the behaviour of 46 lion prides living in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Conducted by ecologists Anna Mosser and Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota in St Paul, US, the study collated data about the prides’ behaviour over 38 years, including where they ranged, their composition and how they interacted.

Mosser’s and Packer’s key finding was that competition between lion prides significantly affects the mortality and reproductive success of female lions, they report in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Larger prides with more adult females not only produced more cubs, as might be expected, but the females within these prides were less likely to be wounded or killed by other lions.

Prides with more females were also more likely to gain control of areas disputed with neighbouring prides, and those prides that recruited lone females improved the quality of their territory.

“The most important way to think about this is that lion prides are like street gangs,” says Packer.

“They compete for turf. The bigger the gang, the more successful it is at controlling the best areas. The main difference from humans is that these are gangs of female lions.”

Both researchers think the study, alongside other work they have yet to publish, finally confirms that bigger prides form to defend territory.

“The advantage of large group size for group-territorial animals has been suspected for a long time, but had never been proven with data,” says Mosser. “With this paper, we were able to do just that because of the many groups studied over a long period.”

One surprise revealed by the research is that male lions turn out to play a much bigger role in how prides interact than expected.

Large coalitions of female lions are so successful at dominating small neighbouring prides that male lions step in to try to alter the balance of power. Males will often attack and attempt to kill female lions in neighbouring prides to tip the odds in favour of their own pride.

“Males turn out to be playing a greater role than we realised,” says Packer. “Males attack females from neighbouring prides, likely altering the balance of power in favour of ‘their’ females.”

The territorial advantages gained by coming together into larger social groups would have driven the evolution of social behaviour in lions, say the researchers.

“It also confirms a pattern that is probably applicable for many species, including group-territorial ants, birds, and chimpanzees,” says Mosser, who is now at The Jane Goodhall Institute, in Kigoma, Tanzania.

Such insights will help with the conservation of lions, the numbers of which are suspected to have fallen by at least a third across Africa over the past two decades.

The research shows that “the lions are competing for relatively scarce ‘hotspots’ of high value real estate,” says Packer.

So “lion numbers are ultimately limited by the number of hotspots that are safely inside national parks”.

Purreciouspots Bengals, who are located in Lancaster, California, have a litter of brown / black spotted bengal kittens for sale. They will be ready to go to new homes on the 23rd June. Kittens will be vaccinated, wormed etc.Further details and contact information can be found on the breeders ad.

Shore Bengals, who are based in Petersburg, New Jersey, have a litter of four brown spotted / rosetted bengal kittens for sale. They were bornon the 26th April and will be ready to go to new homes on the 05th July. Kittens will be registered with TICA, come with a health guarantee, be wormed, had 1st vaccinations etc. Full details can be found on the breeder listing.

BengalClassifieds extend a warm welcome to Doubletake Bengals who have recently started advertising with us. Doubletake are located in Hay Springs, Nebraska, and currently have a litter of brown rosetted bengal kittens for sale. They were born on the 13th April and will be ready to go to new forever homes on the 06th July. Kittens will be registered with TICA, be current on vaccinations and come with a health guarantee. See breeder advertisement on the main website for further details, photos, and contact info.

We’d like to welcome 14KaratBengals who are advertising with us for the first time this month. Located in Cottonwood, Arizona, 14Karat specialise in rich colored Bengals (goldens / reds / bronze) and Cashmeres. Kittens are available throughout the year, so check with breeder for availability. Kittens are registered, current on vaccinations & come with a health guarantee. See breeder listing on the main website for more photos, details and contact info.

” I am hoping you can help in our search for Sunny. He went missing between 02.06.2009 and 03.06.2009.

He was in Madrid, Spain awaiting transport to me at his new home in Lisbon, Portugal.

He is very loved and we want to find him, we believe he was stolen from his cat carrier whilst awaiting his flight. He was near Madrid airport in the cargo section according to the airline.

The airline and courier company are not much help. When we checked the carrier it had been tampered with. The airline are saying he may have escaped if this could be true then someone might take him to a shelter if found.

Sunny is a 7 month old, Bengal/Marble he has been neutered and micro-chipped. We have alerted all the vets in the area about this and given his micro-chip number.

Please could you look at the photo provided and perhaps help us notify anyone who might be of assistance. Perhaps if stolen someone will try and sell him.

This is not about getting a valuble piece of luggage back or an insurance claim as the airline seems to think rather a life that can never be replaced.

Any help you could assist with would be much appreciated. We are beside ourselves with worry for Sunny’s well-being.

Thanking you in advance for any help from you.

Lisa.”

Contact Lisa:   lisadolanbudd[at]gmail[dot]com

A rare white tiger has mauled to death a New Zealand zoo keeper as horrified tourists looked on, police said.

The attack occurred at the Zion Wildlife Gardens in Whangarei, some 200km (124 miles) north of Auckland.

Police said the tiger grabbed a male zoo keeper who was cleaning an enclosure and would not let go despite the efforts of other staff members.

The zoo – home to some 40 rare lions and tigers – has been closed to visitors, and the tiger destroyed.

Police said the attack was witnessed by a group of eight tourists.

The keeper was named in local media as South African Dalu Mncube who reportedly rescued one of his colleagues from an attack earlier this year.

The zoo is well known in New Zealand as the setting for a reality television programme that starred its founder Craig Busch, known as the “Lion Man”.

Mr Busch was dismissed from his post last year by his mother, who controls the zoo.