NEWSLINK: Similipal, Satkosia on tiger trail

As tiger enumeration across the country kicked off on Friday, Satkosia and Similipal, the two notified tiger reserves of the State, got down to the job armed with increased manpower and technology as mandated by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).


The first phase of the enumeration includes carnivore sign survey for three days, starting Friday. Apart from Satkosia and Similipal, the enumeration is being conducted across all forest divisions.In Satkosia Tiger Reserve, a total 212 forest personnel have been engaged for the enumeration.

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NEWSLINK: Death of female jaguar hard for researchers as numbers continue to decrease

An adult jaguar has been found run over and left dead on the side of a highway not far from Playa del Carmen.


The tragic event occurred in the vicinity of kilometer 10 of the road known as Ruta de los Cenotes. The female jaguar, whose numbers are decreasing quickly, was hit by a vehicle and left for dead on the side of the road.


She was discovered by locals and reported to officials who regretted reporting the death of the cat. Raul Padilla Borja, wildlife activist in Riviera Maya made the official report last week, documenting her death with video in hopes of raising community awareness about the nocturnal jungle animals.

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NEWSLINK: Belfast zookeeper's dog helped raise abandoned lion cub

With almost 30 years' experience as a zookeeper, Linda Frew from Belfast Zoo has helped to socialise animals including bears, primates and big cats.

As a keen supporter of the Dogs Trust, her Dr Dolittle-like devotion continues at home - she has adopted 10 rescue dogs over the years and fostered countless others.

Linda's two loves combined in 2007 when Lily, an endangered Barbary lion cub, was abandoned by her mother Fidda and father Qays.

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ARTICLE: Wild Ideas: No cougars in Virginia... so far

The mysterious cougar has long had a near-mythical place in the minds of humans, and despite no hard evidence that this big cat is still in Virginia, people here continue to report seeing them.

Recently reclassified as in the genus Puma, the cougar (Puma concolor) has many other common names — puma (as scientists tend to prefer), mountain lion, red tiger, deer tiger or panther. In 2011, wildlife biologist David Kocka, with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) co-authored an article on the status of cougars in Virginia for “Virginia Wildlife,” which is published by VDGIF. When he spoke about “mystery” animals at last year’s “Woods and Wildlife Conference", cougars took up half of his talk.

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NEWSLINK: Family shocked to see 3 male cats having sex in Safari park

While watching lions in the wild can be a memorable experience, their behaviour at times may come across as a surprise to many. Over the past few years incidents like a monkey having sex with a deer and male lions mating in Kenya have been in the news.


A family was shocked during their visit to a safari park in England when they spotted three male lions having sex with each other. It happened when the family tried to get a closer look of the big cats as the lions started an orgy in front of the children.

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NEWSLINK: Poacher 'hunting big cats' mauled to death by lions

Police are investigating if a man killed and eaten by a pride of lions at a private game reserve in South Africa was a poacher who had been hunting big cats.


His screams for help raised the alarm but the lions quickly killed the man and devoured most of his body before being chased off.


The head was left untouched and is the only means available to police of identifying the man who was carrying no documents.

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NEWSLINK: Another tiger found dead in Bandipur

Yet another tiger was found dead at Maddur forest range limits in Bandipur Tiger Reserve (BTR) on Monday morning. According to forest officials, the age of this male big cat is around four years and it had died two to three days ago.

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ARTICLE: National Geographic explorer uses stories to save lions

It was 2013 when Dr. Andrew Stein noticed that something was wrong in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana.


Stein was a carnivore conservationist working in the region at the time when a colleague brought a long, drawn-out fight between the region’s lions and local people to his attention. In 2013 alone, more than 50 percent of the region’s lions had been killed — most by poison.


“We find the carcasses because they’re normally surrounded by 18 to 20 dead vultures,” Stein told a crowd Monday night at the Center for the Environment at Catawba.

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NEWSLINK: Forests in and around Mumbai are home to 41 leopards

A survey of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivli, and its surrounding forest areas has confirmed the presence of 41 leopards. Camera traps were used to document wildlife during the survey, wherein 27 leopards were photographed for the first time. The researchers surveyed 140 sq km . The survey report ‘Monitoring density and movement of leopards within Sanjay Gandhi National Park and along its periphery’ was released at the SGNP, Borivli, on Tuesday.


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NEWSLINK: Tiger census begins in Madhya Pradesh

Authorities have started the official count of tigers in Madhya Pradesh, which lost 26 wild cats last year, as part of a nationwide exercise.


The first phase of All India Tiger Estimation (AITE) began yesterday in all the tiger reserves of Madhya Pradesh, a Public Relations Department official said today.


Besides tiger, the population of leopards and other wild and herbivorous animals will also be counted for the next seven days in the first phase, he said.

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VIDEO: Rare leopard cannibalism caught on video

A scientist on his honeymoon recently filmed an exceptionally rare, grisly sight: an adult male leopard cannibalising another a juvenile male leopard, mere minutes after the kill.


“It was a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, for sure,” says Tanner Harvey, a Ph.D. student studying snake venom at the University of Northern Colorado.

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NEWSLINK: Tiger cub rescued from dry well

A tiger cub was rescued from a dry well in a village near Pench National Park in Seoni district on Sunday. The cub was trapped in the well - located in the buffer zone of the protected area - for almost 24 hours, before being rescued in the evening, said sources. Villagers saw the tiger cub in afternoon and informed the authorities.

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NEWSLINK: As Africa’s Big Cats Face Serious Threat, There is New Hope for Lions in Tanzania

Most people around the world are not aware that lions and other predator species currently face a major crisis. The lion population worldwide has plummeted 43% in the past two decades, and only about 20,000 remain across Africa. Habitat loss, bush-meat poaching, and human-predator conflict – primarily with local herders that share their land and livestock grazing areas with the lions' habitat – are the main reasons for this sharp and worrisome trend.


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PHOTOS: This Awesome Camera Setup Captured Incredible High-Def Footage Of A Cheetah Sprinting

If you’ve been following along with the BBC’s Natural History Unit, most notably for the Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II documentaries, one of your token reactions probably was, “How in the hell did they film that?” Well, in the case of the unit’s newest documentary, Big Cats, sometimes the crew uses little remote-controlled buggies that zoom across the land to catch up with cheetahs running. It’s very cool.

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NEWSLINK: Mountain Lion Tracked By Scientists Is Found Dead Near Malibu Road

A mother cougar has been found dead near Malibu Canyon Road after apparently being struck by a vehicle, officials have revealed.

“Unfortunately, her life came to an end prematurely due to the challenge of navigating the complex road network in this area,” Jeff Sikich, biologist for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said in a statement.

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NEWSLINK: Wild cat defies its instincts to 'seek out human help' in village

An endangered tigress defied all its normal instincts and walked out of the wild into a village to seek human help over a severe teeth and gum problem.


The rare predator - one of only 500 or so Siberian tigers living in their snowy natural habitat in eastern Russia - found a remote house and quietly lay down on the porch.


The big cats - the largest in the world - normally shun all human contact, but it was clear the exhausted and emaciated animal could no longer eat and needed urgent dental assistance.

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NEWSLINK: Despite rumors, cougars officially extinct in eastern U.S.

After nearly a decade of debate - and decades of rumors - the eastern cougar has officially been declared extinct and will be removed from the list of endangered species later this month.
In a press release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency said that eastern cougars have likely been extinct for decades, and as such there is no need to protect them under the Endangered Species Act.


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SIGHTING? UK: The Panther of Probus could be the new Beast of Bodmin as big cat spotted near Truro

A big cat, described as being similar to a black panther, has been spotted in a field just 300 yards from the A390 near Probus.


The animal was seen by Simon Vage, a sailing instructor at Porthpean Outdoor Education Centre, as he drove to work from his home in Truro.

Mr Vage, who previously managed the former family jewellery business Vage’s in New Bridge Street, Truro, said: “It looked like how I would imagine a panther to look, as it had a long tail. It was black and walking across the middle of the field and about the size of a small fallow deer.”


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