NEWSLINK: 365 big cats died in two years: Gujarat government

In reply to a question by Somnath MLA Vimal Chudasama, the state government said on Monday that in total, 65 big cats including lions, lion cubs and leopards have died unnaturally in the two years ending on December 31, 2017. The government, however, in its reply did not take into account deaths of lionesses.The government claimed that 291 big cats including lions, lion cubs and leopards have died in the last two years, among which there were 110 lions and lion cubs and 181 leopards.

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NEWSLINK: Two big cats dead in Rajasthan

Two male tigers have died in separate incidents in the tiger reserves of Sariska and Ranthambore in Rajasthan over the past two days, officials said today.


A 13-year old tiger died after he was rescued from a village in Khandar area near Ranthambore National Park in Sawai Madhopur district today.

"The tiger strayed and went close to a village where people surrounded him. A team of the forest department tranquilised and shifted him to a forest area, but he died after some time," Y K Sahu, chief conservator of forest (Sawai Madhopur), said.

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NEWSLINK: Leopards could reduce rabies by controlling stray dog numbers in India, study finds

Leopards are among the most widespread of all big cats, with a historical range covering large parts of Africa and Asia. Though humans have whittled away about 80 percent of that area, the big cats still overlap with some of the world’s largest concentrations of people. That convergence can be a recipe for conflict, but a recent study finds that leopards in India could be helping to keep people in India safe from rabies-laden dog bites.

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NEWSLINK: Kiwi petitions for snow leopard sanctuary in the Southern Alps

A petition has been put forward to create a snow leopard sanctuary in the South Island of New Zealand - an idea scientists have called "risky".
Brian Daly of Hastings is petitioning the Ministry for the Environment to create a sanctuary as "ecological back-up" for the threatened species that are endemic to Central and South Asia.

He wants a private landowner in the high country near the Southern Alps to give up land for the safe haven.

In his petition, he writes the sanctuary could provide "an important tourism initiative where people can view them more easily than in their native environment".

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NEWSLINK: Lions, tigers to stroll in natural habitat at city zoo

Soon, you will be able to see the big wild cats roam around freely in their natural habitat in the city. The civic body has drawn up ambitious plans to revamp the Sayajibaug zoo that is one of the most popular destinations here.

The zoo that took off in 1879 is home to several animals and exotic birds brought here from different parts of the country.


“For the first time since the zoo was made during the rule of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, it is being revamped as per the contemporary needs. The idea is to give an open space to the animals and birds and let them live in their natural environs. There won’t be any cages with cramped spaces for the animals and birds in the zoo anymore,” said Dr Vinod Rao, municipal commissioner.

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NEWSLINK: How community averts lions' attacks, reaps big

Near the foot of Amboseli National Park in Eselenkei Conservancy, senior warden David Kitasho gazed down at a pride of lions lapping water at a nearby water point.

Kitasho, whose name means a double lion killer in Maasai, watched delightedly as the large carnivores rolled themselves on the ground before they disappeared into some thickets not far away from the shallow water pan.

Though not a lion killer himself, the warden says he got the name from his father, who was revered by his peers and locals for killing nine lions in his Morani hey-days.

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NEWSLINK: Eastern cougars are extinct — or are they?

The eastern cougar is a gone cat.


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally declared it extinct in January. This was no surprise. The last time anyone saw one was in New Brunswick in 1938.


But there are these big cats people keep seeing.


Mike Bird of New Milford saw one crossing Hardscrabble Road in 2016. He watched it walk for about 40 yards before it ducked into the woods.


“A cat crossed from the left to the right,” Bird said. “I thought, ‘It’s too big to be a bobcat.’ I could see its big tail.”

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PHOTO: Cougar comes into backyard of Leaburg home, eyes house cat

A cougar prowled onto the backyard deck of a Leaburg home Monday morning — coming close enough to peer through the sliding glass doors.


Mr. Brody, a 2-year-old house cat, was in the home and drew the attention of the mountain lion, according to homeowner Dick Tracy.

Tracy and his wife, Judith Tracy, were home during the 9 a.m. cougar visit. The Tracy home is about 19 miles east of Springfield, right off Highway 126 and close to other houses.


Spooked, the black-and-white kitty alerted its owners about the mountain lion.


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NEWSLINK: Big cat keeps coming back!

The big cat keeps coming back to Slocan City.


A young cougar that was chased around and inside a house early this month has returned to the area at least twice since.


Shayla Aumack, who now carries an airhorn and doesn’t walk alone at night, first came upon the cougar as she returned home from her Slocan Village Market job at about 8:30 p.m. on March 3.

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NEWSLINK: Royal battle to save cats from red list

Princess Michael’s visit to South Africa coincides with the launch of her latest book A Cheetah’s Tale which chronicles her childhood on her father’s farm in Mozambique and the chance encounter with a cheetah cub that impacted her life.


Here, she tells us more about her life-long passion for cheetahs, her work as Royal Patron of the Cheetah Conservation Fund and The Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre, and the official African launch of her new book taking place in Joburg this week.


“My interest in conservation came early. Once I had finished school, it was prompted by my visit to my father’s farm in Mozambique as a teenager.

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NEWSLINK: 5 big cats roaming without radio collars but intense patrolling a far cry

The tragic death of tiger ST-11 at the Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR) has exposed major chinks in the monitoring of big cats. Five tigers are still roaming without radio collars in reserve even as sustained patrolling by dedicated forest guards remain a fry cry.

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ARTICLE: Close interaction with captive lions is NOT conservation

The Lion Whisperer Kevin Richardson’s promotion of interacting and walking with lions was seriously called into question recently when one of his lionesses mauled a young woman to death on his farm, Welgedacht, which shares an unfenced border with the Dinokeng, a Big-5 game reserve near Pretoria.

Richardson and a colleague took three lions for a walk in the reserve some weeks back and one of his lionesses apparently chased an impala, eventually encountering the 22-year-old woman two kilometres away.

Richardson has had much to say against the cub-petting and canned lion hunting industry and positions himself a champion against such practices yet conservationists state that his own brand of conservation – unrestrained walking and the close interaction of captive lions – is no different.

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NEWSLINK: Another tiger goes missing from Maha forest, was last spotted in Oct 2017

Almost two years after the iconic tiger, Jai, went missing from Umred-Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary near Nagpur in April 2016, another three-year-old tiger has been reported missing from the jungles of Amravati in Vidarbha region. Two years ago, Jai, a huge male tiger, went missing from Umred-Karanhdla forest in Nagpur district. The big cat is said to have travelled about 150 km from Katlabodi in Nagpur forest range to Pohra-Malkhed forest in Amravati district – from where it went missing. Jai had migrated to Umred-Karhandla from Nagzira-Navegaon Tiger Reserve in Gondia-Bhandara district in September 2013, during which he covered 150km. The big cat has fathered more than 30 cubs.

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VIDEO: Leopard Enters Residential Area in Ulhasnagar, Rescued by Forest Department

A leopard entered a residential building in Ulhasnagar in Thane district of Maharashtra in the wee hours of Sunday. The leopard was later rescued by forest department officials. As per reports, forest officials claimed they were not sure as to how the animal managed to reach the site.


The leopard was caught entering the building on CCTV camera. When residents checked the footage near the entrance gate, to their surprise, they saw the leopard entering and leaping over a wall.

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NEWSLINK: Leopard mortality on rise; 21 more die in March

At least 21 more leopards lost their lives in the first half of March, taking the toll to 127 this year, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI).


The WPSI said the leopard deaths between March 1 and 15 reported from different parts of the country included a total 12 cases of "seizure and poaching". Nine other cases were classified as "mortality".

Mortality is a category when a leopard or tiger is found dead due to diseases or unknown causes, shot by forest department or police, killed by villagers, killed in road or train accident, killed in rescue operation or during treatment, infighting, accidental electrocution.

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NEWSLINK: Man-eater leopard who killed four children captured

In February, the leopard killed one 10-year old Poonam Sallam from a village in Parasia forest range. On January 7, the leopard killed two children in a day-one three-year-old-girl Kalpana and ten-year-old Harshit. According to state forest department nearly 20 to 30 people are killed and nearly a 1000 to 1500 are injured by wild animals every year in MP. Nearly 200 officials of the forest department were involved in the search operation. The young male leopard had created terror in Chhindi and Parasia range area of Chhindwara, where it was attacking children.

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NEWSLINK: Leopard cub rescued from mother now being raised by dogs

Zookeepers were forced to pair an endangered leopard cub with a golden retriever foster parent because its own mother was a cannibal who had eaten three of her other babies.


The Sadgorod Zoo in Vladivostok, Russia, put the newborn leopard cub with a golden retriever named Tessa, even though she already had four puppies of her own.


Now, Milasha the leopard cub seems to love canines and is best friends with Elza the Central Asian Shepherd dog.


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ARTICLE: How Cheetahs Keep Their Heads Still While Sprinting

Cheetahs are synonymous with speed. But past the big cat's slender build and lean muscles, there's something inside that aids this animal's need for speed.

A new report, published February 2 in Scientific Reports, shows that certain parts of the cheetah's inner ear help to make it a better hunter. The study marks the first time researchers have analyzed the big cats' inner ear.

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NEWSLINK: Leopard scare grips V. Kota residents

Half a dozen hamlets close to V. Kota mandal headquarters in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, are in the grip of fear with a leopard reportedly on the prowl since Friday.

As the residents spotted the leopard at three different locations in a span of half a day, there is confusion about the number of big cats in the area.

According to information, some migrant dwellers reached the premises of local Government Junior College at V. Kota close to midnight on Friday to fetch water.

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PHOTOS: At dinnertime, mountain lion lurks in the shadows

The King of the Forest showed up at our door last week.


On a cold, dark and quiet evening, the biggest mountain lion I’ve ever seen, roughly 200 pounds, staked out our home.


In the Bay Area and Northern California, anybody who lives with their house backed up to greenbelt, near parks or in rural areas, has a chance for a similar encounter in the next few months.

It was 6:45 p.m. Sunday when my wife, about half the size of the lion, was putting the final touches on a garlic chicken stir-fry dinner, with her movements visible through a back window. One of our cats, Calvin, an orange fluff-ball of a puddy cat, was tense and edgy, and peered out a window with bright yellow eyes wide, his stare a laser.

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PHOTOS: Giant cat with appetite to eat dogs trapped in unique operation in eastern Russia

The hungry feline terrorised a village snatching and eating guard dogs in Aleksey-Nikolskoye, even forcing scared children to miss classes.
The endangered female Amur tigress snatched guard dogs to feed her two cubs.

Her behaviour is new to experts, but is perhaps the result of a rare species in recovery thanks to a crackdown on poaching in the Russian Far East.

Despite this, Siberian - or Amur - tigers are one of the most endangered species on the planet, with only 550 or so animals still surviving in the wild.

This particular cat was regularly stealing dogs from the village of Aleksey-Nikolskoye, some 40 km from Ussuriysk in the Primosrksy region of eastern Russia.

There was a real danger that fearful locals would shoot the rare tigress.

Or that the tigress could attack humans.

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NEWSLINK: Protecting tigers could be beneficial for their prey

Protecting one of Asia's most formidable apex predators may not seem like the most obvious way to help another species that might be on its dinner menu, but that is precisely what Fauna & Flora International (FFI) is doing in Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park, the second-largest national park in Southeast Asia.

In theory, a pangolin would make a handy bite-sized snack for a Sumatran tiger, but in reality, an encounter with a hungry feline is the least of its worries. Thanks to their cloak of tough, overlapping scales, pangolins can protect themselves against even the most determined natural predators by the simple expedient of rolling into a virtually impenetrable ball.

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VIDEO: Zoo Keeper Mauled And Eaten Alive By Tiger He Raised

A man has been mauled to death by a 'usually quite docile' tiger at a zoo in Fuzhou City in China, after it bit him and suffocated him to death.

The Chinese zoo handler, known only as Mr Wu, had raised the tiger since it was just a cub. He was inside a big metal cage - formerly a circus performance area but now used only for training and exercise - on Sunday.

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NEWSLINK: Tipeshwar emerging a tiger haven

The Kawal Tiger Reserve in erstwhile combined Adilabad district no longer seems to be the “promised land” for tigers. The recent wild animal survey has revealed that it is a tiger-less park and the kind of disturbance to environment being noticed there will only ensure the big cats stay away or quickly return to where they came from at best, according to wildlife experts.


A comparison of the situation at KTR with the tiny Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary located about 30 km away from Adilabad town on the NH 44 in Yavatmal district of neighbouring Maharashtra makes it look much worse than it perhaps actually is.

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NEWSLINK: Tiger deaths: Lab reports confirm big cats not poisoned

The lab reports from Bengaluru have confirmed that the unnatural deaths of two tigers and an elephant in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve (BTR) were not due to poisoning.The two laboratories submitted their reports on the animal deaths which took place on January 25 to the BTR management.BTR director Ambadi Madhav told TOI that the viscera samples of all the three dead animals were sent to three laboratories to find out if they were poisoned.

“As on today, we have received the lab reports from two institutes.

Both the reports are negative for poisoning,” he said.“We have received reports from the Forensic Lab, Madivala, and Veterinary Science Lab in Bengaluru.

We are waiting for the third report.

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ARTICLE: A walk on the wild side

When conservationist Stephen Le Quesne ventures out into the wilds of Namibia later this month, he will likely do so with an air of trepidation.


The African nation’s four-legged inhabitants include lions, cheetahs and hyenas, and scattered across the arid sub-Saharan plains are the bleached-white bones of their prey.


However, Stephen does not fear becoming carnivore fodder – the only thing that concerns him is falling victim to his own brain.


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PHOTO: Security video shows cougar peering into Wisconsin home

A security system recorded a cougar peering into a window of a home in Brookfield.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources confirmed the cougar sighting on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018.
Officials believe the cougar is one-and-a-half-years old and weighs about 50 pounds, according to a report from our Milwaukee partner station WISN.

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NEWSLINK: Feds say lynx no longer need protection, despite bleak outlook

The federal government announced in January that it plans to remove the Canada lynx from the Endangered Species list.


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently completed an analysis that it says shows the species has recovered, but environmental groups say low population numbers and growing threats to habitat mean the species needs protection now more than ever.


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PHOTOS: Dudley Zoo animals can't get enough of aftershaves and perfumes

Animals are falling for the Lynx Effect in a big way at a Black Country zoo.
The residents of Dudley Zoo can’t get enough of their aftershaves and perfumes which have got them purring with delight.


Whether it be Yves Saint Lion or Roarmani – different animals prefer different scents, according to the keepers.


They have been spraying it on posts and climbing frames around the animals’ enclosures as part of an animal enrichment programme at the Castle Hill attraction.

Keepers say the strong scents from the fragrances encourage ‘natural behaviour’ among its animals.


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