India is rightly celebrating its success at conserving tigers with the all-India tiger census results published on July 29 showing a remarkable 33 per cent increase of its population in the last four years. That’s a beautiful headline at a time when most natural history news resembles doomsday scenarios. We must thoroughly congratulate all those behind this extraordinary turnaround.
However, we should also ask why this is happening in India (and Nepal), when the rest of Asia’s wildlife is disappearing at an alarming rate. Most other tiger-range countries, 13 in all, are experiencing tiger extinction, most rapidly and recently in the once plentiful forests of Southeast Asia.
Two bits of earlier news help illustrate the ground reality behind these figures.
Firstly, Kawal Tiger Reserve in Telangana—a park nobody has ever heard of and few
care about—lost its only remaining tiger to poaching last year. And secondly, another report in January this year showed the exact opposite. The government’s own scientists at the Wildlife Institute of India reported that many tiger parks (all of which I know well and have visited often) were now full of the big cats and that park authorities could not cope with any increase in population.
So why this extraordinary difference between India’s tiger reserves? Too full or completely empty?
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Karnataka Forest Department has ordered shoot or capture orders of a tiger that allegedly killed an 80-year-old farmer outside Bandipur Tiger Reserve on Tuesday. Shuivalingappa, the farmer from Hundipur village near the Reserve, was mauled to death reportedly by a tiger. The incident occurred when the victim was working in his field.
When the tiger went into nearby bushes, the locals tried to revive Shivalingappa. This is the second human casualty since September 1 from the village located on the edges of Gopala Swamy Betta Wildlife Range. First, the villagers had tried to locate the animal in a bid to chase it away, but they were in for a shock when the big cat sprung out from the buses and made a dash for the forest.
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A dog owner fears her dog was attacked by a huge panther after the two animals came face to face in the woods.
Kayleigh Holmes said 11-month-old black Labrador-Rottweiler cross Loki ended up with a massive scratch on his head after she saw it in a stand off with a 'panther or puma' from afar.
She claims her pooch was 'nearly dinner' after it ran off and was met with the 'yellow-eyed' creature during an afternoon stroll on Sunday.
The mum-of-three said Loki initially stood his ground growling and baring his teeth while husband Adam Holmes, 39, frantically tried to distract the muscular black beast.
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A pair of African servals have been rescued by the Lions, Tigers & Bears big cat and exotic animal sanctuary, it announced Thursday.
The two large wild cats, named Junior and Miss Kitty, lived with an owner in Arizona but were left without adequate care when that person died. The sanctuary agreed to take the cats in after the owner's spouse contacted founder Bobbi Brink.
Junior and Miss Kitty are both roughly 8 or 9 years old and are currently receiving routine examinations from the sanctuary's veterinary staff. The two cats will join the sanctuary's other rescued serval, Denali, once their new dens are constructed and they are released from their quarantine habitat.
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Showing indomitable courage, an 11-year-old girl saved her younger brother from a leopard attack in Devkundai Talli village in the district but was badly injured in the process.
The incident took place on October 4 when the girl identified as Rakhi was playing with her 4-year-old brother and was attacked by the leopard, her aunt Madhu Devi said, giving details of the incident.
Instead of running away, the girl lay over her brother to cover him and saved him from the big cat. Though the boy remained largely unharmed, she received severe neck injuries, Madhu Devi said.
The villagers soon gathered at the spot and raised an alarm following which the leopard ran into the forest.
She was rushed first to a nearby hospital from where she was referred to a higher centre considering the seriousness of the injuries she had received in the attack.
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Nancy Earl had seen bobcats in her Varsity backyard and they’d always bolted when confronted.
But the 70-year-old retired dentist said she received a rude awakening to the fearsome unpredictability of wild animals in August, when she was attacked and badly injured by one of the big cats.
On the evening of Aug. 23, Earl said her two cats confronted a larger animal in their enclosed yard, which backs onto Dale Hodges and Bowmont parks.
“I started yelling at it and my two cats raced back into the house . . . it was very aggressive, it was snarling,” said Earl.
That was when the bobcat she estimates weighed nine kilograms launched itself from the home’s patio about a metre away and onto her chest.
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Saitoti Petro scans a dirt road in northern Tanzania for recent signs of the top predator on the African savannah. "If you see a lion," he warns, "stop and look it straight in the eyes – you must never run."
Mr. Petro points to a fresh track in the dirt, a paw print measuring nearly the length of a ballpoint pen. He walks along a few more yards reading tracks the way an archaeologist might decipher hieroglyphics, gleaning meaning from the smudges in the dust. A large male passed here within the past two hours, he says. "Here he's walking slowly, then you see his claws come out in the tracks. Perhaps he's running after prey, or from something else."
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Two mountain lions were found dead in the Santa Monica Mountains in the last two months, both with rat poison in their bloodstream, officials announced Tuesday.P-30, a 6-year-old male, was found dead Sept. 9 by biologists in Topanga State Park after his collar sent out a mortality signal.
The big cat’s body showed no sign of trauma, but a necropsy found that he had bled to death internally as a result of rat poisoning. The report indicated P-30 had severe hemorrhaging in his brain and abdominal cavity. Five liters of unclotted blood were found in his abdomen, according to a news release by the National Park Service.
Five poison compounds — all of them rodenticides — were found in his body: bromadiolone, brodifacoum, chlorophacinone, difethialone and diphacinone.
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The discovery of a female Florida panther lying with a broken leg on a verge outside the town of Naples, south of Tampa, triggered a widespread rescue dash.
Conservationists, who had previously fitted a tracking collar to the animal, were aware she had recently given birth. The kittens would not survive long on their own, they realised, and so an urgent search for them was launched.
Eventually two of the three were found and reunited with their mother. Her leg was treated by vets from White Oak Conservation Foundation and the trio were eventually reintroduced into the wild.
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Northumberland's elusive black cat has reportedly been spotted in the Tyne Valley.
Hexham resident Matthew Stokoe (23) reported seeing the animal whilst driving between Allenheads and Hexham in the early hours of Monday, September 30.
Describing the creature, Matthew said: “It was about as big as a German Shepherd, it had a massive tail and it was very muscular.
“It was the big tail, that’s what made me think it was a big cat.”
Tynedale is no stranger to reported sightings of a large, black cat.
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A male and female leopards were trapped in cages in Pansemal forest area of Barwani district in early hours of Friday. In the last two months, four leopards have been caught from this area.
Sendhwa SDO (Forest) Vijay Gupta told TOI that the leopards were caught in two separate cages set up near village Bhatki located on Baigor road under Pansemal forest area. He said that the male leopard was about eight and the female leopard was four-year-old.
Gupta said that both leopards were hunting pets and cattle of villagers in surrounding areas.
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When an image of a pair of mountain lions flashed on my laptop, I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder.
I was sitting on a stump just a few feet from where my newest trail camera, which caught the images, was mounted. The photos were more than a week old, and the cats were long gone, but my heart was thumping in my chest nonetheless.
This wasn’t the first time I had photographed cougars near my home in the Leavenworth area, but it was the clearest evidence to date of what was hunting in the woods around me.
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Jon writes: "If this actually had been of a black cheetah in India, it would have been completely extraordinary. Whilst the Asiatic cheetah was once found in the Indian subcontinent, they were extirpated in the mid-20th century, with the last known specimens being a female, seen in 1951, and three shot in 1948. Whilst the Asiatic cheetah does still hang on in parts of Iran, it is apparently extinct across the rest of its range. Whether there ever were melanistic Asian cheetahs, I have no idea. That is probably a question for Karl Shuker. However, the creature in the video is undoubtedly a black leopard. It has the unmistakable shape of its face, and could not be anything else. As Richard Freeman commented: “It’s undoubtedly Bagheera!”"
Watch here...
A stop at my street’s communal mailbox earlier this week revealed an unnerving delivery.
Sprawled on a bloody patch of snow a few steps away was the partly eaten carcass of a jackrabbit, one of many that populate my northwest community.
Judging from what little was missing from the rabbit, it appeared someone had interrupted a meal.
Two hours later while walking on a nearby paved pathway in Rocky Ridge, a friend and I came face-to-face with the hare’s possible killer.
An orange-and-brown-spotted bobcat uttered a low moan and advanced slowly towards us before bounding effortlessly over a chain-link backyard fence.
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A group of hardworking tradesmen have given up their weekends to build a sanctuary for retired circus animals.
A group of 13 handymen are helping to build a veterinary building and an enclosure for three 15-year-old lions at Zambi Wildlife Retreat in Wallacia, 60km west of Sydney, completely free of charge.
The structure will house wild cats Kovu, Kiara and Maisie, who arrived at the reserve following their last performance with the Lennon Brothers Circus in 2018.
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Earlier, T-123-1 went towards jungle area but after three months, he came back to Kerwa location
Two cubs of tigress T-123 have started looking for separate territories around Bhopal jungles. First cub T-123-1 is active at 13 Shutter gate area and is continuously extending his territory. The Forest Department is continuously monitoring two cubs through e-surveillance. Earlier, T-123-1 went towards jungle area but after three months, he came back to Kerwa location. The cub has also killed a prey after which patrolling team raised an alarm in the area. Forest officials said a few more cameras are to be placed in the area but due to rains it could not be done. They said the cub is making territory in the area of his mother tigress and he has also left sister tigress T-123-2 away from the territory. Tigress T-123-2 is active around Bhanpur jungles. Mother tigress visits both cubs in their areas frequently.
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Two new independent sightings of the infamous South Island panther have been reported within a few days of each other in the high country - and just a few kilometres apart.
Many people have reported seeing a very large exotic cat - described as either a puma or a panther - in the South Island over the past few decades, but official agencies say there is still no proof of any large exotic cats.
In April, Picton woman Juliarna Kavanagh and partner Warren Lewis of Picton became the latest to report a sighting, and following publication of that story, numerous Kiwis told 1 NEWS they have seen the same thing.
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There are less than 120 of these animals living in the wild and we promise one of them IS in this photo.
The cat was snapped at the Land of the Leopard Nature Reserve in the Far East of Russia, a national park set up to save this species.
The amazing picture was taken by senior state inspector of the reserve Andrey Troyanov.
If you need a clue, scroll down.
There are only 86 adults and 21 adolescents known to be living in their natural habitat, and the future of the species as a wild - rather than zoo - animal depends on them.
While still highly endangered, two decades ago there were only 30 known adults after years of poaching during the Soviet era.
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Although servals are usually found in Africa, Plymouth City Council records show a dangerous wild animals licence covering one of these cats in our city.
Big cats have been reported in and around Plymouth countless times, with many intriguing eyewitness tales but not much in the way of hard proof. The strongest accounts can be read here including the story of pumas allegedly being released on the moors.
Most ‘sightings’ do tend to be on moorland, with most pictures looking like they were taken on a spud. However, one of these cats could be next door to you in Plymouth. They are undeniably gorgeous animals, but should we be worried?
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We live at a time when more people have access to home surveillance cameras than ever before. While these cameras are designed to stop crooks, in Colorado Springs the increasing amount of wildlife caught on camera is leading to some important discussions between neighbors.
Wildlife officers say people don't send them as much surveillance video as you might think, but during our 3 month investigation we noticed on neighborhood apps and social media wildlife sightings are being shared all the time. Everything from large bucks coming to the door, to more dangerous sightings like bears in trash cans and mountain lions prowling through neighborhoods both day and night. Sharing this video is helping people be more aware of potential dangers and also providing wildlife officials with information they wouldn't have without these sightings.
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A group of environmentalists are casting doubt on the claims of an upbeat 2018 census issued by a group of mainstream wildlife groups.
The 2018 National Jaguar Census (Cenjaguar) estimated about 4,800 adult specimens in Mexico, up 20 percent in eight years. Of those, about 1,800 were thought to be in Yucatan.
That study lacks professional methodology, said the advisory member of the Group of Experts in Conservation and Management of Wild Cats of Mexico, Juan Carlos Faller Menéndez.
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A jaguar’s fangs can pierce the armored skin of a crocodile, and its jaws can crush a croc’s skull. The cats are strong, quick, and cunning—but they’re no match for a wall of fire.
Over the past two months, farmers in Brazil have turned more than seven million acres of the world’s largest rainforest to ash through tens of thousands of fires, lit with the tacit approval of President Jair Bolsonaro. All cross the Amazon, the total 7,000 square miles of scorched earth is just smaller than the state of New Jersey. Burning “the lungs of the world
” is an obvious nightmare for climate and air quality concerns, but scientists are also fearful of what it might mean for Amazonian wildlife.
The Amazon is home to an estimated one in ten species on earth, so the fires’ potential impact on biodiversity is enormous. Many of those plants and animals are also small, poorly known, or rarely seen, making it difficult to measure the true consequences of this ongoing disaster.
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The elusive beast has brought terror to one of Britain’s wealthiest communities.
Prowling through suburban gardens, the leopard-like supercat has led some to lock up their pets – and even their children.
The residents of Billionaires’ Row do not know whether the animal dubbed The Purrminator is a feral monster on the loose or merely a particularly menacing pet on the prowl.
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Devon and Cornwall Police officers were called following a total of 16 reports of big cat sightings in the two counties since January 2019.
Information released following a request under the Freedom of Information Act shows that five of the sightings resulted in officers attending the scene.
The newly released data provides an incident date for each call, the area the sighting was made and a summary of the call.
Calls included the sighting of a big cat four times the size of a domestic cat, a puma with a footprint bigger than a labrador, a German shepherd sized feline and a lynx all in towns and villages around Cornwall and Devon.
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