The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper column-inches than any other cryptozoological subject. There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. Curated by Carl Marshall and Olivia McCarthy
Wednesday, 9 July 2014
VIDEO: When lionesses attack: Horrific footage as 'domestic' big cat leaps on man in European guest house and leaves his shirt in ribbons
Cats usually make good pets but as this shocking footage shows, it’s best to make sure that they are domestic rather than big cats.
This lioness is thought to have been raised from a cub by its owners, likely in France, and has free rein in the guest house home.
A documentary crew is interviewing the big cat’s owner when it suddenly runs into the living room and launches itself at an unsuspecting guest there.
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The lioness grabs the unsuspecting man in her powerful paws forcing him to the ground
The lioness's mistress struggles to free the man from the attack as he screams in fear and pain
The lioness shows no sign of letting go as its owner desperately tries to pull the man free
The big cat's owners both try to yank their pet off the man he attacked
As the man screams, the owners rush to pull it off.
The man manages to scramble to his feet, his shirt torn by the cat’s claws.
NEWSLINK: Private Reserves Support National Parks in Big Cat Conservation
Fig. 1: Aerial view of the Lapa Rios Ecolodge and private nature reserve located on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica (map inset).
National parks offer large core habitat that is critical for conserving large cats, but national parks alone are not sufficient to sustain a connected and genetically healthy population. Smaller adjacent private reserves improve connectivity and increase habitat extent in areas outside these parks. Sustainable, low-impact ecotourism often incorporates private nature reserves, which can serve to create a matrix of interconnected protected areas, providing corridors to larger core habitat areas. Ecotourism areas often involve non-consumptive human use and conserve both primary and secondary forests.
One excellent example of such an operation is the Lapa Rios (Fig. 1) private nature reserve – 1,000 acres of mixed primary and secondary rainforest on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, and a substantial percentage of the last remaining tropical lowland rainforest in Central America. Within one week of camera trapping here in April 2014, we captured photos of puma (Fig. 2;Puma concolor), and their preferred food source, the white-lipped peccary (Fig. 3; Tayassu pecari), locally known as chanchos de monte.
Unfortunately, national parks often suffer from budget declines due to variable national and international economic conditions and shifts in political priorities. Between 2001-2005, for example, more than 50 park guards were removed from guard duties at Corcovado National Park, resulting in a dramatic increase in illegal hunting activities. White-lipped peccary populations were reduced to a tenth of what had been recorded in 1990 (when monitoring READ MORE
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