BOOKS: You Belong in a Zoo!

December 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

You Belong In A Zoo! by Peter Brazaitis
Villard Books (299 Park Ave., New York, NY 10171), 2003.
368 pages. Hardcover, $24.95.

A globally recognized reptile expert, author of many
scientific papers and often called as an expert witness in
herpetological smuggling cases, Peter Brazaitis spent his whole
working life with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He began at the
Bronx Zoo when WCS was still called the New York Zoological Society,
and retired as first curator of the Central Park Zoo, following a
six-year closure for renovation.

BOOKS: Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity & Snakes of the World

December 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity
by Eric R. Pianka & Laurie J. Vitt
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA
94720), 2003.
346 pages, 218 color illustrations, hardcover. $45.00.

Snakes of the World
by Manuel Areste & Rafael Cebrian
Sterling Publishing Co. (387 Park Ave. S., New York, NY 10016), 2003.
256 pages, 256 color illustrations, hardcover. $29.95.

Lizards, the oldest family of land-dwelling vertebrates,
are the ancestors of us all. Fish, insects, and birds are more
broadly distributed, but as Harry W. Greene explains in a foreword
to Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity: “Lizards occur
in all but the highest and coldest places on earth. Some tropical
rain forests and deserts have several dozen species at a single
locality. They come in many sizes…Various lizards use winglike
flaps to glide through tropical forest canopies, strong claws to dig
burrows in prairie sod, and fringed toes to run bipedally over
windblown sand dunes.”

BOOKS: Hawk’s Rest

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Hawk’s Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone by Gary Ferguson
National Geographic Adventure Press (1145 17th St., N.W.,
Washington, DC 20036), 2003. 240 pages, paperback. $15.00.

Rehabilitating Asian bears

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

CHENGDU, AGRA–The Giant Panda Breeding
and Research Center and the China Bear Rescue
Center stand just miles apart, on opposite sides
of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan state in
southwestern China.
The Wildlife SOS Agra Bear Rescue Centre
is 1,500 miles away, on the far side of the
Himalayas, 10 miles from the Taj Mahal, within
the Sur Sarovar Sanctuary, near Agra, India.
The giant pandas, red pandas, and
Asiatic black bears of two subspecies whom the
three sanctuaries host were all caught in the
crossfire of late 20th century Marxist class
struggle, but that was just the latest of their
species’ misfortunes.
Each are descended from some of the first
bears to lose habitat to humans.
Products of parallel evolution, bears
and large primates, including humans, developed
to fill approximately the same ecological niches.
Bears came from the carnivore family,
emerging in the northern hemisphere only slightly
earlier than the first raccoon-sized advanced
primates emerged in northeastern Africa.
Most bears and the most widely
distributed large primates developed omnivorous
diets. The biggest bears evolved limited
bipedalism and relatively small, little used
tails; some of the largest primates became fully
bipedal and shed their tails. Primates developed
opposable thumbs. So did the raccoon branch of
the bear/raccoon line.

Study confirms: corruption kills wildlife

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

NAIROBI–Corruption kills wild-life, confirms data published
in the November 6, 2003 edition of the British scientific journal
Nature.
The findings were based on a comparison of elephant and rhino
populations with the national “Corruption Perception Indexes”
produced by the watchdog group Transparency International during the
years 1987-1994.
The findings support the arguments of Youth for Conservation,
the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and the Nairobi office of
the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in their continuing
effort to maintain the 1977 Kenyan national ban on sport hunting.
Yet study authors Robert J. Smith, R.D.J. Muir, M.J.
Walpole, Andrew Balmford and Nigel Leader-Williams paradoxically
concluded with an implied endorsement of “sustainable use,” such as
hunting, to fund conservation. This was probably because the study
made no effort to trace the relationship between legal hunting and
corruption.
Wildlife policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–backed by much of the same money–threaten to replace the
principle of protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by being hunted or
captured for sale.

Badger culls spread bovine tuberculosis

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

LONDON–Ben Bradshaw, Parliamentary under secretary for the
British Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on
November 4 halted five years of reactively killing badgers near
bovine tuberculosis outbreaks because culls at 20 locations produced
a consistent 27% rise in the number of bovine TB cases compared to
the numbers detected at outbreak sites where badgers are not culled.
The $40 million trial cost the lives of 8,000 badgers. Known
to become infected by bovine TB, badgers are blamed by farmers for
spreading it, but the data shows that they spread it less if they
are not hunted.
Two parallel tests continue. One, the control experiment,
involves taking no action against badgers. The other is “proactive
culling,” in which the badger population is eradicated as completely
as possible before bovine TB appears.
Beginning in 1998, each test method was applied uniformly
within a 38-square-mile area. The experiment was not due to end
until 2006, but trial steering group leader John Bourne told news
media that the results from reactive culling were so bad that
continuing to do it was no longer appropriate.

Raptor rescue in Beijing & the Kalahari

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

BEIJING, China; KATHU, South Africa– Eagles, like feral
cats, are potentially fierce yet are sometimes tamed. More
accurately, they may choose to tame themselves. Many are curious
enough about humans to dwell as close to human habitation as they are
allowed, and are appreciative enough of gentle care, especially
when sick or injured, to permit judicious handling.
Though most eagles could quickly shred human flesh, even
through protective gloves, they seldom do. Some seem to consciously
decide to do no harm.
The Beijing Raptor Center has two highly gregarious resident
golden eagles, closely related to the golden eagles of North
America, and one resident steppe eagle. Too imprinted upon humans to
be released, the eagles remain in custody while Scops owls and eagle
owls, Amur and peregrine falcons, kestrels, and sometimes a buzzard
come and go.
The Kalahari Raptor Centre has black eagles, snake eagles,
and crested eagles. Some of them are also too imprinted to release.
The eagles of the Beijing and Kalahari raptor centers look as
strikingly different as everything else about the two rehabilitation
facilities. The premise of the Beijing Raptor Center is that humans
and wildlife can and must co-exist. The premise of the Kalahari
Raptor Centre is that wildlife does best in the absence of humans,
to whatever extent that can be accomplished.

BOOKS: Hunt Club Management Guide & Deer Diary

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Hunt Club Management Guide
by J. Wayne Fears
Stoeger Publ. (17603 Indian Head Hwy, Suite 200, Accokeek, MD
20607), 2003. 144 pages, hardcover, $24.95.

Deer Diary
by Thomas Lee Boles
Xlibris Corp. (<Orders@Xlibris.com>), 2002. 286 pages, paperback, $18.69.

J. Wayne Fears, involved in leasing land for hunt clubs for
more than 20 years, gives the impression that he lives to kill deer.
Thomas Lee Boles, a vegetarian animal rights activist, has
handreared orphaned deer and befriended deer both in captivity and in
the wild.
Each outlines his perspectives on hunting at about equal
length, allowing for the difference in page size between their
books. Except that Fears writes to perpetuate hunting on property
secured by covenant against the “antis,” while Boles writes against
recreationally killing anything, they appear to be more in agreement
than opposition.
Almost every page of Hunt Club Management Guide tersely
details obnoxious attitudes and behavior among hunters that Fears has
personally witnessed and detests. Without wasting adjectives, Fears
makes plain that in his view, hunters themselves rather than “antis”
are their own worst enemies, chiefly because of inconsiderate and
unsportsmanlike conduct.

BOOKS: Hawk’s Rest

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Hawk’s Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone by Gary Ferguson
National Geographic Adventure Press (1145 17th St., N.W.,
Washington, DC 20036), 2003. 240 pages, paperback. $15.00.

Hawk’s Rest is not about birds, but the joys and trials of
living in wilderness. Here on nine million acres deep in Yellowstone
National Park, granite turrets rise 2,000 feet into the air, giant
boulders tumble into deep gorges, and ice forms endless lakes.
Yellowstone Lake, covering 136 square miles, can switch in minutes
from calm to waves thrashing five to six feet high. According to
park historian Lee Whittlesy, no body of water in the park and
perhaps in all of the U.S. is more dangerous. The water averages 45
degrees Fahrenheit, which gives swimmers about 20 minutes before
they must get ashore.
The weather in Yellowstone varies from sweat-drenched summers
in the Thorofare district to year-round squalls and blizzards in the
Beartooth Mountains.
Since the reintroduction of wolves in 1995, Yellowstone has
had all of the species known to have lived there within recorded
history, making it the largest intact ecosystem in the temperate
world.

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