The Amur leopard, considered to be one of the world’s most threatened big cats, is showing signs of a population recovery, according to the results of a new survey.

The charismatic Amur leopard is one of the world’s rarest cats

Positive signs

A majestic species, the Amur leopard sports the heaviest coat of any leopard, an attribute which enables this highly threatened cat to survive the long, harsh winters which envelop its pine forest habitat in the Russian Far East.

At its lowest point, it is thought that the Amur leopard population may have fallen to just 25 individuals, sparking grave concern that this incredible big cat could soon become extinct. However, results from a new survey indicate that the population may have risen to as many as 50 individuals, representing about a 50% increase from the last survey conducted in 2007.

“While we cannot help but be gladdened by this fact, it is no reason to let down our guard. 50 is still a critically small number for long term persistence of [the] population,” said WWF-Russia in a news release.

The Amur leopard population may have increased by about 50% in the last six years

Camera traps and conservation

During the latest survey, researchers counted Amur leopard tracks along snowy trails to determine an estimated population size. Tracks from 23 individuals were counted, and this number was then extrapolated to estimate a minimum of 43-45 adult leopards and 4-5 cubs surviving in the wild.

The results of the survey also revealed that, as the population grows, Amur leopards are shifting and expanding their range. While most Amur leopards are known to be found in Russia, recent camera trap photos have shown that a few individuals now occur on the Chinese side of the border, and in addition sightings have been reported from North Korea.

With the promising news comes an urgent need to scale up conservation actions aimed at protecting the charismatic feline. “The Far Eastern leopard, the rarest cat on the Earth, is stepping back from the brink,” said Yury Darman, Director of the Amur branch of WWF-Russia. “We started the recovery programme in 2001 and now can be proud of almost 50 leopards in the wild. The most crucial role is played by the establishment of large unified protected areas with huge state support, which cover 360 thousand hectares of leopard habitat in Russia. It is necessary now to accelerate the creation of a Sino-Russian trans-boundary reserve that would unify six adjacent protected areas encompassing 6,000 square kilometres.”

Siberian tigers may be posing a threat to the Amur leopard

New rising threat

The Amur leopard has long been at risk from a variety of threats, from habitat loss and inbreeding to poaching. Poachers not only target the leopards directly, but also the prey base on which the cats depend, including deer and boar. Yet a new rising threat to the Amur leopard is becoming evident: the Siberian tiger.

The Siberian or Amur tiger is also undergoing a population increase in the region. While the recovery of the populations of both the Amur leopard and the Siberian tiger is welcome news, it has resulted in clashes between the two powerful predators. As the world’s largest cat, weighing up to six times the weight of the Amur leopard, the Siberian tiger is a lethal opponent for the smaller species. In the last few years, WWF-Russia has reported that three Amur leopards have been killed by tigers, and the organisation is calling for more research to be conducted on the relationship between these two big cats.

Read more on this story at Mongabay.com – Amur leopard population rises to 50 animals, but at risk from tigers, poachers.

View photos and videos of the Amur leopard on ARKive.

Kathryn Pintus, ARKive Text Author

Add Comment (0) Share

Cotton-headed tamarin (Saguinus oedipus)

Species: Cotton-headed tamarin (Saguinus oedipus)

Status: Critically Endangered (CR)

Interesting Fact: The cotton-headed tamarin is named for the long white crest of fur around its otherwise black face.

One of South America’s most endangered primates, the cotton-headed tamarin is found only in Colombia, where it lives in tropical rainforests and dry deciduous forests. This small monkey lives in groups of up to 13 individuals, but only one dominant female in the group breeds, with the other group members helping to care for and carry the young. Like other tamarins and marmosets, the cotton-headed tamarin has claws rather than nails on most of its fingers and toes, allowing it to climb trees more easily, and its long tail aids with balance as the tamarin moves through the forest.

The main threat to the cotton-headed tamarin is the clearance of forests for timber, charcoal, agriculture and human settlement. Many of the remaining patches of forest may be too small to maintain tamarin populations in the long term. This species has also been collected for the pet trade and for biomedical research, but its export has now been banned. Proyecto Tití, a conservation programme for the cotton-headed tamarin, undertakes a range of conservation actions for this species, including field research, education projects, and developing agricultural training programmes and alternative incomes for local communities.

Find out more about cotton-headed tamarin conservation at Proyecto Tití.

Find out more about primate conservation at the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group and Neotropical Primate Conservation.

See images and videos of the cotton-headed tamarin on ARKive.

Liz Shaw, ARKive Text Author

Add Comment (0) Share

Extreme measures have been taken in an attempt to curb rhino poaching in a game reserve in South Africa, involving poison and indelible ink.

Poaching is the single biggest threat to rhino survival in South Africa.

Over 200 rhinos have been poached in South Africa this year alone, a chilling figure that has driven the Sabi Sand Game Reserve to take drastic measures in an attempt to reduce the slaughter.

Poaching is the single biggest threat to rhino survival in South Africa, driven by increasing demand for rhino horn in Asia where it is highly valued in traditional medicine. Thousands of rhinos have already been butchered by organised gangs and crime syndicates.

Over the past 18 months, the Sabi Sand Game Reserve in South Africa has been injecting non-lethal poison into the rhinos’ horns, along with an indelible pink dye. Ingestion of any products made with poisoned rhino horn will cause the consumer to become “seriously ill”.

Rhinoceros horns are made from nothing more than keratin and have no medicinal properties whatsoever.

Legal chemicals

On the effects of the poison, Andrew Parker, chief executive of the Sabi Sand Wildtuin Association says, “It’ll make [people] very ill – nausea, stomach ache, diarrhoea – it won’t kill them… It will be very visible, so it would take a very stupid consumer to consume this.”

The chemicals used to contaminate the rhinos’ horns are readily available over the counter and the aim is to advertise this poisoning practice as much as possible. Hopefully, these measures will serve to reduce both the demand for the product and therefore the levels of poaching. The indelible pink dye is detectable by airport scanners in whole rhino horns, and when they are ground into a powder.

“If the poacher hacks off the horn, he’ll immediately see it’s contaminated. We’re saying to the poachers: ‘Don’t bother coming to Sabi Sand. You’re wasting your time’,” says Parker.

The black rhinoceros is classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

Why poison horns?

 Despite the many measures taken to reduce the number of rhino deaths, the massacre has continued and the death rate has increased. With conservationists at a loss as to what to do next, the idea of poisoning the product was born.

Parker explains, “Despite all the interventions by police, the body count has continued to climb. Everything we’ve tried has not been working and for poachers it has become a low-risk, high-reward ratio. By contaminating the horn, you reduce the reward and the horn becomes a valueless product.”

Confiscated black rhino horns

Varied reactions

Reactions to the programme have not been unanimous. Although South Africa National Parks have shown support for the programme, they remain sceptical regarding its effectiveness within all national parks, saying the lack of resources will make it “virtually impossible”.

 TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, also highlighted the low likelihood of success in the large areas where rhinos are free-ranging, such as Kruger National Park. Their concern is that by reducing poaching within a concentrated area such as Sabi Sand, it might not have an effect on overall poaching levels due to a ‘displacement effect’, whereby poaching intensity is increased elsewhere in response.

“These dealers are already perpetuating fraud on so many levels in the interest of windfall profits, so it’s hard to imagine that they will suddenly be bothered about putting potentially toxic horns into circulation. The prospect of human suffering deters few criminals and that’s what we are dealing with here”, says Tom Milliken, author of a TRAFFIC report on rhino horn consumption in Vietnam.

A total of 145 rhinos have been poached in Kruger National Park alone this year, thus fears that poaching could increase in areas such as this as a result of this programme could be well founded.

Read more on this story at The Guardian – South African game reserve poisons rhino’s horns to prevent poaching.

See photos and videos of rhinoceros species on ARKive.

Kaz Armour, ARKive Text Author

Add Comment (1) Share

The Sumatran rhino has not been seen in the state of Kalimantan, Borneo, for more than two decades, but recent evidence has been found to suggest that this threatened species still occurs in the Indonesian state.

The Sumatran rhino is one of the most threatened mammals in the world

Encouraging evidence

Now considered to be one of the world’s most threatened mammals with just 200 to 275 individuals remaining in the wild, the Critically Endangered Sumatran rhino once roamed across the Himalayan foothills and east to southern China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Viet Nam and Peninsular Malaysia. However, this impressive range has since been dramatically decreased as a result of hunting and habitat destruction.

Also known as the ‘hairy rhino’ due to a covering of reddish-brown to black hair, the Sumatran rhino is known to survive in small populations on Borneo in the Malaysian state of Sabah, but this is the first time that scientists have been able to confirm the presence of this shy and elusive species in the state of Kalimantan for over 20 years.

While conservationists from WWF-Indonesia have yet to spot a rhino in Kalimantan, the discovery of footprints, mud wallows, tree markings and signs of rhino feeding all indicate that at least one Sumatran rhino persists in the area.

“This is a very important finding to the world, and especially to Indonesia’s conservation work, as this serves as a new record on the presence of Sumatran rhinos in East Kalimantan and especially in West Kutai,” said Bambang Noviyanto, the director for biodiversity conservation at the Forestry Ministry.

The Sumatran rhino is classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List

Numbers

In such small and fragmented populations, it has become difficult for populations of the Sumatran rhino to breed successfully, and cases have been reported in the past of single rhinos surviving alone in a small forest fragment. The rarer the species becomes, the more challenging it is for scientists to count and monitor the number of remaining individuals.

As yet, there is no information on whether the recent evidence has been left by just one rhino or a small group, but scientists believe it is unlikely that the group is large.

“The Sumatran rhino is on the very brink of extinction. The fact that this discovery comes more than a decade after the last evidence of the species in Kalimantan, despite the opening up of previously remote areas during that period, suggests that this might be just one or a small number of individuals,” explained John Payne, a conservation scientist with the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA). “If so, they might not have been breeding. There may be inbreeding, or a skewed sex ratio, or simply old or otherwise infertile rhinos.”

WWF-Indonesia is working on determining how many rhinos may be living in Kalimantan

Breeding programmes

Along with other scientists at BORA, Payne is currently working to breed two Sumatran rhinos in large, semi-wild enclosures in Sabah, Malaysia, one of which was found living alone in a fragment of forest with no hope of finding a mate to breed with.

A similar breeding programme in Sumatra led to the first successful birth of a captive Sumatran rhino since 2001. Given that it was only the fourth captive Sumatran rhino birth in the last century, this was an impressive achievement, but Payne believes that more rhinos will need to be captured to increase genetic diversity within the population and ensure that the breeding programmes are successful in the long term.

“I would hope that consideration might be given to capture to add to the global captive population of 10 individuals,” said Payne. “New genes are needed. Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA), although a Malaysian NGO, would be happy to collaborate with WWF-Indonesia and the Indonesian authorities. Such collaboration would help in exchanging information and ideas, and help to better secure collaboration on this species between Indonesia and Malaysia.”

At present, WWF-Indonesia is focusing its efforts on determining how many rhinos are currently living in East Kalimantan, and the organisation is working with local communities to ensure that the area is protected.

Read more on this story at Mongabay.com – Sumatran rhino found in Kalimantan after unseen in region for 20 years.

View photos and videos of the Sumatran rhino on ARKive.

Kathryn Pintus, ARKive Text Author

Add Comment (2) Share

It seems that, in many countries, spring has not yet properly sprung, but we hope that our little April Fools’ joke helped cheer you up! The ARKive team had fun coming up with the ‘squabbit’, which was created in the hope that it would raise some awareness of the many incredible (and real!) species that are constantly being discovered around the world. To find out more about these fascinating newly discovered species, including the psychedelic frogfish, the ‘ninja slug’, and the David Bowie spider, visit our informative newly discovered species page.

Original image of the grey squirrel used to create the loveable ‘squabbit’ © E. Shaw

Add Comment (0) Share