A couple of days ago the New York Times had an interview with Dr. Ullas Karanth, a wildlife biologist/conservationist from India who is desperately trying to save the tiger from extinction (thanks for the tip Yamini):

Dr. Karanth, 57, was in New York on a recent summer afternoon to attend a conference at the Bronx Zoo, a subsidiary of the conservation society, on the future of tigers in the wild. In a break in the proceedings, he spoke of his favorite feline.

Q. Do we know how many wild tigers still exist in India?

A. We don’t. The government claims that there are over 3,000. But that figure is based on a flawed counting method that officials developed for themselves. There are preservation groups who claim the number is more like 1,000. It’s probably not that low.

We believe that if India is to have tigers, these wildlife reserves must be rigorously protected.

Josh Dolan of Cornell University publishes a paper in this week’s Nature (paid subscription required) that proposes a solution for animals faced with the same prospects as the tigers in India:

North America lost most of its large vertebrate species — its megafauna — some 13,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene. And now Africa’s large mammals are dying, stranded on a continent where wars are waging over scarce resources. However much we would wish otherwise, humans will continue to cause extinctions, change ecosystems and alter the course of evolution. Here, we outline a bold plan for preserving some of our global megafaunal heritage…

Our vision begins immediately, spans the coming century, and is justified on ecological, evolutionary, economic, aesthetic and ethical grounds. The idea is to actively promote the restoration of large wild vertebrates into North America in preference to the ‘pests and weeds’ (rats and dandelions) that will otherwise come to dominate the landscape. This ‘Pleistocene re-wilding’ would be achieved through a series of carefully managed ecosystem manipulations using closely related species as proxies for extinct large vertebrates…

Bold plan?  Are you kidding me! You guys get what he is saying?  They want to reintroduce lions and tigers and…elephants from Africa into North America so that they have a chance to survive the seemingly inevitable extinction they face in Africa (and most likely India).  This is just ballsy.  There are a dozen reasons why this is a very very bad idea but I like big thinkers.

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It’s not often that one hears of a government which is mandating an animal’s extinction; then again, India is and has always been a nation of exceptions. Her Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has decided that it is last call for the “cocktail lion”, a hybrid composed of Asian and African lion genes. All 300 of the mixed cats remaining in zoos and safari parks will be sterilised and allowed to die out, since Indian laws and traditions forbid killing them.

The authorities say the hybrid lions have weakened the blood pool of India’s lions and have turned out to be mangy, emaciated and suffering from mental and physical defects…Critics say that the breeding programmes across India were largely unsupervised over the years.

The end result has been a large increase in “cocktail” lions that have been interbred and are genetically weak. The hybrid animals bear characteristics of both species, but are low on immunity and prone to disease. Some are reported to be suffering from tuberculosis.

Zookeepers first experimented with “cocktails” by cross-breeding their Asiatic lions with African lions who were travelling the country in circuses. At places like Chhatbir Zoo in the Punjab, almost 100 of the cats were created during an era when no thought was given to genetics or preserving certain bloodlines. Zookeepers were focused on the short-term; they bred as many animals as possible, to improve exhibitions. Unfortunately, their careless efforts created the exact opposite result;

The (Chhatbir) zoo’s once healthy pride of lions is now no more than a motley collection of disease-prone animals barely able to stand up.

According to zookeepers, almost 45 lions have died over the past three years. “We lost 13 cubs in one go,” remembers wildlife warden Neeraj Gupta. Almost all the deaths occurred because the animals suffered from severe immune deficiency which slows down or prevents healing whenever the animals fall sick or are hurt.

…While the zookeepers do their utmost to treat the animals and keep them as comfortable as possible, there is little they can do for those born paralysed or for others whose open wounds refuse to heal.

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BBC NEWS: Feeble roar of the hybrid lions Continue reading →