Last Commented Animals Blogs (472)

Africa is centre of a ‘wildlife war’ that the world is losing.
A year on since 46 countries signed up to the ‘London declaration’ to eradicate the trade in horn and ivory, rhinos and elephants are still being pushed closer to extinction.

The northern white rhino is heading the way of the dinosaurs. With only five left on Earth – three in Kenya, one in America, and one in the Czech Republic – extinction is now inevitable. It survived for millions of years, but could not survive mankind.

This is just one subspecies, but soon the planet’s remaining 28,500 rhinos could be under threat from the illegal wildlife trade. Worth up to £12bn a year, it has joined drugs, arms and human trafficking as one of the world’s biggest crime rackets. Ground zero in this “wildlife war” is Africa, and the conservationists are losing as animals are slaughtered on an industrial scale to meet demand for horn and ivory in newly affluent Asian countries.

At least 220 chimpanzees, 106 orang-utans, 33 bonobos and 15 gorillas have been lost from the wild over the past 14 months, according to estimates by the Great Apes Survival Partnership. Elephants also remain under siege – at least 20,000 were poached annually from 2011 to 2013, according to the UN – although countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have fought back with some measure of success over the past year.

Arguably the biggest setback since the London conference has been the failure to arrest, prosecute and convict all but a handful of players in the transnational wildlife mafia. Dr Patrick Bergin, chief executive of the African Wildlife Foundation, said he had attended one recent meeting where there was talk of progress, but “the glaring silence in the room was the lack of successful prosecutions”.

He continued: “We don’t see people going to jail. It’s easy to say we’re putting more dogs at airports or doing more training, but the international community is only going to get serious about this when we see people going to jail. We need to see a preponderance of prosecutions and sentences handed down that sends a message to the traffickers that it’s not worth the risk.”

The concern is shared by Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network. Tom Milliken, its rhino programme coordinator, said: “In all of this, the judiciary in many countries is lagging behind the times. A white South African who was reportedly a major player in the trade and his cohorts were arrested, but got out on bail. Organised crime can have the best legal guns in the country and those involved in rhino crime are heavily lawyered up.”

The scale of impunity was vividly illustrated when Bartholomäus Grill, a German journalist with Der Spiegel, went to Mozambique to investigate the supply chain from South Africa through middlemen to the horns’ ultimate buyers in Vietnam, where they fetch up to $65,000 a kilo – more valuable than gold. When he visited the home of a notorious poaching kingpin, Grill was taken hostage by an angry mob and threatened with death. Far from offering help, the local police appeared to be under the kingpin’s thumb.

Politicians in Tanzania say they are aware of the need to tackle poverty. January Makamba, a minister and potential presidential candidate this year, said: “The villages that surround these sanctuaries have to somehow be taken care of in a manner that people do not feel that ‘we have to help poachers to poach so we can make a living’.

Makamba added: “The issues of poaching and logging are issues of governance and poverty. Corruption is the centre of it. You deal with corruption, you are halfway to dealing with the problem of poaching.”

i saw her yesterday with her brother and sisters and her mom. yes they're united. they look happier. playing together and i know now she has 4 others look as tiny as her:) hohoho...but different motive fur. o i love those litlle tiny furry animals.owww... sooo cuteyyy:)
but they've moved to another place this morning.

i miss my tiny tail.
tiny ear.
tiny 4 legs.
and that cutey face.
her mom took her.
after i become her foster mom.

lil kitty... i will always remember you.

Long time readers will recall that last winter and through this fall I had something killing and eating deer in my forest.

Although I had suspicions I never did find out for sure what it was. It all stopped around the time human hunting season began and I put it out my mind. The only clue I ever had beyond the fact of the kills and the devoured carcasses left behind was this strange paw print.



Today, early this AM I let one of the Toms out. We still have a lot of snow on the ground so he wandered down the driveway, sat there awhile then came back in. Late this afternoon I went out to check my mail box. Down at the bottom of the driveway I observed strange tracks coming out of the forest and very clearly exactly following (as in right alongside of) the paw prints of my cat. Right up to the doorway of the house, then it turned and meandered around the house and disappeared into the woods in back.

Again I have photographed the prints and present them here. I am puzzled by them. I have spent several hours on line attempting to match them to the tracks of known species with no success. I present the imagery to you below. I am open to reasonable suggestions (no, it is not a midget bigfoot). These are, as you can see about twice the size of the paw print of a large domestic cat. No (supposedly) predator species in North America has both 3 pads on the foot and 3 prominent claws. There should be 4 or 5 pads. Just like the thing in the woods, there are 3. Herbivores have two. Anyone have a sane idea what I am dealing with?



A different track



It does not appear to be wolf or coyote and is the wrong shape for a big cat.

wohoo i got a new tiny cat. a few week baby cat.
she is leaving my her mother in the front garden of my house.
so i adopt her. now she is living with me in my house.
but she didnt like a cow milk. how to make this tiny baby cat want to eat somethings?
do i have to push her to drink a milk cow?
i am new with handling a baby cat.
thank you before.

My job with a house building firm has moved. They moved to a building in Riverside, CA and it's pretty cool. There's a lot of new stuff so I am still learning about the new area. We are butted up against a hill that was once a wilderness area and is home to the strangest animals. The one familiar animal, however, are the Cotton Tail rabbits.

Today as I was cleaning in this kinda isolated area and a small newborn, or actually days old, animal came crawling out from under the stack of PVC pipes. It was so young it's eyes were still closed and it was hairless.

As he crawled onto the asphalt it started getting burned, it's been in the 90's here, and it started squirming. The little guy was pretty strong because it was crawling at a fast pace and when it hit the asphalt it really squirmed. Poor little guy!

I put him in a box and covered him with a rag and he just snuggled and got quiet. I told a lady in the office and pretty soon everyone had to look with ooh's and ahh's. It was really cute.

Well, then the guys in the warehouse started getting interested and the Wascally Wabbit was finally adopted by this guy whom I think will make a great "Mr. Mom". One of the ladies printed a bunch of advice sheets on how to adopt an abandoned in the wild animal and so the man that adopted "Wascally" will have a good start.

I kinda miss the little guy now! Hee Hee!

And what touches my heart....

men die first for many reason...women go for older men...

heres really why.

It is a risk. It really doesn't matter where you live, but the general consensus is the odds of death go way up if your house is near a road. Not only is there the routine death where the cat misjudged a car or truck's speed while innocently crossing the road, but there are dogs and mean humans too. All can be lethal. Add to this some cats think dodging a car's wheel is a game. So they will intentionally play it a few times, until they lose.

I live hundreds of yards from the nearest road and it doesn't get that much traffic anyway. So on the one level it seems safer. Also there are no other humans here. So, again, on the surface letting the cat outside on a country property seems safer.

The reality however is grimmer. Sure the cats are happy because they get to hunt mice, moles, baby groundhogs, and even snakes. However what can be forgotten by both them and me is there other critters. Critters to who the cat is either a food chain competitor or actual food. Weasels, raccoons, fox, coyotes, bears, and even possibly much larger cats.

Last night after their dinner I let my Tom cats out. There is still snow on the ground, but they don't care about that too much after they have eaten. Normally they go into the woods and don't come back for an hour or two. A half hour later when I looked. one of them was huddled under the chair outside the door and looking very worried. When he saw me at the door he demanded entry. This was unusual, but I let him in and he seemed quite happy to be inside. No sign of the other one.

About an hour later I heard a scream. It sounded like a scream of extreme pain, but only vaguely cat like. Grabbing a pistol and a Maglite I went outside in the dark and called for the one still out there. Usually within 4 or 10 minutes (depending on how far away they are) they come at my call. Nothing. I saw nothing. I walked around the house and called again. This time I clearly heard something running away in the woods. I called again and from several hundred yards away I heard something yipping then more brush noise slowly fading. No sign of the cat. Sometimes at night when I cast about with the light I will see two eyes gleaming back and know I have found him. Not last night.

I went back inside and at around the usual time of return, although I was worried, I looked outside a few more times and called his name. Finally he showed up. I half heartedly scolded him. He seemed fine, but he was wet. I put it down to snow and let him in.

This morning however his back was still wet. A quick taste, salty, blood. I washed his back in hydrogen peroxide (he hates that, but not today). Much foaming that blotted pink on a paper towel. Examination shows several punctures and evidence something had tried to grab him. He overall seems none the worse. Now however, I am wondering about what I heard. I think it was him screaming like that. I think the yipping was his attacker running away from me. There is enough time lag between the scream and my going out behind the house, that either the fight had already ended, or they had been locked in a wrestle hold till my very presence intervened and the other animal fled. I know this cat and I have seen him chase after other stray cats before when I break up the fight. I think whatever it was, the odds were about 50/50 and when the attacker fled, he pursued till he got tired of it and came home.

He may disagree, but I think he is very lucky and that I nearly lost him. I will not let him out tonight and will instead focus on his injury. Still he will be allowed out tomorrow.

Always when we let our cats out, there will be risk.