GPS To Track Blue Sheep And Snow Leopard
Friday, 6 November, 2009 – 10:19
DNA could offer captive-breeding alternative to snow leopard studbook
Oct 16, 2009 11:03 AM in Scientific American
Breeding via studbook, however, is a slow process that does not offer many benefits to an endangered species with small populations, such as the snow leopard. Now a team from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences in
Principal investigators Margaret Barr, Kristopher Irizarry and Janis Joslin have received a $100,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to develop a strategy for using genetic analysis to maximize the breeding of snow leopards to enhance species diversity and robustness.
The existing snow leopard studbook is “slow and cumbersome,” Barr says. “It relies on demographic information and traditional observational genetics in deciding on which animals might be assets to the breeding program. The individual animals are bred and observed to see if the offspring survive, thrive and successfully reproduce free of diseases of concern. Zoos need a faster way to determine that they are correctly identifying the best individual animals for breeding for the long-term success of the program.”
According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, worldwide populations for the cats are estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 animals. About 550 live in captivity in zoos. The species’s limited genetic range has weakened the animals’ immune systems and left them susceptible to a variety of diseases, such as pneumonia, enteritis from salmonella, and two different papillomaviruses, “which cause them to develop squamous cell carcinomas on their skin and in their mouths,” Barr says. The big cats also have problems similar to those in overbred domesticated animals, like hip dysplasia and colobomas (eye lesions).
As part of its research, the team will collect and store DNA samples from up to 100 snow leopards from North American captive populations. “Some of these samples will be used to generate a sequence of the snow leopard genome and to begin to identify genes that might play a role in the snow leopard’s increased susceptibility to some diseases,” Barr says.
Before that, the team plans to organize a workshop for several groups interested in snow leopard conservation, including “zoo curators and veterinarians involved in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums‘ Snow Leopard Species Survival Plan (SSP); key members of some SSPs for other endangered animals; geneticists and experts in genomics; immunologists; and reproductive physiologists,” Barr says. The team will use the workshop to come up with a “comprehensive strategy for applying functional genomics to animal conservation issues.”
The team hopes its results will also be applicable to other endangered species. “There are many other species of endangered cats such as the cheetah, Pallas’s cats, sand cats and Asiatic lions that have medical problems that could be evaluated using this same process, and breeding programs could be managed using the approach developed in this research,” Barr says.
The team’s yearlong project begins this month.
Rare photo shows endangered snow leopard in the wild
A trap camera took this rare photo of a snow leopard.
By Wildlife Conservation Society
The Wildlife Conservation Society released two photos Thursday of a snow leopard, an endangered cat that lives in the high mountains of Central Asia.These photos were taken by a trap camera in Sast Valley in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor and sent to my colleague Dan Vergano,who wanted to share them with the pet community. Thank you, Dan. We’ll do more on wild cats and wolves in upcoming blogs.
WCS researchers are conducting ongoing wildlife surveys in this remote area with the goal of establishing a protected area. They found this endangered cat willing to strike a pose or two.
Trap cameras are placed in an animal’s habitat and are automatically triggered to go off when an animal goes by, allowing researchers to take photos without being nearby.
Snow leopards are on The World Conservation Union’s Red list of Endangered Species, the same endangered status given to the panda and tiger. Snow leopards are elusive creatures. Sightings are rare, partly because of how well they blend into the landscape. They weigh about 75-120 pounds (roughly seven to eight times the weight of a house cat and one-seventh to one-eighth the size of a tiger). They have large paws that allow them to jump up to 50 feet. More information about the cats and where they roam can be found at the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Snow Leopard Trust websites.
Peter Matthiessen writes about a magical journey he took on foot – what else? – in the rugged mountains of northwest Nepal with a wildlife biologist to look for these near-mythical creatures in The Snow Leopard.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/pawprintpost/post/2009/08/rare-photo-shows-endangered-snow-leopard-in-the-wild/1
Capturing the elusive cat
Ashwin Aghor / DNA
Just published in the Journal of Wildlife Management: SLN member article “Assessing Estimators of Snow Leopard Abundance”
The article Assessing Estimators of Snow Leopard Abundance was published in the Journal of Wildlife Management 72(8), pages 1826-1833. 2008. Congratulations to authors Kyle McCarthy, Todd Fuller, Ma Ming, Thomas McCarthy, Lisette Waits, and Kubanych Jumabaev.
http://www.snowleopardnetwork.org/bibliography/Assessing Estimators of Snow Leopard Abundance.pdf
The secretive nature of snow leopards (Uncia uncia) makes them difficult to monitor, yet conservation efforts require accurate and precise methods to estimate abundance. We assessed accuracy of Snow Leopard Information Management System (SLIMS) sign surveys by comparing them with 4 methods for estimating snow leopard abundance: predator:prey biomass ratios, capture–recapture density estimation, photo-capture rate, and individual identification through genetic analysis. We recorded snow leopard sign during standardized surveys in the SaryChat Zapovednik, the Jangart hunting reserve, and the Tomur Strictly Protected Area, in the
The Power of Genetics in Snow Leopard Conservation
Animal Conservation: Vol 11(5):pages 401-411. Population monitoring of snow leopards using noninvasive collection of scat samples: a pilot study. 2008. J. E. Janečka, R. Jackson, Z. Yuquang, L. Diqiang, B. Munkhtsog, V. Buckley-Beason, W. J. Murphy
This pioneering genetic study was also featured in the October 15 issue of New Scientist Online
The full story, paraphrased below, is available at:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg20026782.600-snow-leopard-genes-could-help-estimate-populations.html
The article describes how snow leopard numbers can be read in their scat. A genetic test specific to endangered snow leopards can reveal vital information on their numbers and diversity from a sample of feces. What is more, a pilot study has found that some feces thought to come from snow leopards were actually from red foxes or lynx – a disturbing sign that previous estimates of snow leopard numbers may be far too high.
Genetic testing of feces is more precise than field observations, but efforts to date have been limited because the costs were high. But now, these genetic approaches have become reasonably priced, allowing for large-scale studies. In addition, standard molecular primers based on domestic cats were not reliable when testing the degraded DNA in snow leopard feces. This led co-author Jan Janecka of
Trials using the new approach in
That information is crucial for conservation, says co-author Rodney Jackson, director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy of Sonoma, California, which has plans for expanding the genetic test-based survey program.
Animal Conservation is a publication of the Zoological Society of London. The journal provides a forum for rapid and timely publication of novel scientific studies of past, present and future factors influencing the conservation of animal species and their habitats. The focus is on rigorous studies of an empirical or theoretical nature, relating to species and population biology. A central theme is to publish important new ideas and findings from evolutionary biology and ecology that contribute towards the scientific basis of conservation biology.
For over fifty years New Scientist, which now reaches nearly 1 million worldwide readers, has been informing the public of the latest science and technology news from around the world.
Mongolian Wildlife to be Recorded on Film
Written by Kirril Shields | |
Friday, October 17, 2008 | |
MONGOLIAN wildlife will soon be captured, on camera that is. A Wildlife Picture Index programme is set to begin in January of 2009, aiming to ‘camera trap’ Mongolian mammal and bird species. The program intends to help scientists gain an understanding of population figures and biodiversity across an array of environments, from desert, to steppe, to the rugged and snow-capped mountains of the taiga.
While the WPI was trialled on a small scale in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sapo National Park, Liberia, and to a lesser degree in other locations around the world, it will be used for the first time on a large scale to record Mongolian wildlife. “This is a great step for Mongolia,” says Eleanor Monks of the Zoological Society of London. “It gives us the opportunity to monitor data deficient species which are rarely seen by the public eye.” According to the team establishing Mongolia’s WPI program, the use of photographic imagery is an effective way of enthusing and educating the public about wildlife by producing vivid colour pictures of rare or, as yet, undiscovered animals. The camera trapping will be implemented by the Zoological Society of London (through the Steppe Forward Programme), the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Mongolian Academy of Science. According to Cambridge University, the benefits of camera trapping are that it “offers a non-obtrusive, low cost, verifiable, simple and effective means of meeting objectives across disparate sites.” The objectives, they continue, include “monitoring trends in the diversity, abundance, and distribution of a broad range of terrestrial mammals and birds, including nocturnal, rare and elusive animals.” The majority of funds for the project’s first year have been supplied by the World Bank. The program will employ roughly six foreign scientists, including two project leaders, four young Mongolian scientists, two Mongolian student interns, and as many as sixty herdsmen from the aimags where the cameras will be placed. Mongolia, according to the report Silent Steppe: The Illegal Wildlife Trade Crisis in Mongolia, has a “flourishing illegal and wildlife trade, now estimated to be worth more than US$ 100 million annually.” Add to this the depletion of forests and the impact mining companies can have on the environment, and the future of Mongolia’s rare and depleted species may be grim. In 2006, for example, the population of red deer in Mongolia was said to have declined by 92 percent over the last 18 years. In 2006, Baille enumerated some of the environmental problems Mongolia currently faces. “Mongolia was once a refuge for Central Asia’s mammals, but the Mongolian steppe is now being silently cleared of its wildlife. Even the marmot, a large rodent, is estimated to have declined 75 percent over the past 12 years, due to hunting.” The Wildlife Picture Index hopes to reverse some of these trends. Implementing the program, according to ZSL, means that “robust monitoring will take place so that the scope and severity of the problem can be defined, communicated and defended.” The society hopes this project will in turn lead to public and government awareness initiatives, launched both by Mongolia and the world at large. http://ubpost.mongolnews.mn/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2333 |
Second Snow Leopard Collared in Mongolia Project
We are pleased to report that early in the morning on 14 September 2008, a second male snow leopard was captured and radio-collared in Mongolia’s South Gobi Province as part of a new long-term ecological study of the rare and endangered cats. The research team named the cat “Bayartai”, meaning “go with joy” in Mongolian, an appropriate sentiment since two of the researchers involved were leaving the study area that day after about 6 weeks of trapping effort. An automated trap camera at the site recorded the cat entering the snare just 15 minutes before the research team’s regular morning trap check. The 44 kg (97 pound) cat was immobilized for approximately one hour before slipping back up the hillside away from the trap site.
The snow leopard becomes the second subject of a collaborative study being undertaken by the Snow Leopard Trust (SLT), Panthera, Felidae Conservation Fund (FCF), the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment (MNE), and the Biological Institute of the
number of the rare cats anywhere in their vast Asian range.
On another positive note, the GPS collar on the first young adult male snow leopard captured on 19 August 2008 (named “Aztai”) is performing very well: nearly 75% of scheduled GPS locations are successfully uploading via satellite phone to SLT headquarters in
For more information on the study, visit the websites of the cooperating organizations:
Snow Leopard Trust: www.snowleopard.org
Panthera: www.panthera.org
Felidae Conservation Fund: www.felidaefund.org
First Snow Leopard Captured in Long-Term Ecological Study in Mongolia
In the early morning of 19 August a young adult male snow leopard was captured and fitted with a GPS collar in
The snow leopard, which the research team named Aztai (meaning “Lucky” in Mongolian) becomes the first subject of a collaborative study being undertaken by the Snow Leopard Trust (SLT), Panthera, Felidae Conservation Fund (FCF), the Mongolian Ministry of Nature and Environment (MNE), and the Biological Institute of the
In early August additional team members arrived from
The high-tech collar is programmed to operate for 13 months before it automatically opens and falls off. Researchers will then retrieve the collar and download any data that was not successfully uplinked via satellite phone. The comprehensive study, which is expected to run for 15 years or more, is the first of its kind and is designed to yield unprecedented data on the ecology of an animal that until now has been extremely difficult to research due to its secretive nature and remote habitat. Only with the type and amount of information that this study will provide can conservation efforts for snow leopards have a chance of succeeding.
www.snowleopard.org <http://www.snowleopard.org> www.panthera.org <http://www.panthera.org> www.felidaefund.org <http://www.felidaefund.org> www.mne.gov.mn