A female snow leopard was released back into the wild in northwest China Wednesday after receiving care for a respiratory tract infection. The big cat, which weighed 40 kg and was between 70-80 cm long, hesitated a few seconds after the cage was opened, then rushed to the woods in the suburbs of Zhangye City, Gansu Province, without looking back at the people who had taken care of her since she was found on April 29. “She was exhausted and panting when she was found. We believed she was too sick to hunt from an infection and so she came into the village to look for food,” said Zhao Chongxue, a researcher with the Gansu Endangered Animal Research Center. Staff added medicine to food and water for the snow leopard for 10 days essentially curing her, Zhao added. The snow leopard wandered into a village at the foot of Qilian Mountain in Zhangye City, on April 29, prompting fearful villagers to seek help from police. The animal was then shot with a tranquilizer gun and put in an iron cage for transfer to the research center. Xie Jianrong, chief wildlife official of Zhangye City, said the area where the snow leopard was released is sparsely populated and rich in prey. He believed she would live a good life there in the wild. Hundreds of local residents came to see the rare animal Wednesday. Snow leopards are usually nocturnal and live in mountains more than 3,000 meters above sea level. The animal is listed as endangered in China, the same classification given to the giant panda. An estimated 3,500 to 7,000 wild snow leopards roam the mountains of central Asia, in addition to 600 to 700 more in zoos around the world. http://english.cri.cn/6909/2009/06/10/2001s492130.htm
2009-05-13 13:20:46 GMT2009-05-13 21:20:46 (Beijing Time) Xinhua English LANZHOU, May 13 (Xinhua) — No decision has been made if a snow leopard captured in a northwestern Chinese village will be released into the wild, an animal researcher said Wednesday. The big cat wandered into a village at the foot of QilianMountain in Zhangye City, Gansu Province, on April 29, prompting fearful villagers to seek police help. Police and animal protectionists shot the wild animal with a tranquilizer gun and put it in an iron cage amid worries that it might hurt people. The animal was then handed over to the GansuEndangeredAnimalResearchCenter. The snow leopard, female, is 70 to 80 centimeters long and weights around 40 km, said Li Yan, a researcher at the center, adding that the animal is in good condition. Li said the researchers were baffled by why the elusive and solitary animal came down from the high mountains. He ruled out three possibilities as reasons: human damage to its habitat, food shortage and waning ability to hunt due to illness or age. Snow leopards are usually nocturnal and live in mountains more than 3,000 meters above the sea level. They are white, yellowish, or smoky-gray with dark-gray to black spots and rosettes, the Snow Leopard Trust said on its Web site. The animal is listed as “endangered” in China, the same level given the giant panda. An estimated 3,500 to 7,000 wild snow leopards roam the mountains of central Asia, in addition to 600 to700 more in zoos around the world, according to the agency.http://english.sina.com/china/2009/0513/241004.html
The Dalai Lama has called for an end to illegal wildlife trafficking between Nepal, Tibet, India and China.
He is appealing to exiled Tibetans, who are increasingly involved in the bloody trade, to remember their dedication to Buddhist non-violence.
Last year, Tibetan officials intercepted 32 tiger, 579 leopard and 665 otter skins in one single shipment.
This prompted the Dalai Lama and a pair of wildlife charities to launch an awareness drive around the Himalayas.
“We Tibetans are basically Buddhists, we preach love and compassion towards all other living beings on Earth,” said the exiled Tibetan leader. “Therefore, it is the responsibility of all of us to realise the importance of wildlife conservation. We must realise that because of our follies a large number of our animals are getting killed.”
The Dalai Lama is working with the charities Care for the Wild International (CWI), from the UK, and the Wildlife Trust of India, to promote an understanding of the damage illegal trading can cause.
The team plan to make videos and leaflets which they will take to Tibetan refugee settlements around India. They also hope to broadcast anti-poaching messages over the TV and radio.
“Thousands will be reached in this way,” said Barbara Maas of CWI. “Eventually, we hope to reach every single one – we will go to schools, we will go to refugee camps, we will go to villages.”
Urgent action
Dr Maas says the project has a sense of urgency because illegal wildlife trading is set to get worse, thanks to a new train line being constructed between the old Tibetan capital of Lhasa and Beijing, the capital of China.
This new transport link will make things easier for poachers wishing to shift animal body parts.
“You can imagine what will happen when the train link opens,” said Dr Maas. “So we are trying to pour water on the flames as they are at the moment and also take pre-emptive action.”
Other charities are in strong support of this new initiative.
“Our own investigation has shown that Tibetans are heavily involved in the organised smuggling of tiger and leopard skins between India and Tibet, and that Tibet is a major market and distribution point for these skins,” said Debbie Banks, of the Environmental Investigation Agency.
“We are encouraged that the Dalai Lama is taking action on this serious issue and hope that his message helps to prevent this disgusting trade from spiralling further out of control.”
CWI claims that the illegal wildlife trade is devastating populations of endangered Himalayan and sub-Himalayan wildlife such as tigers, leopards, snow leopards, otters and bears.
Many of these animal body parts head for China, where they find their way into the traditional medicine market.
Wildlife organisations have long worried about this sad pilgrimage, but few have appealed to people’s religious sensibilities to prevent it.
The Dalai Lama carries enormous weight, especially with Tibetans living in exile, so his voice is likely to be heard.
“It is in the Pali and Sanskrit tradition to show love and compassion for all living beings,” he said at a press conference in New Delhi, India. “It is a shame that we kill these poor creatures to satisfy our own aggrandisement.
“We must realise that because of our follies a large number of our animals are getting killed and we must stop this.”
Loud voice
The CWI is under no illusion about the importance of the Dalai Lama backing the campaign.
“This campaign starts and ends with him,” said Dr Maas. “If it was just us saying: ‘Oh please don’t do it’, I’m not sure it would do much good. But His Holiness will make all the difference.”
Underpinning the whole campaign is the hope that, in the end, people all over the world will want to save endangered species not because we can benefit from them financially, but because it is wrong to kill them.
The Dalai Lama said: “Today more than ever before life must be characterised by a sense of universal responsibility not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4415929.stm
By Patrice O’Shaughnessy of the New York Daily News
Tuesday, February 24th 2009, 1:24 AM
He’s an unassuming man, with gray hair, pale eyes and a measured voice. But if not for George Schaller, there’d probably be a lot less spectacular beauty in the world.
At 75, he has devoted half a century to saving endangered creatures and habitats all over the planet. It’s a never-ending task.
“You can never relax, and say something is okay,” he said, and noted a new threat.
The influx of Chinese workers to Africa, he said, has spawned a trade in lion bones, sent back to China for medicinal purposes.
“In Kenya, they put an insecticide in cow carcasses, and they kill off the whole pride,” he said. “There are only about 20,000 lions left in the world.”
Schaller is on the case.
And he says he’ll keep at his conservation efforts “for another 25 years.”
He visits animals in the wild, living for months or years at a time observing snow leopards in Pakistan, gorillas in Rwanda, lions in the Serengeti, pandas in China and the last Asiatic cheetahs in Iran to better learn how to protect them.
We caught up with him at the zoo last week, where he has been a researcher in animal behavior with the WCS since 1966, before he embarks on a round of trips to Iran, Brazil and Tibet.
Schaller was deemed “perhaps the greatest force for conservation in more than a century” by National Geographic magazine.
Discover magazine said he is considered the finest field biologist of our time.
Schaller has spent 50 years up close with exotic animals, tracking them, jotting notes in a small notebook and taking photographs, doing it the old-fashioned way.
He conducted a groundbreaking ecological study of mountain gorillas when he was 25, becoming the first scientist to live in their habitat. Now he is focusing on Marco Polo sheep, notable for their majestic spiral horns.
“Professors said gorillas were too dangerous, but I found them very congenial. They’re big, beautiful hairy relatives,” he said.
“I started out because I like to watch animals; that’s the fun part,” he said.
“Then, you have to worry about livelihood of communities” encroaching on the habitats.”
At 14, after World War II, he came to the U.S. from Berlin with his American mother, and retains a slight German accent. His first field trip was to the Arctic slope in Alaska.
“The oil companies wanted to drill. Luckily, they didn’t,” he said. As of 2006, “the place is still beautiful .. . no roads, lots of caribou and grizzly bears.”
He and his wife, Kay, “the perfect co-worker,” raised two sons in exotic locales. She still accompanies him on some trips.
“The most wonderful place is Serengeti and Tanzania,” he said. “You literally see a million animals spread before you.”
He writes even more than he travels. Schaller has penned seven books and scores of articles with titles like, “Courtship Behavior of the Wild Goat,” and “Effects of a Snowstorm on Tibetan Antelope.”
It’s a commemoration of his years with the WCS, celebrating his contribution to science. A panel of international conservationists will examine the status of key species and landscapes that Schaller has brought to the world’s attention.
Is he excited about the symposium? He looked a little uncomfortable, and said, “Why do you think I am always overseas?”
Schaller is passionate, though, about his prized project, first conceived in the 1980s.
He envisions the PamirInternationalPeacePark, at the nexus of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and Tajikistan. It will be a refuge for Marco Polo sheep.
“We had a meeting of all four countries,” he said.
He has never let war, strife, the political squabbles of humans or borders stop him.
As he wrote in one of his books, “I live in a geography of dreams. …”
American Biologist Honored With China Environment Prize
NEW YORK, New York, December 19, 2008 (ENS) – Dr. George Schaller, a world reknowned field biologist and conservationist, has been awarded the China Environment Prize for his efforts to study and protect China’s giant pandas, Tibetan antelope, and China’s wild places.
Schaller is a senior conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Asia Programs and has worked with the Bronx Zoo-based organization for more than 50 years. He has worked in China for much of the last 28 years.
The $70,000 prize was established in 2000 by the China Environmental Protection Foundation to honor and encourage individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the cause of environmental protection in China. The foundation was the first nonprofit organization in China dedicated to environmental protection.
“George Schaller has been and continues to be a role model and driving force for conservation,” said Dr. Steven Sanderson, president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “After more than 50 years of groundbreaking field research on some of the world’s best-known wildlife, George continues to define the field of conservation biology and works tirelessly to preserve our natural heritage.”
One of the first foreign experts to work with the Chinese on conservation issues, Schaller’s conservation work within China began in the 1980s with his seminal research on giant pandas in the bamboo forests of China‘s WolongMountains.
Schaller helped the Chinese government establish the massive Chang Tang Wildlife Preserve in Tibet – one of the world’s largest protected areas – in order to protect the plateau’s unique assemblage of wildlife, including wild yak, Tibetan argali sheep, and Tibetan brown bear.
Schaller’s research on Tibetan antelope helped reveal that the rare animal is in fact the source of “shahtoosh,” the world’s finest wool, which is smuggled by poachers into Kashmir, India. He has lobbied to shut down the trade and protect critical habitat in China for this antelope species.
His recent work includes efforts to establish a trans-boundary protected area along the mountainous borders of China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan that is inhabited by Marco Polo sheep, ibex, and snow leopard.
Schaller’s reputation in the conservation field was established long before his work in China.
His field work as a graduate student in northern Alaska in the 1950s led to the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and Schaller remains an advocate for permanent protection of the refuge. He has expressed the hope that the incoming administration will safeguard this pristine and ecologically rich part of America‘s landscape.
Schaller initiated the first scientific study of mountain gorillas in Africa‘s Virunga Volcanoes in 1959. Since 2001, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Agency for International Development have invested over $15 million towards conservation of great apes in Africa and Asia, with an additional $14 million coming from private donors and conservation organizations such as the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Schaller also pioneered behavioral examinations of big cats, with the first ever ecological studies of tigers in India and lions in East Africa. His work resulted in a successful popular work, “The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations,” which won the National Book Award in 1973. He has also studied jaguars and other cat species.
Schaller’s work over the years on several species listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has helped raise awareness on the growing rates of global illegal wildlife trade.
His studies have been the basis for his numerous scientific and popular writings, including several books such as The Stones of Silence, The Year of the Gorilla, and The Last Panda. In addition to the China Environment Prize, Schaller has received numerous national and international awards for conservation, including the International Cosmos Prize from Japan and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in the United States.
Dr. Schaller is now working primarily in Iran and Tajikistan, but he will be in New York on February 26, 2009 to keynote a daylong conference devoted to his work.
He will be the featured speaker at the Fairfield Osborn Memorial Conference and Lecture at RockefellerUniversity. The conference, titled George Schaller: Practicing the Art of Conservation, will celebrate his conservation work over the past 50 years.
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.
On December 13, 2008, WCS International organized a present reward ceremony of “the Chinese Frontier Wildlife Bodyguard Award” take place Beijing, the big hall of literature information center of ChineseAcademy of Science. Ablimit Abdukadir，IUCN/CSG and SLN member, Professor of the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography，Chinese Academy of Science honored to obtained “the Chinese Frontier Wildlife Bodyguard Award” and prize. Chinese major wildlife conservation cabinets and leaders came from to attend the award ceremony such the State Forestry Bureau, the State Environmental Protection Department, the State Natural Ecology Protection Department, the Chinese Environment Culture Promotion Agency, the Forest Police Staff at State Forestry Bureau, the CITES Office at Beijing, People’s Republic of China. And to Dong Hongyu (Heilongjiang, Harbin), Ablimit Abdukadir (Xinjiang CAS, Urumqi),Liu Jinxu (Yunnan, Xishuangbanna), Qiangba Ceren (Tibet, Ali district),Wang Lifan (Guangxi, Guilin) so on 12 winners and comes from Bureau and Sub-bureau of the Anti-smuggle Inner Mongolian Customhouse, the Bureau Second Customs of Anti-smuggle ant-poaching Tibet, Administrative Bureau of the Xishuangbanna Dai Nationality Autonomous Region’ State-level Nature Protected Area, the CITES Office at Kunming and Jilin province and the People’s Liberation Army 65811 and so on are honored to obtained the collective represents award.
This award “the Chinese Frontier Wildlife Bodyguard” item, has been through repeatedly the application, the network public shows with the voting, the expert appraisal and so on a series of links, is domestic first in view of the Chinese frontier area wild biological shield and the law enforcement award item. This award item is for the purpose of driving positively participates in the personnel in the Chinese frontier area who and supports the wild biological law enforcement work, conservation any wildlife, the commendation attacks the robber to hunt for, the control wild biology transnational illegal trade, makes the important contribution for the China wild biological shield the collective and individual, promotes the frontier area correlation personnel in the wild biological shield and the law enforcement work exchange, enhances the wild biological shield and law enforcement ability. On December 13, altogether have 12 prizes to represent the frontier area which works from them to come to Beijing, the attendance award ceremony. At the award ceremony, the scene audience and the honored guest understands the bodyguards in the remote frontier area protection wild animal’s touching fact, also deeply their this kind of selfless offer mental move. At the award ceremony, Mr. Dong Zhiyong, former vice-minister of Ministry of Forestry, the People’s Republic of China; Mr. Dong Zhi, office Director of the endangered species import and export; Mr.Chen Ze, Deputy Secretary-General Assistant of the Chinese Environment Culture Promotion agency; Mrs. Zhang Ping, Forest Police staff Assistant at State Forestry Bureau Commissioner and all other department heads with countryside Chinese representative as the promulgation honored guest to promulgate and to make the speech. In addition, the WCS International chief – scientist Dr. George B. Schaller also attended this award ceremony, has carried on the introduction to the current international on frontier area protection of wild animals and the law enforcement situation.
Xinjiang is an typical area biggest provincial in China, also is a country boundary line longest provincial area, it with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India is neighboring, the boundary line long amounts to 5600 kilometers, the wild animal resources are rich, approximately 700 species of wild vertebrate and 3000 species of vascular plants, in which very multiple wants the species to include especially “National Key Protection Wild animal Name list” and the listed into CITES appendix as endangered wild fauna and flora. Xinjiang has 27 passes which opens with the neighboring country with two kind of ports continental and air, including the Alataw port, the Kashigar aviation port, Kashigar Khonjirab pass, the Urumqi international and domestic port, the Chuguchak international border trade city port and so on many differences channel-like traffic pass and ports. Because with peripheral aspects and so on country and area in language and writing, religious belief, life custom is extremely close, Xinjiang has the advantageous superiority in the frontier trade development, and also be same advantageous space in the frontier animal smuggling, poaching and transiting illegal. As a result of is unceasing with the Xinjiang neighboring many country chaos caused by war, the country and the international laws and regulations are quite imperfect, these national biological shield is at the anarchy, many unlawful element uses “the green channel” carries on is endangered species smuggling and the poaching for. In Xinjiang, some unlawful elements and overseas trade the smuggling wild animal and the product criminal offender collude with, use each kind of channel, the tool and the method capture and kill the wild animal, the purchase, the sale, the transportation, the smuggling wild animal and the product, non-card import and export wild animals and plants for example a live animal or body, horns, skin, bone, skeletons of saiga Antelope, saker Falcon, Gazelle, Tiger, Snow Leopard, Bear, Deer, Argali Sheep, Ibex, Turtles, Wolf, Fox, Marmot etc. These behaviors have become the most main threatened which the Xinjiang frontier area wild animal, causes the wild biological shield work to be more complex and to be difficult. Under this situation and the background, Professor Ablimit Abdukadir be invite a special expert for to determine, identify and sorting of different species which smuggled, poached and threatened illegal in countryside and frontier area of western China by CITES of Beijing and Urumqi, China, Chinese Endangered Species Conservation Scientific Committee, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region forest public security and China is close to managed in surveillance, the law enforcement and department responsible for the work’s and so on Urumqi office association examines expert and the biological species appraisal expert, participates in the attack smuggling illegal act with his unique way. For many years, Ablimit Abdukadir has assisted Xinjiang all levels of wildlife conservation departments and so on control section, forest public security as well as customs industry and commerce develops coordinated in every way works, to investigates the wild animal and the wild animal product which as well as treats requests authorization carries on the appraisal. From 2001 to 2008, the protection of wild animals law enforcement association which he participation examines the involved criminal case to have 50, in which involved the living specimen animal, the animal organ, the fur, the angle, even was the small pill and so on.
As short content of in Chinese, the news just reported the web: http://www.egi.ac.cn
