Tigers About The House Episode 1

This week, BBC2 shows a three part documentary, Tigers About The House, which looks at a pair of Sumatran tiger cubs being hand reared at home by a zoo keeper in Australia.

Anything that brings publicity for this endangered species is good, but finding out about the programme, we were expecting a little controversy to be stirred up. None of the previews mentioned a reason for them being hand reared, meaning that we were expecting resistance, at the very least, from viewers of the Born Free mentality, and perhaps even more widespread if they had been taken from their mother and domesticated without a legitimate reason such as rejection at birth.

It was interesting to see Australia Zoo's approach to conservation awareness, allowing visitors to get up close and touch animals such as camels and wallabies in the hope that it would encourage the public to support conservation efforts. However, the issue of domesticating these wild animals to the point that the public can interact with them is something that has been phased out in the majority of zoos in recent years, and is not something that we necessarily agree with. The programme even showed the tigers performing in a tiger show, despite many people believing that captive animals should not be made to perform, no matter how endangered or in need of publicity their species is.

It was revealed in the first episode that the reason for the cubs being removed from their mother, was not to do with rejection, or danger, but mainly influenced by the zoo's desire to continue their practice of directly handling these animals into the next generation - they wanted to domesticate the cubs from birth so that their keepers could continue to enter their enclosures, rather than keeping their distance as is standard practice in most zoos,

That's not to say that Giles doesn't have the best intentions, and doesn't do an excellent job at raising the cubs - he does. But that doesn't mean that everyone agrees with their decision to handle the animals and remove two healthy cubs from their mother to satisfy human desires.

Let's see what the next episode brings tomorrow.

New Chinese law against eating endangered animals

A new law in China means that eating an endangered animals could now result in ten years in prison.

The law covers 420 rare and endangered species, including giant pandas, Asian black bears and golden monkeys. Also eligible for prosecution are people who buy illegally hunted animals.

More on this story here.

Why save an endangered species?

Why do we bother saving an endangered species? Why not let nature take its course? What does it matter if one or two species are allowed to peter off until they disappear completely, forever?

Aside from the fact that humans are responsible for the decline of so many species, and we should therefore buck up our ideas and take responsibility for some of the damage we've done, and the fact that ecosystems rely on each individual species to play a part, I think that this quote from Laurens de Groot's upcoming book, 'Hunting the hunters: At war with the whalers' sums it up brilliantly:

"If mankind fails to protect rare whales then that seals the fate of all endangered animal species as far as I'm concerned, from European hamster to Rwandan mountain gorilla, from badger to snow leopard, from tuna to Andean condor. They will all be doomed."

'Hunting the hunters' is released on January 2nd 2014. I am currently halfway through my copy and I'm loving it - and I'm not being paid or bribed in any way to say this!

Okapi listed as "endangered"

Another species was today considered to be in increased danger of extinction, as the okapi was reclassified from "near threatened" to the more critical "endangered".

Also known as the "forest giraffe" -although many people think it is more closely related to the zebra-, the okapi is only found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and was only rediscovered in 2006 after not having been sighted since 1959. It is the national symbol of the DRC, even featuring on their banknotes. Poaching and habitat loss are the main causes for the decline in okapi numbers.

In 2010, ZSL launched a project to assess the okapi situation and plan an okapi conservation strategy. Data on okapi numbers is difficult to ascertain due to the remote and dangerous forests that they live in, the political instability of the area, and their shy nature. Find out more about ZSL's okapi conservation here: https://www.zsl.org/conservation/regions/africa/okapi/protecting-okapi,1806,AR.html

Large parts of their habitat are in the Virunga National Park, which is currently at risk of being destroyed by oil exploration drills. Please consider signing the WWF's petition to stop oil exploration in Virunga.

It's not all bad news. ZSL London Zoo welcomed Daphne the baby okapi in April this year. Furthermore, two species of albatross and the island fox are now considered less endangered than previously.