Hope for Animals and Their World Read online

  Key to Long-Term Success: Handing Over to the Brazilians

  From the beginning, Devra knew that a key component for the success of the golden lion tamarin reintroduction program would be the attitude of local farmers—those with remnant forest into which the growing numbers of family groups could be reintroduced. And so from the earliest days, the Brazilian team worked on forging relationships with the local people. It was hard going at first, for many of the farmers were initially hostile, Devra told us. “But it was perhaps the most important aspect. I wanted to be able to retire and know that there was something in place that was lasting, and this could only be possible if it was in Brazilian hands.”

  To a very large extent, this has now happened. In 1992, the Golden Lion Tamarin Association (or the Associação Mico-Leão Dourado—AMLD) was formed in Brazil to integrate all conservation work relating to the golden lion tamarins and to educate local communities about the conservation program. The association, headed by a dynamic young Brazilian, Denise Rambaldi, monitors the tamarin populations, helps impoverished farmers develop agro-forestry techniques, and trains young Brazilians in conservation. The association also works closely with Brazilian government agencies to foster conservation in the entire region.

  In 2003, the golden lion tamarin was downlisted from critically endangered to endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the only primate species to have been downlisted as a result of a conservation effort. This is certainly a milestone for the countless people and organizations who have dedicated themselves to the species’ survival.

  Of course, as with all conservation projects, those who care cannot sit back and relax. Habitat is still being destroyed, and the continuing fragmentation of existing forests remains the tamarins’ greatest threat to survival. Thus it is very encouraging to learn that the AMLD is building forest corridors to link tamarin habitats, which will help prevent inbreeding within small isolated groups. The first of those corridors, which will be approximately twelve miles in length, is nearly complete. And more and more private ranchers are agreeing to accept tamarin groups on their land.

  At the time of writing, there are golden lion tamarins living on twenty-one private ranches adjacent to the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve. When their currency was redesigned, the Brazilian people voted to portray the golden lion tamarin on twenty-dollar banknotes—the species is now an icon of conservation in Brazil.

  “When I started working with the zoo population in 1972, there were about seventy golden lion tamarins in zoos,” Devra said. By the late 1980s, that number had increased to almost five hundred, and it was decided to put some individuals on contraceptives and stabilize the captive population. Today there are about 470 in zoos and aquariums, and the groups are carefully managed. “In 1984, when I started reintroducing tamarins, there were fewer than five hundred in the wild,” Devra told me. Thanks to the reintroduction efforts, about sixteen to seventeen hundred tamarins now live in the wild.

  As I write this, in my home in faraway Bournemouth, I think back to that April day when Devra introduced me to Eduardo and Laranja and their family. I remember how the adult male approached Devra, who had been handed a piece of banana by the keeper. Gently, the small creature reached out to take the fruit. It was, for me, a magical moment, symbolizing the trust of a very small primate for the woman who has worked so passionately to prevent this enchanting species from vanishing forever from Planet Earth.

  Joe Wasilewski, who is helping to ensure the future of the American crocodile, with three wild hatchlings at Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant, 2007.(Joseph A. Wasilewski)

  American Crocodile

  (Crocodylus acutus)

  For most people—including me—the thought of encountering a crocodile in the water is quite terrifying. I vividly remember empathizing with the elephant when my mother read me that most delightful of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories: “How the Elephant Got His Trunk.” The poor little elephant child wanders down to the “great grey-green greasy Limpopo River” to drink, only to have his short little nose seized by a crocodile. The crocodile pulls and pulls and the elephant pulls and pulls. Luckily all his uncles and aunts hurry to the rescue. They pull and pull, and the crocodile pulls and pulls, until by the time he is rescued, the nose of the elephant child has been elongated into a trunk.

  In real life, there are fearsome accounts of large antelopes—even buffalo—being seized by crocodiles as they go to drink; struggling desperately, they are pulled under the water to their deaths. When first we arrived at Gombe, my mother and I were warned about two such crocodiles that frequented the lakeshore near our camp. Nothing would have induced either of us to swim in the lake in those days. Indeed, one of those crocs almost grabbed the cook’s wife. Later we were told they were the “familiars” (like the black cat of a witch) of old Iddi Matata who, although we had no idea at the time, was the most infamous witch doctor in the area. And it is true that when he moved away, those two crocodiles disappeared. Indeed, there are many stories about crocodiles in association with the powerful witch doctors of Tanzania.

  A “Gentle” and “Timid” Crocodile

  But all of those stories are about African or Nile crocodiles, who behave much like the American alligator. In this chapter, we shall hear about the American crocodile. This is a very different kind of animal—much gentler and more timid, but unfortunately often feared and persecuted by those who mistake it for an alligator. Once you know the difference, though, it is easy to distinguish between the two. First, the crocodile is olive green to gray-brown, mottled with black, whereas the alligator is uniformly black. Second, the crocodile has a much narrower snout, and the fourth tooth on the bottom on each side of its mouth is clearly visible on the outside of the upper jaw. There has never been a documented attack on humans by the crocodile in Florida, although we hear that there have been a few in Mexico and Costa Rica.

  The American crocodile has a large range, including Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, the Caribbean coast from Venezuela to the Yucatán, and the Pacific coast from Peru to Mexico. The northern subspecies found in Florida has been isolated from its relatives for at least sixty thousand years (although recent but unpublished DNA studies show relatively recent mixing with the American crocodiles of Cuba). By the early 1970s, the Florida subspecies, like many other crocodilians around the world, had been driven toward extinction through hunting for its hide and relentless human development that had destroyed huge areas of wild habitat. In 1975, it was classified as endangered: It was estimated that no more than two hundred to four hundred individuals survived.

  In November 2006, I had a wonderful telephone conversation with Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife biologist who has been involved with crocodile research for almost thirty years. In 1977 Frank, then a graduate student, began assisting with fieldwork on the crocodile in Everglades National Park. No one knew much about it except that it appeared to be in dire straits. One of the questions the researchers were trying to answer was: How many of the young crocs were surviving, and what was killing them?

  Frank occasionally saw blue crabs eating a young croc, but thought they had probably scavenged a dead individual. Then one memorable day he saw a reptilian tail thrashing in the water, grabbed it, and pulled out a young crocodile that was firmly in the grips of a blue crab, which had one claw around the middle of its prey and the other around its head. Frank managed to free the youngster, but it was no longer breathing. A short while previously, someone had pinned a silly cartoon from MAD magazine to the wall in the ranger station.

  “It showed a guy giving a lizard mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” said Frank. “The character just closed his lips around the lizard’s neck and blew.” So that is what he did to the crocodile! And after a few seconds it spat up water and, thoroughly revived, was soon ready to go. Surely, Frank is the only person in the world who has given the kiss of life to a crocodile!

  A Love of the Wilderness at Night

  When he was a ch
ild, Frank read all the Tarzan books and other similar stories—just like me. But whereas I fell in love with Tarzan, he wanted to be Tarzan. “Gradually,” he said, “I realized that this would not happen to a five-foot-eight-inch adolescent!” But as a college student, he had the opportunity to help with some crocodile research. Since the animals are nocturnal, it meant being in the wilderness after dark—which he loved. At that time, they kept a few young crocs as part of the research program. “I did raise a couple until they were about six feet long, and got to know them pretty well until they had to be released.” When he talks about them, he cannot keep the enthusiasm out of his voice. “They are the real sweethearts of the crocodilian world. The least defensive, and so the least aggressive. They are shy,” he said. “And they are relatively gentle.” At this point he laughed—we decided the crocodile might not seem so gentle from the vantage point of its prey! (It feeds on crabs, fish, snakes, turtles, birds, and small mammals, rarely anything larger than a raccoon or rabbit.)

  After completing his PhD, Frank conducted a survey of crocodile nests in Florida. First he pulled together all the information he could find, starting from 1930, as to where nests had been recorded. Then he visited each of the sites, and searched—in vain—for signs of crocodiles. Finally, in 1987, he found a nest at Club Key in Florida Bay, Everglades National Park. “The last one recorded there had been in 1953,” he told me. It was nearly twenty years since he discovered that nest, but the excitement in his voice came down the phone line all the way from Florida to my home in Bournemouth!

  Crocodile Mothering

  I was fascinated to learn that female crocodiles (just like chimpanzees!) do not become sexually mature until they are eleven to thirteen years of age and (also like chimps) can live for about sixty years. After mating, which occurs in late winter and early spring, the female crocodile digs a nest hole on high ground such as a beach or streambank, lays twenty to fifty eggs, and carefully covers them with soil. She then leaves the nest, but after about eighty-five days she returns—for this is when the babies are due to hatch, and they will need her help to dig their way out. When she arrives at her nest, she puts her ear to the ground to listen for the chattering sounds the hatchlings make when breaking out of their eggs. Then she uncovers them and carries them to the water in her mouth. On their own, the nine-inch-long youngsters make their way into saltwater estuaries. Frank told me his favorite memories are of this maternal behavior.

  The survival rate of the young crocodiles for the first year ranges from 6 to 50 percent and depends, in part, on the amount of rainfall and natural water flow—they cannot tolerate high salinity. Historically, fresh water flowing through the Everglades lowered the water’s salinity where it emptied into Florida Bay, producing the conditions young crocodiles need. The problem, of course, is that the natural water flow was disrupted long ago. For the past few decades, water has been “managed”—held in catchment areas outside the park for agricultural uses then, when it is no longer needed, suddenly released in large quantities. This has disrupted the slow, relatively constant flow of fresh water through the glades, affecting water levels in the wetlands and the salinity of Florida Bay, wreaking havoc on both flora and fauna.

  How a Power Station Helped Save the American Crocodile

  Despite this, scientists estimate that there are about four times as many crocodiles in Florida today as there were in 1975. The extraordinary thing is that this population growth is in large part due to the operations of a power station! In the 1970s, Florida Power and Light, at Turkey Point, built 168 miles of canals that allow the water coming from the plant to cool before reentering the bay. And this created ideal habitat for crocodiles, which dig their nests in the loose soil between the canals. To its credit, when hatchlings were discovered there in 1978, the company showed great interest and hired a consulting firm to monitor the animals. Since then, the number of nesting crocodiles has steadily increased.

  For information about the crocodile situation at Turkey Point, I turned to Joe Wasilewski, who started working there in 1996 and has been there ever since. Part of his job is to hunt for the crocodiles, following every print and “tail-drag” he sees in the warm, saline-rich canals. Every crocodile he catches is tagged with a microchip.

  “I’ve caught thousands of them,” Joe said during a phone call in spring 2008. “They’re not that aggressive. Once they know they’ve been had, they surrender. Whereas other species of crocs will fight till the bitter end.”

  The population of American crocodiles—excluding hatchlings—within and adjacent to the FPL Turkey Point cooling canal system has been surveyed, using the same methods, since 1985. The results show a dramatic increase. That first year there were just nineteen individuals, ten years later the number was forty, and by 2005 the population had increased to four hundred.

  The crocodile also nests in the southern mainland area of Everglades National Park and in the sixty-six-hundred-acre Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Key Largo established in 1980. Thus 90 percent of its habitat is either in protected areas or on land owned by a very supportive company. And with added protection and growing numbers, the crocodiles have been showing up in populated areas—from inland waterways to golf course ponds. For this reason, as Frank said, it is very important to educate people about the American crocodile’s passive nature, and teach people how to distinguish it from the much more aggressive alligator.

  The Usefulness of Crocodiles

  The crocodiles play an important and interesting role in the ecosystem. “For instance,” said Joe, “we’ve had a horrible problem with invasive species here in Florida—exotic pets, such as green iguanas and pythons, get released into the wild. Fortunately, the crocodiles are an apex species—they eat anything smaller than themselves and so help to keep the invasive species under control!”

  Ironically one of the signs of a healthy crocodile population is that they start preying on their own young. “As the numbers grow, they take on their own population control,” Joe said. “We’re seeing more and more crocodiles eating the hatchlings. Some just get a taste for it.”

  So far, the comeback of the American crocodile can be considered a success story. Its ultimate fate, however, depends—like that of so many other Florida flora and fauna—on the restoration of the Everglades. We have to hope that engineers, working with biologists, will succeed in ensuring a more natural water flow. The passion and persistence of Frank Mazzotti and Joe Wasilewski—and the presence of the crocodile itself—may make all the difference.

  Falconer Tom Cade, who led the massive American efforts to restore the peregrine falcon to its original hunting grounds. (J. Sherwood Chalmers/The Peregrine Fund)

  Peregrine Falcon

  (Falco peregrinus)

  The first time I watched a peregrine falcon streak across the sky, then dive down after some small bird of prey, I experienced a similar tingling of wonder and magic as when I see a shooting star. All bird flight is awesome—no wonder we earthbound humans strove for so long to find ways to fly. No wonder that most of us, at one time or another, dream that we are flying. (Indeed my mother’s dream was once so vivid that she rose and, still half asleep, launched herself from the end of her bed—waking the whole household with her inevitable heavy landing!)

  As a child, I read a story about a little boy and a falcon—I don’t know what species. They loved each other so much that he never had to hood or shackle her. She hunted to get food for both of them when, for some long-forgotten reason, he was hiding in the moors. I have always been ambivalent about falconry—the taming and restriction of birds, symbols of freedom shackled. That is why caged birds, denied their birthright, make me sad, angry. But I am filled with admiration for the role falconers played in the restoration of the glorious peregrine falcon as described in this chapter. Indeed, Tom Cade, the man who initiated and led the effort, is a falconer himself, and he relied heavily on the knowledge and skills of his fellow enthusiasts.

  The peregrine (alon
g with the gyrfalcon) has long been considered the classic bird of the ancient art of falconry. The American naturalist Roger Tory Peterson wrote, “Man emerged from the shadows of antiquity with a Peregrine on his wrist.” Although peregrines were sometimes used simply to hunt for the pot, for the most part falconry has been a sport for nobility. It did not start in North America until the 1900s, and the peregrine quickly became the favorite bird there also.

  Much has been written about this falcon—its beauty, its speed, its deadly stoop as it dives upon its prey from above. However, one book, Return of the Peregrine: A North American Saga of Tenacity and Teamwork, documents its near extinction in America and the incredible story of its rescue and return to the wild. This book, along with personal information from Tom Cade, who led the restoration effort, has been our main source of information for this chapter.

  Peregrines have been observed in almost all parts of the globe save Antarctica. They were always more abundant in Europe than in North America—indeed, during World War II, many peregrine falcons in the south of England were killed for the risk they posed to service carrier pigeons. But after the war, some ornithologists began to suspect that all was not well with Britain’s peregrines. And in 1960, the Bird Trust for Ornithology (BTO) asked the late Derek Ratcliffe (the chief scientist for the British government’s Nature Conservancy Council) to make a survey of nesting peregrine falcons throughout the UK. He found that numbers were indeed in serious decline in the south, reduced in the rest of England and Wales, and only normal in remote areas of Scotland.

  The BTO suggested this was perhaps due to the very toxic organochlorine pesticides that had been introduced to British agriculture after World War II. There had been many reports, dating from the late 1940s, of seed-eating birds dying seemingly as a result of feeding on pesticide-treated fields. Corpses of raptors were also discovered, presumed poisoned from feeding on contaminated prey.