Hope for Animals and Their World Read online

  And it worked! On September 13, 2001, a male calf, named Andalas (one of the original names for the island of Sumatra), was born at the Cincinnati Zoo. Emi, it ends up, after all these trials and tribulations, is a phenomenal mother. Andalas weighed seventy-two pounds at birth and stood up and walked at fifteen minutes old. He nursed like wild and reached nine hundred pounds by his first birthday. After four years at the Los Angeles Zoo, Andalas was sent to Indonesia, where a small captive population of hairy rhinos is kept on the edge of a preserve.

  The return of Andalas to his native land not only met with international media attention but also brought the story full circle, demonstrating that captive breeding of this critically endangered species is not only possible but looks to be succeeding. The hope is to establish captive breeding populations adjacent to the parks so that the young can be more easily released in the wild to bolster the population.

  Meanwhile, in the past few years Emi and Ipuh have continued to breed successfully. Now that Emi’s a veteran mom, she no longer needs progesterone to carry her fetus to full term. The immediate plan is to breed Andalas with two young females at the sanctuary in Indonesia to increase the genetic diversity in captivity.

  So does breeding a few rhinos save a species? Not by itself. Demonstrating the value of wild animals to the people in an area where they live is the number one way to help protect those species and their habitat. Perhaps the most important outcome of this successful captive breeding program is the increased public awareness and dedication to protecting the wild hairy rhinos—around the world, but especially in Indonesia.

  THANE’S FIELD NOTES

  Gray Wolf

  (Canis lupus)

  The first time I saw wild wolves was in the Lamar Valley in the northern section of Yellowstone National Park. I am willing to say that I believe in miracles solely on the basis of seeing those wolves. Because it is nothing short of a miracle that the gray wolf—once ruthlessly eradicated from the region—has returned to Yellowstone.

  Long feared as a vicious predator, this social creature is actually very important to people. Not only are wolves the ancestors of our beloved dogs, but they are a remarkable symbol for conservation. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the American West, the successful reintroduction of the gray wolf has been both a remarkable comeback and a major controversy. Perhaps the greatest miracle is that ranchers are starting to live together with wolves for the first time since the advent of guns. And even though some ranchers continue to resist the reintroduction, the wolves are back, and by all appearances they are here to stay.

  As a result, the return of the gray wolf to Yellowstone National Park is number one on the official “World’s Top Ten Conservation Programs” list. It took decades of work and educating and arguing and explaining for that crazy combination of Western conservationists, ranchers, federal biologists, and dreamers to succeed.

  In my mind, what makes wolf restoration so significant is that it follows hundreds and hundreds of years of persecution. There are documents from the 1600s offering bounties on gray wolves in a number of colonies, stating the desired eradication of the species from the land. For centuries, Americans worked diligently to kill the wolf. And by the early twentieth century, the job was done. A species that once lived throughout most of the lower forty-eight states was almost entirely gone (a small remnant population was able to survive in Minnesota).

  This almost complete eradication was not due just to the use of leg-hold traps. Or to wanton hunting and bounties. What finally took out the wolves was the widespread use of poison over a huge landscape. What brought them back was a public outcry and backing of efforts to restore the wolf to suitable habitat in the American West.

  Mike Phillips is the executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. Mike ran the gray wolf restoration program in Yellowstone National Park from 1994 to 1997. But a decade before that began, he was involved with the reestablishment of the red wolf to the American Southeast, which Jane speaks to in these pages. Mike told me that during his many restoration projects, he learned a great deal about communicating with, and especially listening to, the concerns of local people.

  “You have to make sure that local folks know exactly what you’re up to because they will ask you, ‘No, you want to do what?!’ And ranchers throughout the West will often say to me, ‘It’s not so much that we’re against the gray wolf. We can live with the wolves. But what we do not want is a further erosion of our way of life. We don’t want further federal intervention into what we do. We don’t want further state intervention into what we do.’ They see this as just another indication of how the West they once knew is changing.”

  Of course, the effort isn’t to restore wolves to private ranches, but on federal land in Yellowstone National Park, where national surveys had shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted again to see wolves thrive. What heartens Mike Phillips is “the continued bipartisan support of the Endangered Species Act for more than thirty years. The law is much argued over and debated, but the American people steadily tell their representatives that they do not want and will not accept extinction on their watch in their country.”

  Mike was there at the cages on that March morning in 1995 when the first wolves in sixty-nine years were allowed to run free in Yellowstone. What made the project so complicated was that wolf restoration wasn’t just a sociopolitical challenge, or an administrative one with all the logistics, but also a biological challenge.

  “We knew from other wolf relocations that if we simply released the gray wolves in Yellowstone, they would take off,” Mike told me. “But the purpose of this program was to restore wolves to Yellowstone, so we needed to release them in a way that they would have a strong tendency to stay in the region. So we had to arrange an acclimation program that would allow the wolves to remain in captivity for an extended period of time at the release site. Well, that meant that they had to be fed and watered.”

  Water was the easy part of course. “For heaven’s sake, in wintertime they can simply eat snow,” Mike told me. “But imagine the amount of food we had to provide. We needed to feed five pounds of food per wolf per day. And if you have twenty wolves to be released, that’s a hundred pounds a day and seven hundred pounds a week and three thousand pounds per month. It starts to add up.”

  Mike has been surprised by the success of the wolf restoration. “On any measurement you would like to observe, the program has been a success. The population has grown faster than expected. And particularly surprising is that many of the packs have remained observable. It is rather routine today for visitors to see wolves in the wild in the Northern Range of Yellowstone Park.”

  And as for what the future of wolves looks like, Mike reveals that at his core, he is a biologist: “The other thing you have to be mindful of is that gray wolves are great ecological generalists. They don’t need much of an opportunity to flourish. They largely need to be left alone and they need access to prey items that are typically bigger than themselves. You give wolves a big landscape with something to eat, they’re going to do just fine.”

  Basically, he is unconcerned about the wolf’s future in Yellowstone and nearly unconcerned about the wolf’s future in the northern Rocky Mountains generally. As a result of Mike Phillips’s work and that of hundreds of others involved with the gray wolf restoration program, today you can see wild wolves again in the West, just as Lewis and Clark did two centuries ago.

  PART 3

  Never Giving Up

  Introduction

  So far our stories have been about species rescued from the very brink of extinction and reintroduced to nature, although very few of them are surviving with absolutely no human management. And with the prospect of continued human population growth, habitat loss, pollution, poaching, climate change, and so on, we must remain vigilant in our effort to protect them and their habitats.

  Those grouped in this section have a future that is even l
ess secure. They have been saved from toppling into the abyss of extinction but, for various reasons, they have not yet been reestablished in the wild.

  In its vast desert habitat of Mongolia and China, the wild Bactrian camel is threatened by hunters—and also by lack of water, as so much of the snowmelt in the surrounding mountains is diverted for agriculture—and will, presumably, be diminished further by global warming. Its future will depend on continuing talks with the Chinese and Mongolian governments and the political will to find an area where the wild Bactrian camel will be safe and its needs met. The future of the Iberian lynx in the wild depends on the extent to which the authorities are prepared to protect areas of natural habitat from human encroachment—and to some extent on the lynx’s ability to learn how to cross roads safely!

  Some must be retrained during captive breeding to adapt to the reality of their habitat. The giant pandas that are bred in captivity must be raised in such a way that they can survive and find more suitable food in their natural habitat than has been the case so far. And the effort to teach the northern bald ibis a new migratory route is still in the pilot phase—though this is very encouraging.

  I have met many of those who are involved in the efforts to ensure a safer future for these species in the wild—some of them have been involved for many years. Fortunately for the animals—and for future generations—none of them will ever give up, no matter the challenges they face.

  A further point to be made: These stories are representative of countless other rescue efforts that deserve to be publicized, some of which—such as the Chinese alligator—will appear on our Web site. One of the problems I have faced, during the writing of this book, is just how many admirable efforts are being made to save endangered species, all over the world. Just today, for example, I read about the beautiful little ladybird spider that lives close to my home in the UK. Its numbers were once down to about fifty individuals, but thanks to captive breeding there are now a thousand. I hope, on our Web site, we can honor many more of these ongoing projects, and the scientists and citizens who are helping to maintain and restore the biodiversity of our planet.

  We do not know what the future holds for life on earth, whether our combined efforts can turn things in favor of animals and their world. What is important is that we never give up trying.

  Iberian Lynx

  (Lynx pardinus)

  I first read about the Iberian lynx in the Iberian Air magazine Ronda Iberia in June 2006, when I was on my way from Spain to the UK. Endemic to the Iberian Peninsula, this lynx, I read, is one of the world’s most endangered felines. The article introduced Miguel Angel Simon, a biologist who was heading up a lynx recovery plan. Immediately I wanted to meet with him.

  And a year later, when I was in Barcelona, it happened: Miguel Angel flew in from his field station to talk with me. I found him sitting at a table in a peaceful area of my small hotel with Ferran Guallar, executive director of JGI-Spain, who offered to translate for us. Miguel Angel, a wiry man with a short military mustache, looked business-like and competent, and was clearly passionate about his work with the lynx.

  It was 2001 when Miguel and his team began the first thorough census of the lynx population throughout Andalusia. They set up photo traps and searched for signs of lynx presence such as feces. The results showed that the species was in serious trouble. Not only were the lynx affected by habitat loss, hunting, and being caught in traps set for other animals, but rabbits, their main prey species, had been almost eliminated by an epidemic. Indeed, in some places they had disappeared entirely from this land the Phoenicians called Hispania, meaning “land of the rabbits.” Undoubtedly, Miguel said, many lynx had died from starvation. His census showed that there were only between one and two hundred lynx remaining in two areas in southern Spain; during the previous twenty years, they had become extinct in central Spain and Portugal. Clearly desperate measures would have to be taken if these beautiful animals were not to become extinct.

  Astrid Vargas and her staff work around the clock to save Spain’s treasured Iberian lynx. Shown here with a young male, Espliego, abandoned by his mother, Aliaga. (Jose M. Pérez de Ayala)

  Winning Friends for the Lynx

  An application to the EU for funding resulted in one of its biggest-ever grants for work with an endangered species—twenty-six million euros for the period from 2006 to 2011. The lynx restoration program was established with eleven partners: four conservation groups, four government ministries, and three hunting organizations. Because most of the surviving lynx were on private land in the rural boroughs of Andujar in Jaen, Cardena in Cordoba, and Doñana in Huelva, it was clearly of utmost importance to strive for the full cooperation of the landowners.

  At first, this was not easy. A lynx will prey on fawns, and many farmers had concerns about lynx also killing their lambs—which they sometimes do. And so, from the start, Miguel and his team investigated every report of lamb killing and gave compensation to farmers—even if it turned out that the killer had been a wolf. A scheme was launched whereby awards were given to landowners who had good conservation records.

  Gradually the landowners’ attitude changed. More and more of them, whether they owned fifteen thousand acres, or fifty acres, or simply a summer villa with a garden, signed agreements with the lynx recovery team. First—they would protect the lynx on their land. Second—they would no longer shoot rabbits, but rather leave them for the lynx. Third—they would permit those working on the lynx recovery plan to use their land for controlled reintroductions (of lynx and rabbits) and monitoring. Indeed, it has become something of a status symbol to claim that you have lynx on your land—after all, in some places the lynx is actually a totem animal. Thus the lynx is now protected, through ninety-eight separate agreements, throughout an area of some 540 square miles.

  Of course, Miguel told me, recovery is agonizingly slow. A female has cubs only every other year, and normally she will not raise more than two young at a time. Nevertheless, in 2005 at one of the main research sites, some twenty females gave birth to about forty cubs in the spring. And by autumn approximately thirty young lynx had survived. But this is the time, Miguel told me, when the trouble starts, as the young adults leave to find new territories. The males leave when they are a year old. The females may hang around for another season. Whatever their age, many simply vanish when they go off on their own. But according to Miguel, they have now started using radio collars for GPS satellite tracking; it is finally possible to find out where the animals go.

  I asked Miguel if he had a good story to share and he told one that proves, he says, that the conservation program is working. In 1997, in one area, there were only seven adult lynx (identified from photo traps)—two females and five males—and just one cub. Nobody thought the tiny group had a chance of surviving, especially because disease was spreading among the rabbits. Nevertheless, the son of the ranger in charge was asked to name the cub. The little boy, without hesitation, chose the name Pikachu. And, to everyone’s amazed delight, Pikachu—along with all seven adults—survived. Today there are forty-five lynx in the area. “And,” said Miguel, “Pikachu is king.”

  A Visit with the Lynx

  Written into the recovery program was the decision to establish a captive breeding program. A team of scientists, who work closely with Miguel and his team, carefully determine which lynx, from which areas, should be taken into captivity in order to ensure genetic diversity. The rules are strict: Only if three cubs from one female survive to six months of age can one of them be captured. The cubs are sent to one of the two breeding centers.

  Miguel works closely with Astrid Vargas—who heads up the El Acebuche Centre in Doñana—and he introduced me to her by phone. A year later I was landing in Seville, with my sister Judy, for the drive to the breeding center. Astrid herself was unable to meet us at the airport because there had been a tragedy during the night. She had been woken by the volunteers who monitor the breeding females and cubs via TV monitors. They to
ld her that there had been a serious fight between cubs—the sixth within the past month. This time it was Esperanza’s youngsters. By the time Astrid arrived, the female cub had received a lethal bite to her throat.

  I learned that it was the second death caused by cub fighting since the start of the breeding program. Thus it was a somewhat subdued team that greeted us when we arrived: Astrid, Antonio Rivas (Toñe), Juana Bergara (the head keeper), and some dedicated volunteers. It was not surprising that they were upset—they showed me the footage of the aggression later, and it was shocking in its sudden onset and its ferocity.

  Astrid told me that she could never forget the first time sibling murder took place at the breeding center. The mother was Saliega, known as Sali, and she was the first female ever to give birth in captivity. She was an excellent mother, and her three cubs were all doing well—until, when they were about six weeks old, a play bout between the largest cub, Brezo, and one of his sisters suddenly turned deadly serious and they began to fight fiercely. Sali seemed perplexed and tried to break it up, holding one or the other of the pair with her jaws, shaking them. But Brezo would not let go, and in the end, badly wounded himself, he killed his sister with a bite to her throat.

  “We suddenly went from a happy family to an awful crisis situation with a dead cub, an injured one, and a completely stressed-out mother who would repeatedly take the third cub in her jaws and pace all over the enclosure,” said Astrid.