Hope for Animals and Their World Read online

  Over the years, conferences to discuss panda conservation have been held in Berlin (1984), Tokyo (1986), Hangzhou, China (1988), and Washington, DC (1991). In 2000, the San Diego Zoological Society brought together scientists from China, Europe, and North America to discuss current understanding of the giant panda. Known as Panda 2000, this conference created new collaborations and new friendships and provided a great deal of new information, which is presented in a major volume, Giant Panda: Biology and Conservation. In his foreword, Don Lindburg wrote: “Perhaps the clearest consensus drawn from this event was that the panda’s day is now.”

  And George Schaller, so pessimistic when he left China in the 1980s, wrote in his introduction to the book: “The prospects for saving the giant panda are today unequaled.”

  THE BIRTH OF A PANDA: A SYMBOL OF NEW COOPERATION

  A few months ago, I met up with my friend Donald Lindburg in California to discuss his years of involvement with the panda breeding programs in Wolong and San Diego. He told me of the birth he had witnessed, and I asked him to send me an account. It was in San Diego in 1999, the first birth since those at the National Zoological Park in the late 1980s.

  Bai Yun’s pregnancy had been going well. “A veterinarian had recently confirmed the presence of a fetus in Bai Yun’s womb via ultrasound,” wrote Don, “and her hormone profile led to predictions of a birth within days. Now, the twenty-four-hour watch has begun, and as a video monitor portrays mother in her birth den, the staff waits in hushed silence. There was plenty of evidence to indicate that at this crucial moment in time, something could go wrong, very wrong, giving [rise] to mixed emotions of hope and anxiety.

  “Early in the day, the first signs of labor were evident. As the pace of Bai Yun’s straining increased, suddenly there was a scratchy-sounding wail, a sound never before heard by the eager watchers. Immediately, two staff members who were on rotation from the Wolong Centre in China—and who had witnessed previous births—gave the thumbs-up sign.

  “All eyes were glued to the video screen when first-time mother Bai Yun bent over and retrieved her seconds-old cub from the floor of the den. She placed it on her expansive ventrum and began to lick it vigorously. Soon, there was a new kind of sound from the cub—a sound we would later call a contentment vocalization—as it dozed off for its first post-partum nap.

  “The air was electric with excitement. Everyone in the room wanted to shout and clap, but showed great restraint out of fear that the mother in the nearby den might be disturbed. In the days immediately following, Good Morning America and the Today show, as well as local media, would check in for the latest word on this rare event. By diplomatic message, sent secretly from China to its Consulate in Los Angeles, at one hundred days of age this new baby would be named Hua Mei, meaning ‘China–USA.’

  “The symbolism was clear. A single birth will not save the species—but now a new direction in its conservation had been noted.”

  The pygmy hog population was once down to only a few survivors dwelling in Manas National Park in India. Many dedicated individuals helped to restore this unique and highly intelligent animal through captive breeding. (Goutam Narayan)

  Pygmy Hog

  (Porcula salvania)

  I’ve always loved the pig family. The first animal I “habituated” was a saddleback named (by me) Grunter. He was in a field with about ten others. I took him my apple core after lunch every day during a summer holiday and eventually he let me scratch his back. What a triumph!

  One of my treasured memories from my years in Gombe was the time when a sounder of bushpigs came upon me as I sat very still in the forest. They could not make me out, stared and sniffed the air, came closer—until I was surrounded. One gave a snorting alarm call and they ran off a few yards, but returned to stare in silence. Finally they moved on, rustling through the leaves eating fallen mbula fruits. I’ve spent time, also, watching another member of the porcine family: warthogs on the Serengeti plains, grazing on their bent knees, running with tails straight up, competing with each other for the best dens in which to sleep for the night. And I’ve glimpsed wild boar while driving at night in Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

  When I first saw pygmy hogs—a pair in Zoo Zürich—I could scarcely believe my eyes. A pig, measuring at the most one foot in height, and weighing a maximum of twenty pounds! I was sure I was looking at two juveniles—yet they were perfect little adults, dark brown with coarse hair, short stubby legs, and a minute tail. There was a slight crest on the forehead and nape of neck, and a tapering snout. I could just see the canines peeking from the mouth of the male.

  The man who first described these diminutive beings in 1847, B. H. (Brian Houghton) Hodgson, must have been very amazed. He reckoned they were a different species, and although other scientists later declared the pygmy hog to be a relative of the wild boar, Hodgson was eventually proved right. Recent genetic investigations indicate that pygmy hogs belong to a unique genus, with no close relatives.

  They live in tall dense grassland where they eat an omnivorous diet of roots, tubers, various invertebrates, eggs, and so on, feeding during the day unless it is very hot. They make quite elaborate nests, often digging a trough with snout and hooves, piling up soil around the edges, lining it with grass they bend down on each side, and bringing more in their mouths to make a roof. A couple of females and their young may share one nest, while the adult males, who are usually solitary, make their own. Their main predators are the python and dhole (also known as the Asiatic wild dog). And, of course, humans. (For those who like trivia, let me reveal that the pygmy hog is sole host to the pygmy hog sucking louse [Haematopinus oliveri], a louse that is classified as critically endangered and named after William Oliver, the chairperson of the IUCN Pigs, Peccaries and Hippos Specialist Group.)

  I had no idea, when I saw that pair in Zürich, that pygmy hogs were so endangered. At one time they ranged from Bhutan to Northern India and Nepal. But their numbers have been declining in the wild throughout the past century due to a combination of factors: expansion of human population in the Brahmaputra flood plain region, overgrazing, commercial forestry and flood control programs, taking of grass for thatching, and, especially, burning. As a result, by the late 1950s it was believed that pygmy hogs had become extinct, and they were so listed in 1961.

  Ten years later J. Tessier-Yandell, a tea planter from Assam, visited Gerald Durrell at his zoo in Jersey, England, and asked if there was any special animal in Assam that he was interested in. Laughing, Durrell said, “Yes, get me a pygmy hog.” And he did! He found four that were being sold in a tea garden market! They had been captured hiding in a plantation when a small forest patch nearby was burned. It was hoped they would breed, but there were no professionals there to advise and nothing came of it, although several more wild hogs were acquired. Clearly the pygmy hog was not extinct and Durrell, delighted, made plans for a captive breeding program and acquired funding for field research.

  William Oliver, at that time scientific officer for the Gerald Durrell Jersey Zoo, organized extensive field surveys in the mid-1970s, and concluded that the only remaining small groups of the pygmy hog were in Assam, in the plains to the south of the Himalayas. There were no more than a thousand individuals, and habitat destruction was continuing.

  It was in 1977 that the two pygmy hogs that I met were sent to the zoo in Zürich. At first all went well: The sow farrowed and delivered healthy piglets. But then she died in an “accident.” The piglets remained healthy, but the only female among them was, unfortunately, left with her father and brothers. She was only one year old when she became pregnant (far too young) and she died in childbirth. That hope for captive breeding was thus ended. The only other pygmy hogs sent to Europe had gone to London Zoo in 1898 where both members of the pair had died without raising young.

  In 1996, with a grant from the EU, the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (then the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust) got permission to start a captive breeding pr
ogram in Guwahati (the capital of Assam), and six pygmy hogs were captured from the last surviving population of the species in Manas National Park.

  Early in 2008, on the advice of Gerald Durrell’s wife, Lee, I called Goutam Narayan, who heads up the program. The voice that traveled to me from India was warm, and he was generous with his time. He explained that, with help from Parag Deka, the excellent veterinarian on staff who has been with them from the start, the breeding program was going well. “We followed established breeding guidelines—and common sense,” he said. Usually four or five young are born once a year. They weigh barely five or six ounces at birth, grayish pink at first, then develop faint yellow stripes by the second week. They live up to eight years in the wild but can reach ten years in captivity.

  I asked Goutam if he could share any stories from his long years with the project. He told me about a local forest guard in Manas who had rescued a young hog that he had found, half frozen and almost dead, floating down a river on a cold day in October 2002. Veterinarian Parag Deka rushed to Manas and tried his best to revive the hoglet. As its condition deteriorated, it was brought to the breeding center in Guwahati where, against all odds, the little male pig miraculously recovered. He has proved a valuable addition to the breeding program, bringing new genes from the wild, and he has sired several litters during the last six years.

  “From the six original individuals,” Goutam told me, “we now have about eighty individuals, divided between two centers.” He said that the hogs were ready for release into the wild, “but the problem is the continuing exploitation of the environment.” I could hear the frustration in his voice. The pygmy hog, he explained, is “a good indicator species”—very sensitive to disturbances in composition of the herbs and other plants in the grass. And then he went on to emphasize that “they must have grass for their nests.” They hide in their nests and get protection from the heat and cold. “They must have grass all the year round,” he reported, “all of them.”

  Meanwhile the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, alongside the Pygmy Hog Conservation Program, had been working under the guidance of William Oliver and in partnership with the Assam Forest Department, to draw up plans for the long-term management of the species, and to find a suitable site for release. And in the spring of 2008, just four months after I spoke with Goutam, three groups of pygmy hogs, sixteen individuals in all (seven males and nine females), were taken to a facility near Nameri National Park with the goal of creating a second population of the species in the wild. There, with minimal human contact, they lived for five months in pre-release enclosures designed to replicate natural grassland habitat, getting ready for life in the wild.

  At last the day came when they were moved to their final destination, the Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary, 110 miles northeast of Guwahati. After two weeks in prepared enclosures the doors were opened and they were free to leave. Their movements have been followed by direct observation at bait stations and examination of droppings and nests. Goutam told me in a recent e-mail that most of them are doing well and one of the females has even farrowed in the wild.

  A major education outreach program has been initiated in the villages in the area, as it is certain that, without the cooperation of the local people, these little pigs will have no chance of surviving in the wild. At the time of writing, two other potential release sites have been found in Assam, in the Nameri and Orang National Parks. On one of my trips to India I am determined to accept Goutam’s invitation to go and meet these enchanting little pygmy hogs and the dedicated people who are working so hard to save them.

  Northern Bald Ibis or Waldrapp

  (Geronticus eremita)

  In February 2008, I met Rubio, one of thirty-two northern bald ibis or “waldrapp” that live at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Grunau, Austria. These birds are about twenty-eight inches in length with the long curved bill that characterizes all ibis. They have a distinctive fringe of plumage around the nape of their necks, but their heads are bare with no facial or crown feathers except during the juvenile stage. I had hoped to sit on the grass while they flew freely around us, as they normally do, but unfortunately all were temporarily confined because the rate of predation had been unusually high.

  I went into the huge flight aviary with one of the keepers and Dr. Fritz Johannes, who is in charge of the project. Seen close up, they were beautiful, for we were lucky with the weather: The cold winter sun brought out the glorious iridescent sheen on their almost black plumage, and shone on their long pink bills and pink legs. The juveniles, whose feathers are bronze, had not yet lost their feathered caps.

  At first the birds preferred to take mealworms from their keeper and from Fritz, but then Rubio decided I was okay, too, and transferred from Fritz’s shoulder to mine. Having consumed an inordinate number of mealworms, he began the serious business of grooming me. What really amazed me was how warm his beak felt, and how delicately and gently he used it as he preened my hair. He also made attempts to probe into my ears and nostrils—I must admit I was not too thrilled about that!

  Eventually he was persuaded to return to his keeper—but not before he marked me with white liquid down the back of my jacket. This, of course, is a sign of good luck, so I tried to feel grateful!

  I had the huge good fortune of visiting Rubio, one of the hand-reared northern bald ibis in Austria, who are being taught to migrate south for the winter by following ultralights. (Markus Unsöld)

  I was there, with the team from JGI-Austria, to learn about the attempt to teach the waldrapp to migrate from Austria to the south of Italy. In the flight aviary next to Rubio’s were the birds that would take part in the spring migration over the Alps.

  Extinction in Europe

  This ibis once ranged in arid mountainous regions from Southern Europe to northwestern Africa and the Middle East. Today, however, it is an extremely rare species, extinct throughout nearly all of its range as a result of pesticide use, habitat loss, and hunting for its tasty flesh. The last waldrapp disappeared from Europe in the seventeenth century. In the 1980s, after all the individuals from the last remaining wild colony in Turkey had been captured for captive breeding, it was thought that the species was extinct in the Middle East.

  Between 1950 and the end of the 1980s, the last migratory colonies in the Moroccan mountains vanished. Fortunately, however, birds from that colony had been captured during the 1960s for exhibition in European zoos, and they became the founder individuals for an international zoo breeding program. I saw descendants of those original captives in Innsbruck, where they have been bred for forty years.

  By 2000, it was believed that only one colony of about eighty-five breeding pairs of (nonmigratory) bald ibis remained in the wild, in the Souss Massa National Park in Morocco. But then, to ornithologists’ surprise and delight, a tiny group was located in the Syrian desert. There were only seven birds, but there were three nests, and they were raising young—seven fledged in 2003.

  A Human-Led Migration

  The (usually) free-flying breeding colony that I visited in Austria was established in 1997. Waldrapp can survive well in the Austrian Alps during the summer, feeding on insects and other invertebrates, but they cannot endure the winter months in the wild. To create a self-sustaining population, then, it would be necessary that they learn to migrate—as in the past—to warmer climes. And so a feasibility study (based on the pioneering work with Canada geese and whooping cranes described in the last section) was planned to find out whether the bald ibis could also learn to follow ultralight planes—or trikes, as they’re called—on a migration route over the Alps to Tuscany in Italy.

  Unlike the whooping cranes—which, as we have seen, are raised by caretakers wearing strange white gowns to prevent them from imprinting on humans, these ibis are hand-reared and bonded closely with their caretakers. They are exposed to the sound of the trikes, and the foster parent—Fritz’s wife, Angelika—wears the helmet she will don when flying the plane.

  During
training, the birds initially flew too far away from the trike, despite Angelika’s constant calling. But their performance gradually improved, and the first successful migration started out on August 17, 2004, with nine waldrapp following two trikes. Just over two months later, on September 22, the trikes arrived, along with seven of the waldrapp, at the chosen wintering ground, Laguna di Orbetello, a WWF nature reserve in southern Tuscany. (The other two waldrapp failed to make the journey on their own and were brought along in boxes.)

  The following year, using a different trike (with old-fashioned wings and more powerful engine), the same route was followed and, with fewer stopovers, took only twenty-two days, from August 18 to September 8. Because this trike could fly at a lower speed, the birds were able to follow more closely so that the whole operation went more smoothly.

  During the winter of 2004–2005, following their arrival in Tuscany, the young birds stayed close to the night roost, seldom venturing much more than half a mile. However, when summer came they began to go on longer flights—up to twelve miles—before returning. And some were seen along the migration route, heading for Austria. After some weeks they returned to Tuscany, but it seemed that the instinct to migrate was still present, and Johannes, Angelika, and the rest of the team were much encouraged.

  In spring 2006, all the birds who had followed trikes from Austria to Tuscany in 2004 went on long flights while those from a second successful migration in 2005 remained in the wintering area. Thus it seems that as they get older, they are more likely to leave for the breeding grounds in Austria at the time of the spring migration, and that this is genetically programmed.