The Long Journey
DNA samples show that a mountain lion from a population native to the Black Hills of South Dakota walked 1,800 miles across farms, prairies, and forests, skirting the Great Lakes and Chicago, only to be hit by a car on June 11 on a road in Milford, Connecticut, fifty miles from New York City. Scientists quoted in a BBC report believe it may be “the longest-ever recorded journey of a land mammal.”
The big cat’s movements drive home, once again, our top predators’ need for big wilderness and large-scale protection.
Photo: BBC
Trouble Ahead for Tiny Cat
Breaking news highlights the threat to Southeast Asian wetlands: A mysterious, little-known species, the Flat-Headed Cat, Today’s Endangered All-Star, is even more threatened that previously believed because few forested wetlands in the region are currently protected. The BBC reports that a new study published in PLoS ONE has found that only ten to twenty percent of the cat’s range is adequately protected; seventy percent of its habitat has been plowed under for agriculture; and only 17 images of the elusive species have been captured on remote camera traps.
The species—scarcely bigger than a domestic cat—is exquisitely tuned by evolution to hunt in coastal and wetland areas. Its partially webbed feet ensure steady footing in muddy swamps and streams; backward slanting teeth enable the animal to hold onto the fish, frogs, and crustaceans that make up its diet. Believed to be extinct in 1985, this reclusive cat has been found in very small, fragmented populations in Borneo, Sumatra, the Malaysian Peninsula, and a tiny pocket of southern Thailand. This latest research shows it surrounded by palm oil plantations, commercial gold mining, and industrial logging.
Clearly, these cats—and the wetlands and coasts of Southeast Asia—need urgent attention to prevent them from slipping away forever.
Photo: © Gerald Cubitt / www.nhpa.co.uk
There Ought to be a Horror Movie…
…about Today’s Endangered All-Star, Rajah Brooke’s Pitcher Plant. Described in 1859 by Joseph Dalton Hooker, one of the great botanists of the 19th century and a close friend of Charles Darwin, the species was named after James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak. Found on the island of Borneo, this enormous pitcher plant grows only on high slopes of 13,435-foot Mount Kinabalu and neighboring Mount Tambuyukon, in Kinabalu National Park in Malaysia. The plant is found only on so-called “serpentine” soils, high in heavy metals (nickel, chromium) and lacking in essential nutrients like nitrogen. Such soils generally are too toxic for plant life, so this pitcher plant clearly evolved to fill a very special niche indeed.
One of the most fascinating of the carnivorous plants, Nepenthes rajah, a vining plant like many of these species, develops enormous, lidded pitcher-like traps that fill with water and digestive fluid, attracting insects, lizards, and possibly even mice and birds. They fall in, drown, and are slowly digested. Evidence suggests that these plants may have evolved in tandem with other species, a mutually-beneficial relationship known as “mutualism.” New research has just revealed that Nepenthes rajah may have evolved its large pitchers in just such a relationship with tree shrews: The pitchers perfectly accommodate the shrews, which feed on the plant’s nectar, leaving feces behind; the plant then absorbs the shrews’ leavings. For more on this extraordinary discovery, see the BBC’s “Giant meat-eating plants prefer to eat tree shrew poo.”
Check out the wonderful gallery of photographs of Nepenthes species at Mongabay, or visit a great collection of pitcher plants in person at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers at Golden Gate Park. National Geographic also features carnivorous plants in its April, 2010 issue.
Clouded Leopard on the Menu
According to the Smithsonian, today’s Endangered All-Star, the Clouded Leopard, has been seen on restaurant menus catering to the wealthy in China and Thailand. Skins are for sale in markets throughout southeast Asia, and teeth and bones are used in traditional Chinese medicine, a replacement for tiger parts as that species grows ever more scarce. But with its population of 10,000 already in decline, this cat can hardly afford to feed Asia’s so-called “Big Bucks” businessmen.
In addition to poaching, rapid deforestation—exceeding ten percent over the past decade—endangers this forest-dependent species. Thought to provide a unique link between small and large felines, the clouded leopard has the largest canine teeth proportionately of any cat, prompting comparison to extinct sabre-toothed cats. Recently, motion-sensitive cameras captured evidence of seven species of cat, including Clouded Leopard, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Ravi Chellam, representing the Wildlife Conservation Society, told the BBC: “The entire forest here should be protected as a single conservation landscape, free of disturbance and connected by wildlife corridors.” But with a Maoist insurgency active in a number of India’s tiger reserves, adding to poaching pressure, this seems unlikely to happen.
Meanwhile, the Clouded Leopard Project, organized by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ Clouded Leopard Species Survival Plan, supports research and better management throughout the species’ range: Learn how to adopt a Clouded Leopard here.
Photo: © Andy Rouse / www.nhpa.co.uk for ARKive
Panamanian Golden Frog:
Wrapping up our first month of Endangered Species All-Stars on iWild is the Panamanian Golden Frog, which is, in fact, a toad. Last filmed in the wild for BBC’s 2008 Life in Cold Blood series, this extraordinary poison toad—endemic to Panama—secretes a water-soluble neurotoxin known as zetekitoxin. It may be extinct in the wild; individuals have been collected in an effort to breed them for reintroduction. As it stands, however, deforestation and water pollution—which spread the deadly fungal infection chytridiomycosis—drove the population to a steep decline of over 80% in only a decade. The IUCN attributes much of that decline to the 2003 construction of a road along a ridge of the Cordillera Central, just one example of the pernicious effects that roads can have on endangered species, opening the way for people and pathogens.
It seems extraordinary that we should still be debating whether nature is a luxury or a necessity. But we are. In a recent BBC Green Room editorial, “Wildlife: A Luxury We Can Live Without?” Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN Species Programme, turns the familiar argument on its head when he asserts that, “Those who… think human ingenuity will solve all our problems, should be asked to demonstrate that they can live without nature.” A brilliant notion: Put the responsibility for proving that nature is expendable squarely on the shoulders of those who want to dispense with it.
Photograph of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii, by Caroline Fraser
