A Fowl Deed? The struggle to secure sound management of the feral cat problem continues.

I have always found Ted Williams to be a very good wildlife writer for Audubon magazine and others who doesn't back away from hard issues or take the easy way around them. I've discussed the subject of feral cats with him in the past and it appears he is getting a raw deal now for stating that they need to be managed to better conserve wildlife. He has been released by Audubon due to the heavy lobbying from special interest groups that put their desires before that of native wildlife. The record shows from scientific studies that free-roaming cats cause great harm to wildlife and must be managed. Read on:

"A writer's call to euthanize feral domestic cats has caused new fur to fly in the ongoing debate over how to handle free-roaming felines.
In a March 14 opinion piece in the Orlando Sentinel (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-03-14/news/os-ed-feral-cats-031413-20130313_1_feral-cats-feral-cat-problem-alley-cat-allies), Ted Williams, then editor-at-large for Audubon Magazine, advocated for trapping and euthanizing feral cats due to their rampant hunting of birds and their reputation for carrying diseases like toxoplasmosis.
The magazine, published by one of the nation's leading bird groups, has since suspended its contract with Williams and removed him as editor-at-large from its masthead.
Over 80 million pet cats reside in U.S. homes and as many as 80 million more free-roaming cats survive outside. (Watch a video about the secret lives of cats.)
A study published earlier this year in Nature Communications estimated that cats kill up to 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 billion to 20.7 billion mammals in the continental U.S. each year.
Tylenol Poisoning Controversial
In a portion of the Sentinel article that has since been removed, Williams said that use of the pain reliever Tylenol as a poison to euthanize feral cats has been prevented by feral-cat advocates. Tylenol is especially toxic to cats, according to the website PetMD.
According to a version of the op-ed posted on the Best Friends blog, run by the Best Friends Animal Society, Williams had originally written: "There are two effective, humane alternatives to the cat hell of TNR"—which stands for trap-neuter-return, a method of feral cat control promoted by feral cat advocates.
"One is Tylenol," Williams continued, according to the blog, " ... a completely selective feral-cat poison. The other is trap and euthanize."
The Tylenol reference sparked wide condemnation from animal-rights groups, including Alley Cat Allies, which bills itself as "cats' leading advocate." The organization pushes for humane methods of caring for feral cats, including trap-neuter-return, in which cats are trapped, neutered, and then returned to the wild so they can't reproduce.
Alley Cat Allies asked its supporters online to urge Audubon to dismiss Williams as editor-at-large.
The cat group said on its website that poisoning "isn't just cruel and irresponsible, but also illegal"—similar to language Williams had used to describe the practice of TNR. (Watch a video from the perspective of a house cat.)
Poisoning cats would violate anti-cruelty laws in all 50 states, Alley Cat Allies president and co-founder Becky Robinson told National Geographic. "Whatever someone's belief, the answer is never cruelty," she said."
"But posting in the comments section of his Sentinel story, someone identifying as Williams said: "If Alley Cat Allies bothered to read, they would note that I did not 'call on the public to kill millions of cats by poisoning them with Tylenol' as they claim in their screed.
"I merely reported the easily verified fact that 'the TNR lobby has blocked its [Tylenol's] registration' as a feral-cat poison," continued the commenter, who decried what he called "the fiction spun by the feral-cat mafia."
But on March 16, Audubon magazine suspended its contract with Williams and removed him as editor-at-large from the masthead pending further review, the Audubon Society said in a Facebook statement.
"Ted Williams is a freelance writer who published a personal opinion piece in the Orlando Sentinel. We regret any misimpression that Mr. Williams was speaking for us in any way: He wasn't," the statement said.
Searching for Feral-Cat Solutions
Even so, Audubon said that it does "fully understand the gravity of the issue of the threats cats present to birds. Cats—particularly feral cats—are a leading cause of bird deaths."
To David Ringer, director of media relations for the Audubon Society, the dust-up shows "that we all need to work together on effective strategies that will address the very serious harm cats inflict on birds and other wildlife and that are also truly humane toward cats," he told National Geographic by email.
"Cats do a great deal of damage to birds and other wildlife, and it needs to be addressed, but Audubon absolutely rejects the idea of individuals harming or poisoning cats."
Instead, the Audubon Society has long urged pet owners to "keep their cats indoors for the safety of both their pets and birds," according to the Facebook statement. The organization also supports the American Bird Conservancy's Cat Indoors campaign. (See Audubon Society's tips on reducing threats from cats.)
According the to American Humane Society, outdoor cats live an average of 3 years while indoor cats typically reach an average age of 15 years.
But Robinson pointed out that promoting indoor cats "doesn't address the cats whose home is [already] the outdoors." And she said that her group's trap-neuter-release model has succeeded in eliminating some feral cat colonies.
"We're a nation of animal lovers," she said.
Tell us: How do you think feral cats should handled?

From National Geographic 3/28/13

A pre-apocalyptic novel focusing on climate change

From Climate Progress 4/8/13 & sounds worth a closer look.

Climate Progress book reviewer John Atcheson has his own book out available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon, A Being Darkly Wise: A Novel Of Survival.
I don't get much time to read fiction these days, but I do follow post-apocalyptic novels, like The Hunger Games and, the ebook sensation, Wool. Atcheson's book, while every bit as compelling a page turner as those, is a somewhat different category, which might be called pre-apocalyptic fiction.
Here's one of the many 5-star reviews on Amazon:
Ingredients: one part diary of a Washington insider, one part introductory science textbook, one part love story, one part wilderness guide, and one part scary-as-hell thriller. Mix well, serve on ice. Enjoy.
I have to admit, I was initially skeptical of this book; climate change, while terrifying, doesn't readily lend itself to the adventure/thriller genre. However, Atcheson is so deft at weaving together the various threads of his story that I was almost halfway through the book before coming up for air. Even now, after a re-reading, I'm simply amazed at the range of emotional levers that Atcheson is able to pull: righteous anger at the do-nothing Washington establishment, sadness over love lost, excitement over new romantic interests, an intense desire to go fly-fishing, and plain-old fear.
Simply put, this is a must-read not only for those interested in climate change. This is a book for anyone who likes a nail-biting, keep-you-up-all-night, hold-your-breath-until-you-turn-blue type of thriller. Count me among those eagerly anticipating the sequel.
"
"Simply put, this is a must-read not only for those interested in climate change. This is a book for anyone who likes a nail-biting, keep-you-up-all-night, hold-your-breath-until-you-turn-blue type of thriller. Count me among those eagerly anticipating the sequel.
I have known Atcheson for 20 years now, since my first weeks at the US Department of Energy in mid-1993. I actually read one of the early drafts of this book back then and was very much impressed at how improved this book is now that he is edited out the uber-wonky parts and streamlined the action. Yes, the author has been working on this book for two decades!
I must say that as much as I enjoyed the post-apocalyptic novels, The Hunger Games and Wool, the former seems to think its young audience simply won't be interested in more than a brief paragraph on how we got in this mess (and Wool seems to rather pointedly rule out global warming as the cause of the ruination).
Atcheson's pre-apocalyptic novel does a very good job of smoothly integrating in the climate science with the page-turning narrative in a non-preachy fashion. In a decade or two at the most — and then perhaps for centuries to come — climate change will be a major element in fiction just as it will become a dominant force in all of our lives. Reading A Being Darkly Wise will put you at the bleeding edge — literally — of this emerging trend."



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Giant snails on advance in Florida

I don't think the tracks that this invasive species leaves will be too hard to spot or follow but it maybe harder to get public roundup events to control it like the recent python ones the media got excited about. At this point the goal should be eradication not control which would be ongoing.

South Florida is battling a growing infestation of the giant African land snail.

Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22155219


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New Species Of Brazilian Porcupine Found, Has Very Cool Rubbery Nose

More wildlife news today. I know the habitat for this newly discovered species is limited which I saw firsthand earlier. 
New Species Of Brazilian Porcupine Found, Has Very Cool Rubbery Nose
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/new-species-brazilian-porcupine-found-has-very-cool-rubbery-nose

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Rare Panda-looking bat found

It appears this bat is unusual enough to be thought of as a new genus. Quite an "unusual" find! Watch for more.

Rare Panda-looking bat found in South Sudan receives new name
Posted Apr 11, 2013 by Igor I. Solar
A team of researchers found a bat with a strong resemblance to a panda. The animal, the fifth recorded capture of the species, was discovered in South Sudan; it is distinct from other species of the same group and has been classified in a new genus.

DeeAnn Reeder
Niumbaha superba, a pied bat found in South Sudan. Live and freshly prepared specimen. Top photos show profile and anterior view, with ventral and dorsal images below. (Dr. DeeAnn Reeder)
Dr. DeeAnn Reeder, mammal specialist and associate professor of biology at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, first saw the animal in the Bengangai Game Reserve in South Sudan. On her return to the United States, Reeder compared it to a similar specimen caught near the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1939, which was classified as Glauconycteris superba. Reeder and her colleagues observed details that were not consistent with the description of bats belonging to the genus Glauconycteris.
"My attention was immediately drawn to the bat's strikingly beautiful and distinct pattern of spots and stripes. It was clearly a very extraordinary animal, one that I had never seen before," said Reeder according to Science20. "I knew the second I saw it that it was the find of a lifetime. After careful analysis, it is clear that it doesn't belong in the genus that it's in right now. Its cranial characters, its wing characters, its size, the ears — literally everything you look at doesn't fit. It's so unique that we need to create a new genus."
The animal is so different, the experts proposed a new genus for this species, of which only five specimens have been collected. The study was published April 5 in the journal ZooKeys under the title "A new genus for a rare African bat vespertilionid: insights from South Sudan." As a result of the investigation, Reeder and her colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution and the Islamic University in Uganda, identified the bat in a new genus called Niumbaha, meaning "rare" or "unusual" in Zande, the language of the Azande people, of north-central Africa.


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‘Upstream Color,’ Worms, a Botanist and Pigs. Sounds Like a Love Story?

I'm going to keep my eye out for this one but have my doubts it will get play here locally. Hopefully it will be picked up later for online viewing because I have to admit I'm curious now...

http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/movies/upstream-color-directed-by-shane-carruth.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130405&_r=1&

Worms, a Botanist and Pigs. Sounds Like a Love Story.

Shane Carruth's "Upstream Color," a deeply sincere, elliptical movie about being and nature, men and women, self and other, worms and pigs, opens with two scenes: Two teenage boys biking around a leafy suburb, and elsewhere, a man harvesting little white worms from orchid root balls. The teenagers slowly tracing circles on the pavement are so attractively framed by the soft, shimmery light and blurred background that they look as if they could have biked out of a Terrence Malick movie. The teenagers join the man, who does nasty things with worms and could be a concerned florist, an experimental entomologist, a budding serial killer or just a run-of-the-mill science-fiction freak.

Given that Mr. Carruth ("Primer") doesn't explain much, this botanist (Thiago Martins) can be all things, all monsters and metaphors, to all viewers. In terms of the story, he also is a worm-wrangler cum kidnapper, referred to only as Thief, who, right out of a David Lynch nightmare, snatches a blonde, Kris (Amy Seimetz), one dark, stormy night and pumps worms down her throat. He never explains his actions, even after he takes Kris back to her house, where a copy of "Walden" waits for someone to enjoy.

Seemingly doped, Kris becomes a hapless puppet for Thief, who murmurs sotto voce instructions ("take a drink") as she writes him checks. By the time he splits, her money is gone and her sheets and body are a mess from her trying to hack out her strange, slithering invaders.

If you're wondering what's going on and why, sit tight, because for all of Mr. Carruth's cosmic reaching and despite the jigsaw montage, "Upstream Color" isn't an arduous head-scratcher if you don't worry about what it means and just go with the trippy flow. (Mr. Carruth helped cut and shoot the movie, and wrote its mood-setting score.) It is, instead, a sometimes seductive, sometimes tiresome mélange of ideas that are by turns obvious, hermetic, touching and sweetly dopey. Much of it involves an emotionally fraught romance that Kris strikes up with Jeff (Mr. Carruth), a relationship that dovetails with a freaky tale of dead pigs, blue orchids, those mind-altering worms and another mystery man, Sampler (Andrew Sensenig), whose mailbox bears the words "Quinoa Valley."

You may laugh, but if that's an intentional joke, Mr. Carruth isn't saying. He's a man of few words and less exposition, and "Upstream Color" doesn't come across as satirical even if it edges close to absurdity. Sampler is similarly taciturn and is mostly seen walking about recording sounds, like the papery rustle of dry leaves and the happy gurgle of streams. He also tends to his swine and conducts a shivery, creepy deworming procedure with Kris and a pig.

At times, he walks among people as undetected as the soulful angels in Wim Wenders's "Wings of Desire." In one scene, he drifts among his adorable herd of little porkers Christ-like, the fingers of one hand trailing through the air as the camera closely follows, a shot and a gesture that strongly evoke Mr. Malick's work.

Mr. Malick's imprint on Mr. Carruth, however deliberate, runs deep. It's evident in Mr. Carruth's emphasis on the natural world; his use of "Walden"; the hushed voices and many images, including some time-lapse photography of a dead pig decaying underwater, which registers as the catastrophic inverse of the time-lapse sequence of a seed sprouting underground in "Days of Heaven." (Mr. Carruth's movie at times feels like days of hell.) Mr. Malick's influence also extends to shots of Kris and Jeff walking, whispering and touching that are not moored in a specific time but could be from the past, present or future. In these Malick Moments, time becomes as circular as the rising and setting of the sun. "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in," Thoreau wrote in "Walden."

Mr. Carruth also expresses this circularity through the editing, skipping through time to create narrative ellipses. He will, for instance, show Kris and Jeff doing one thing and then — as their conversation continues on the audio track — cut to images of them doing something else, someplace else, before looping back to that initial scene. These nominally atemporal lulls feel, much like Kris and Jeff's fights about memory (each accuses the other of stealing his or hers), stirringly rooted in life, and they serve to anchor a movie that, with its natural and unnatural wounds, drifts on allegorical currents.

With its fragmentation and mysteries, "Upstream Color" offers itself up as a puzzle as well as a philosophical toy that you can spin and spin until the cafe closes and kicks you into the night.

Upstream Color

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Shane Carruth; director of photography, Mr. Carruth; edited by David Lowery and Mr. Carruth; music by Mr. Carruth; production design by Thomas Walker; produced by Mr. Carruth, Casey Gooden and Ben LeClair; released by erbp Film. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Amy Seimetz (Kris), Shane Carruth (Jeff), Andrew Sensenig (Sampler), Thiago Martins (Thief), Kathy Carruth (Orchid Mother) and Meredith Burke (Orchid Daughter).

Pity Earth’s Creatures - NYTimes.com

Read on and pity us too.

with many thanks to Edward Hoagland. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/opinion/sunday/pity-earths-creatures.html?pagewanted=1

Pity Earth's Creatures

Edgartown, Mass.

AESOP, the fabulist and slave who, like Scheherazade, may have won his freedom by the magic of his tongue and who supposedly shared the Greek island of Samos with Pythagoras 2,500 years ago, nailed down our fellowship with other beasties of the animal kingdom. Yet we seem to have reached an apogee of separation since then. The problem is, we find ourselves quite ungovernable when operating solo, shredding our habitat, while hugging our dogs and cats as if for consolation and dieting on whole-food calories if we are affluent enough. Google Earth and genome games also lend us a fitful confidence that everything is under control. We have Facebook, GPS apps, cameras on any corner, week-ahead weather forecasts round-the-clock on-screen, repair crews ready to restore "power" if it ever flickers out.

Power to the people is a worldwide revolutionary slogan advancing democracy, but presupposes a more ancient meaning: the prehistoric conquest of every other vertebrate on earth. When I lived on Samos myself in 1965, I heard about perhaps the last wild leopard killed in Europe. It had swum across the strait from Mount Mycale in Turkey, only a mile or so away, presumably a bachelor seeking virgin territory, and when discovered and chased, had taken refuge in a cave, where the Samians promptly walled it in to die of thirst. Wouldn't you have done the same? I suspect that Aesop, however, might have advocated setting it free to garland the 27-mile long island (and thus Europe) for a few more years with a last whiff of the eons preceeding modernity.

Sadistic flicks, sea rise, assassination drones: are we up to playing God? A tectonic shift in civilization has never happened this fast before, and we're still part-chimpanzee with double Ph.D.'s in trial and error. Invent pesticides and see what they do to our organs, sell civilians assault rifles and count the schoolhouse shootings, experiment with longevity and economics, friendship and cellphoning. By our own account we're pigs, yet bearish, owly but mousy, catty and bovine. We beaver at work, hawk merchandise, and ape others by parroting them. We're lemmings, wolfish, snakes in the grass, weasels, bucks, hens, leonine or sharks. We're beaky or tigerish, doe-eyed, raven-haired, foxy, chicken-hearted, slow as a tortoise, meek as a dove, sheepish, dogged, old goats, goosey, sitting ducks or vultures. We butt in, bull ahead, change our stripes or spots, strut like a peacock, weep crocodile tears, ram through or swan about. We're rabbity, calf-eyed, we beat our chests like gorillas, buzz off, or act like a jellyfish.

Aesop would perk his ears, pick up a pen at this thicket of still current figures of speech. But what he, Aristotle, Linnaeus, Darwin, Emerson, Kipling would make of what's going on should give us pause. I don't mean whether they would like e-mail and "the cloud" so much as the price in demolitions paid, the dramatis personae wiped out. Even Isaac Newton, sitting in his apple orchard, might wonder, "what have you done with the birds?" — was it a fair trade? Will Robert Frost be the last great poet to notice that leaves are gold before they're green? And his beloved stars; where are they? Would Newton need to fly to Australia or the Andes to gaze at them as before — and feel the magic of the plane was worth it? So much of creation has gone up in smoke to produce glass skyscrapers flocks fly into, superhighways, on-demand electronics, seven billion people in flabbergasting densities, that it's anybody's guess what these luminaries would say. Would they prefer what used to be called "God's green earth?"

It's a steeplechase, hell-for-leather and exhilarating, for the highest stakes, but not knowing where we're going. Call it progress or metastasizing, what we have done as a race, a species or a civilization is dumbfounding. Every inch of the planet is ours, we claim, and elements of clear improvement are intertwined with cancerous excess: the two-car American dream empowering women's independence but engendering horrendous African droughts. Would Emerson and Aristotle find their hair standing on end, or would they grin so hard their mouth muscles finally wore out? And Darwin's reaction to the tsunami of discoveries succeeding his? A ride on the subway, a month of inquiries, a walk in the park? "Is there any nature left?" he might ask, without concluding if he was pleased. Planes high as the sky, kids with instant gratification from fingering a gizmo, and no gangrene. The seethe dizzies us, also (two billion people were alive when I was born), though we're acculturated to extraordinary amounts of disorientation — the steely shriek of wheels underground, hostile searches at airports, changing lanes in heavy traffic at a mile a minute, sudden bureaucratic notifications — without blowing a fuse. Strokes and heart attacks we postpone by surgery or pharmaceuticals, plus an evolving tolerance for stress.

Yet my patriotism is shifting, from America in its triumphalism toward the wider sphere of everywhere: Africa, India, England and New England. The total entity is entering troubled waters. There are precedents for our imperial decline but not, in written history, for climate alteration on the scale that's looming or for gargantuan extinctions in forest and ocean — our global skin. Simulations have become an addition for us, collaging reality into surrealism and taming it for convenience, entertainment or profit. Simulations are faster, zanier and tailored to our preferences, sentimental or otherwise.

IT'S fantasy, amusing, but as technology closes in upon mimicking God, once again are we up to it? Who shall live, who shall die? We'll save the pandas and the whales that sing prettily, but, like godlings, we're playing with fire and water, tides and industry. The "City Upon a Hill" will have wet feet even if scientists simultaneously, let's say, clone a mammoth to prove their prowess. I'd like to ogle the mammoth but would prefer to hear the bobolinks and wood thrushes singing in the spring as before. We have Dumbo but are losing Jumbo for his ivory (remember the cruel phrase "tickle the ivories," for piano-playing?), and the former needs the latter for good grounding.

Kindle presents a lapful of world thought and literature on tap at a tap, but will the owners pore over it with wholehearted absorption, as book lovers used to do? And when cars drive themselves, will the operators lavish their leisure on the landscape or on a tablet in their hands? We're a species as slippery as mercury, appropriating any space of every shape from the Sahara to the Arctic Circle, so perhaps we can adapt to surreal simulacra transmitted through the ether, too. At least a critical mass of observers has not yet turned pessimistic. Photosynthesis we'll have for growing calories, plus the blessings of rain, and like lichen, be hard to dislodge even in extremis from the rocks of our home, living willy-nilly in reduced bands. A sparer version of civilization may emerge, a throwback to leaner virtues. To kill so vastly as we have (a third of life?) and yet remain unscathed seems unlikely. I do meet younger people who are fervent about reform. Theirs is a preliminary zeal, still suffocating underneath the indifference of older generations.

But love is central to life, now and again overriding selfishness for a spell. Love, mercy, pity are vividly called for with respect to corals, songbirds, sea mammals, lofty trees and other majesties, not to mention endangered pleasures like eating clams and marveling at the starshine in the depthless heavens. Nature is undefended by the powers that be, having no vote or much innate appeal to the sort of "people people" who run for office. They don't saunter (Thoreau's favorite term) and gaze, turn off the motor and open the window when passing a pond to hear the spring peepers sing — won't know if the frogs have all died from toxicities. They'll jog on a treadmill for their heart's health while scanning spreadsheets. It's not just ponds being steamrollered for industry, but gazing itself being lost to Twitter. The attention span involved in formulating a menagerie out of cloud shapes in the sky while lax on one's back in the grass has been eclipsed by what's interesting on-screen 20 inches away, and conscientious parents will troop their youngster to a planetarium, as to the dinosaur hall next door. These stars at least are carbonated, a firmament in whirligig mode, like the animated characters that populate children's programs.

Mason jars and the verb "leapfrog," instructive bedtime stories like "crying wolf" and the goose that laid the golden egg, or the image of Death as a somber figure hefting a scythe — are these all gone? Certainly wolves and scythes are, and the 30th-generation captive-bred lion lying sleepily on cement in a zoo will be no match for the pep and gab of pizazzy graphics designed for a new century. Even if we're fired or a hurricane is predicted, the temptation is simply to switch channels. "Out of the woods" once meant clearing your head, or protesting "in a pig's eye" if you couldn't. "You can lead a horse to water," we'd tell the boss before quitting. Will we still "crow" about small victories, speak of a predatory matron as "a cougar" or somebody scammed as a poor "fish" — still sniff the scent of loam and cedar, dangle our feet in a creekbed (unless we feel "a frog" in our throat) and "eagle eyed," scan the sky for barn swallows and chimney swifts or a glistening meadow for spider webs jeweled by the dew?

Mostly that's over, but Aesopian metaphors were artesian if not prehistoric. The tortoise and the hare, the lion saved by the mouse, the monkey who would be king, the dog in the manger, the dog and his shadow, the country mouse and the city mouse, the wolf in sheep's clothing, the raven and the crow, the heron and the fish, the peacock and the crane. From where will we draw replacement similes and language? Pop culture somersaults "bad" to mean good, "cool" to mean warm, and bustles and bodices segue into tank tops and cargo pants, as in a robust society they should. But will a natural keel remain, as we face multiflex, multiplex change? "Hogging" the spotlight, playing possum, resembling a deer in the headlights, being buffaloed or played like a fish: will the clarity of what is said hold? A "tiger," a "turtle," a "toad." After the oceans have been vacuumed of protein and people are eating farmed tilapia and caked algae, will Aesop's platform of markers remain?

Edward Hoagland is a longtime nature and travel writer, and the author of the forthcoming novel "Children Are Diamonds: An African Apocalypse."

Human Contact Leading to Odd Habits in Jambi Sumatran Tigers

Human Contact Leading to Odd Habits in Jambi Sumatran Tigers
Jakarta Globe | March 16, 2013

Jambi's Sumatran tigers have been behaving strangely following a surge in contact with humans, zoologists say.

Wisnu Whardana, a veterinarian and zoologist from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said increased sightings of the once-elusive creatures suggested a serious loss of their habitat as well as a decline in prey populations.

Wisnu pointed out that tigers normally avoid human settlements and plantations, but recent cases in Jambi, a province in central Sumatra, showed tigers are becoming more accustomed to human habitats.

There has also been a change in their feeding patterns, he said, with cattle found only partially consumed.

"Usually tigers would eat [their prey] to the bone. Now they just eat half a leg and leave," he said.

Wisnu postulated that Sumatran tigers in Jambi had contracted diseases from domesticated animals that led to uncharacteristic eating habits, but added further research was still needed.

Earlier this month a Jambi man sustained serious wounds to his left thigh after being attacked by a Sumatran tiger.

Sutrisno, 45, was tapping for rubber on his plantation.

The attack came just two weeks after two farmers in Jambi's West Tanjung Jabung were attacked by tigers and hospitalized. Last month, a domesticated cow in Batanghari was killed and eaten by tigers.

The Jambi chapter of the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) said the vast majority of Sumatra's tiger population live inside the Kerinci Seblat National Park.

The conservation area contains territory in three provinces — Jambi, West Sumatra and Bengkulu — and was heavily affected by recent floods.

Massive deforestation was also blamed for the increasing number of encounters with the species, of which there are only 30 to 40 in the entire province of Jambi.

BKSDA official and veteran tiger conservationist Bastoni said his office was seeking advice from Wisnu, who is also a consultant to zoos throughout the country, to help catch and relocate the tigers away from human populations.

The BKSDA, he said, has also employed two marksmen to sedate the tigers and help with relocation efforts, as well as locals familiar with the jungle and trained to locate the animals.

"This is what we are trying to do. Conservation of these tigers is not the responsibility of BKSDA alone but the whole society," he said.


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