Rare Leopard

A Rare Persian Leopard was found in central Afghanistan. The leopard was a top predator and we thought had disappeared from it's region. The findings show that rangelands can still surpport other species. Wildlife scientists are thrilled to discover the leopard has return amoung other animals they have found. The Wildlife Society is doing their best to make sure these animals are not being hunted, recently Afghanistan passed a law prohibitting hunting of snow leopards. The images did show though men walking around with guns, even when they are not surppose to.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45574494/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Counting Cats: The endangered snow leopards of the Himalayas

In this article they talk about the endangered snow leopard. Most of the snow leopards live in high mountainous areas of central Asia. Originally they assumed that there was about 350-500 snow leopards left. After scientists did testing on their tracks, scrapes, and droppings they are starting to believe there is a lot less. Scientists recorded
seventy one samples of droppings or scat and after performing genetic analysison each sample they discovered that only nineteen were identified as snow leopard. Ten of which were successfully genotyped. This was the first team to
use genetics with the conservation of snow leopards.

Scientists rediscover rarest US bumblebee

In this article you will read about how scientists from the University of California, Riverside have recently stumbled across the rarest bumblebee species in the white mountains of New Mexico. The "Cockerell's Bumblebee" was last seen in 1956. This is pretty exciting being that there are only about 50 native species of native bumblee and most are on the verge of extinction. Using advanced tools and studies they will find out if they are in environmental danger of being extinct as well.

Gulf Oil Effect Bird Eggs

In Daily Science, it described Texas Tech University's experiment and research taken place regarding the effect that the weathered oil would have on unhatched eggs.

In their experiment, only 39 percent of the eggs hatched while the other 61 percent died. The weathered oil had a better outcome than the non-weathered oil. The birds whose mating seasons were interrupted due to the Gulf Spill were definitely negatively affected, but there's a chance some eggs, hopefully at least 39 percent will hatch in the wild.

There is still a chance that the covered eggs that survive may obtain developmental problems. Hopefully, the bird population will survive throughout the years.

The Species On The Brink

TheChinese alligator or Alligator is one of two known living speciese of Alligator, a genus in the family Alligatoridae. The Chinese alligator is native only to China. It is smaller thatn the other alligator species, the American alligator, growing to an average of 1.5m. While it originally tanged through much of China, this species' wild habitat has been reduced to little more than a few ponds containing a small number of animals( fewer than 200 individuals, onkly approcimately 50n of which are mature) along the lower Yangtze River in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui. In the past decate, very few wild nests have been found, and even fewer produced viable offspring.

"In the past few centuries, the number of Uangtze alligator has dropped dramatically", explained Xie Yan, a quiet and unassuming woman who is the current director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's China office. Tasha Eichenseher, the writter of the article which posted upon National Geographic Daily New, said she was not prepared for was to learn that the species is perilously near ectinction. She wanted to identify the root causes for the species disappearance first, and she was told that the disappearance began over fifty years ago. "The main reason was the reclamation of lakes during the 1950s and 1960s. Farmers considered alligators as vermin, which ate their fish and opther aquatic animals. With the increase of population and the area of farmland, the alligators' habitat became smaller. People did not like to have dangerous species around, so the number of alligators drooped dramatically in 1950s and 1960s." During the 1970s and 1980s, numbers continued to drop as the Chinese alligators' habitats shrank even further. The decline reached its peak at the end of the 1990s when, in 1998, the biggest habit for Yangtze crocodile was one small pond surrounded by farmland. there were only 11 crocodiles in the pond. This rapid decline in the 1980s and 1990s spurred the government into action and along with the ARCAR, a mass breeding program was launched.

Even though some parks were used to protected the alligators, and the 'wild enclosure' replicated the alligators' natural habitat. As the amount of wetlands across China continues to decrease, the question remains. Maybe it ever be possible to reintroduce so many alligators into the wild when their natural habitats have been all but destroyed. "Wetlands paly a very important role in preserving biodiversity... the will-preserved wetland will be the home of the Yangtze alligator in the future."

For the time being, it appears the captive bred population fo Chinese alligators is safe. The same cannot be said, however, for the wild population. So to protect the real home of them -- wetland, is the most important things. The slow process of reintroduction means the future of the wild Chinese alligator is still well and truly in the balance.

http://http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/

http://http://www.threatenedwaters.com/#/map

US removes gray wolf from endangered list

The US has removed gray wolves off of the endangered list. The US government is removing 1,300 wolves off of the endangered list in the Rocky mountain regions. They are also looking to remove wolves off of the endangered list in the western Great Lakes region because they believe they have recovered to a healthy population.

Hunting of these animals will resume in Idaho, Montanta, parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington. They will still be protected in Wyoming as the state still needs a management plan on their population of the wolves.

This has been a legal battle since 2008 since the Fish and Wildlife service took steps to remove the wolves off of the endangered list. An annex was added to the disputed budget bill last month, removing the wolves from federal protection. This makes it the first time Congress has been involved in the removing of an animal from the endangered species list.

I can't say that I like this article, but its sort of sad. We worked so hard to re grow the almost non existent population of the gray wolf and now we want to go back to hunting it. I obviously understand we have to in order to keep the population under control. They are extremely beautiful creatures though.

article:http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-gray-wolf-endangered.html