Posts Tagged ‘Botswana’

May
20

Experiencing Nature Inspires us to Protect it.

Posted by in Africa,Animal Origins & Fun Facts,community-based conservation,Conservation,Endangered Species,Travel

You come to the zoo with family and friends for relaxation and recreation. It is an easy drive, visit at your own pace, see everything or just your favorites. You come to the front gate excited because you are not sure what you will see first. You leave a few hours later with memories and a few new favorite animals. Hopefully, you also leave inspired to want to learn more abotu what is outside our doors – the wildlife of Texas, Africa, Asia and the America’s.

African Elephant, Zimbabwe 2011

It is that simple. Our job here is not only to provide a fun, safe and relaxing environment for your visit, but too also inspire you to want to care about what you have just seen. And if that care turns to action, then we are doing our job.

Bison on the Snake River, Yellowstone 2010

But what if you are interested in stepping outside our doors with us? Then the zoo can take you there as part of our special tour program with specialized guides and zoo staff to make your trip even more memorable. You visit the zoo to see wildlife. In 2011 and 2012 you can also visit them in the wild. Yellowstone, Alaska, Borneo, Rwanda, and Botswana are all zoo tours you can sign up for now. Polar Bears of Churchill, Manitoba and the wildlife of Zimbabwe are 2012 tours which are under development.

You can learn more about these very special trips at http://www.houstonzoo.org/safari/ and you may contact us at conservation@houstonzoo.org for more information.

Puffin, Glacier Bay, Alaska 2011

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May
09

Coming home from Africa, By Peter Riger

Posted by in Africa,Carnivores,Conservation,Endangered Species,Peter's African Adventure '11

The Houston Zoo’s Conservation Director, Peter Riger concludes his African adventure in this blog.  Enjoy previous posts of this series here or scroll down.

The stars may be bright Deep in the Heart of Texas but you have not seen anything like the night sky over the Kalahari. Most of us living in and around Houston see a few stars at night but our light pollution blocks out the majority of them. Next time you find yourself an hour or two outside the greater Houston area you will notice the difference.

The Kalahari night sky is one gigantic light show even without the moon. Millions of stars clustered as far as you can see. The population density of Botswana is typically less than 1.5 people per square kilometer and thus the lack of city lights in the towns we visited have left the stars visible every night.

We will be developing ways to do updates on Facebook, blogs, our website and email’s on both Painted Dog Conservation and Cheetah Conservation Botswana.  Over the next few weeks we will plan for our next visit in late August to begin some of the work we have touched on over the last 2 weeks.  You can drop us an email at conservation@houstonzoo.org if you would like us to keep you in the loop.  Follow our blogs and Facebook page for more information on how you can help support these field programs. We will start uploading trip photos to these sites as well.

It is Saturday May 7th and our 1:30pm flight from Botswana will take us on to Johannesburg, South Africa and then through connecting flights arriving home mid-afternoon on May 8th. A mere 23 hours in the air plus a few minor layovers for plane changes. This is the best time to catch up on all the good and bad movies I’ve missed the past year since as soon as you nod off, the airline staff wake you for a drink of water or a meal looking like something that has been trapped in old Jello since 1974…

By Peter Riger

If you would like to read more about this African adventure click here or scroll down for the previous posts.

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May
06

Conflict between farmers and wildlife in Botswana, By Peter Riger

Posted by in Africa,Carnivores,Conservation,Endangered Species,Peter's African Adventure '11

Farmers in Botswana

The Houston Zoo’s conservation director, Peter Riger is in Africa visiting some of the Zoo’s wildlife conservation partners.  Enjoy this update from the field.

A good portion of May 3rd and 4th have been spent visiting a local farmer managing one plot of land which is 24square miles, Botswana is one of the least populated countries per square mile of space with less than 2 million residents. We also visited a cattle post which is like communal land where multiple families run their cattle, goats and sheep together. We have heard stories of 3 cows lost to brown hyena, 3 cows lost to lions, and losses to leopard, and cheetah all this week. At one farm today the owner was out looking for painted dogs that had presumably chased down a yearling cow across the main road just a few hours earlier. We found the cow on our way out but whether it was painted dogs or not is left to be seen.

With so much loss to personal property, you can see why people would jump to retaliatory killings of predators without looking for alternative solutions to the human-wildlife conflict issue. On the communal lands, Cheetah Conservation Botswana is working with four cattle posts to develop model kraals which are thorn covered corrals basically to protect livestock at night from predators. Once completed, they will. Take this idea out to other livestock owners in the area.

We also showed one family how to hoof trim one of their lame goats. A weak goat in the pasture trails behind and is an easy meal for a predator.

The jackals are yipping around the tents again tonight and the temperatures drop quickly here to the mid 40′s overnight, so time to get settled.  We are off across Botswana to Mokolodi in the morning to CCB’s headquarters and education station.

By Peter Riger

Read previous posts about Peter’s wildlife conservation trip through Africa click here or scroll down.

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May
05

With Cheetah Conservation Botswana, by Peter Riger

Posted by in Africa,Carnivores,Conservation,Endangered Species,Peter's African Adventure '11

The Houston Zoo’s Conservation Director, Peter Riger has traveled to Botswana.  Read about his experience with Cheetah Conservation Botswana. 

May 2nd,

Our first thought once we set out this morning was that there is no way anyone would ever see a Cheetah chase down an Impala at 60mph here. There are no flat open spaces,  everything is thorn-scrub, short acacias and 3-5ft. tall grasses. To hunt here, cheetahs have adapted to stalking their prey. The one thing Cheetahs have going for them here are there are more lions to compete with. Against them is the privately owned land, goat and cattle farms that stretch out and completely covering the landscape.

Cheetah Conservation Botswana is working closely with local farm holders to prevent conflict between wildlife and livestock which includes loss of cattle and goats to predators such as the cheetah. Other predators in the area include Leopards, Brown Hyena,Painted Dogs and Jackal.

Today was a fairly easy day checking camera traps on what they would call marking or scenting trees which the males use to mark their territories. Sounds simple enough except for there are almost no trees over 6-8ft. tall here and Cheetahs prefer the larger trees so they can get up in a lower branch and have a look around before leaving their urine and marks behind. The other issue is the 8 or so taller trees that are being used are all on private lands, accessible with permission of the landholders, and can be hours apart by car.

We managed to check 3 of these trees in 4-5 hours and sure enough there were cheetah photos on each of the camera and fresh cheetah marks and spraying only a few hours old on one tree. Other wildlife caught on camera included warthog, eland, kudu, and even the little seen African Wildcat which is quite small. Each of the cameras are checked once a month and cheetah photos compared to get an idea of how many males are moving through the different areas. 

By, Peter Riger

Come back for more on Peter’s experience in Africa.  If you have missed his previous posts about this trip click here or scroll down.

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Mar
01

A Tail of Two Cats

Posted by in Africa,Animal Origins & Fun Facts,Carnivores,community-based conservation,Conservation,Endangered Species,Featured,Field Research

I do not catch many wildlife documentaries or wildlife shows these days. I know the stories, the figures, the facts. Much of the weekly shows you do happen to catch on cable seems over-sensationalized to draw the public’s attention with little take away messaging.

Somehow I have managed to watch two this past month featuring the worlds most iconic predators. Species we think of as at the top of the food chain. Species which are helpless against illegal poaching, legal trophy hunting, exotic pet trade, habitat loss, and human-wildlife conflict. The Tiger and the Lion are disappearing right in front of you while you watch someone wrestle an alligator in the “name of science” on your television.

The Last Lions will be in theaters here in Houston beginning March 18th at the Edwards Greenway Plaza and if you care about wildlife, you will try and catch it during its short run. The filmmakers immerse you in the Okavanga Delta of Botswana where a mother lion fights for her cubs and her own survival due to a pride pushed into her territory by human encroachment.

Broken Tail: A Tiger’s Last Journey was on our local PBS station last week. A different type of filming than The Last Lions, but it was both a fascinating and relevant glimpse of the Tiger in India. The filmmakers do not know why this one Tiger, “Broken Tail”, left the safety of Ranthambore National Park, but they do tell of his end (not shown so no need to worry about vivid imagery). The story and the images of the filmmakers capturing footage of these tigers is sobering and wonderfully done.

Lions still maintain some large populations but you should reflect on the fact that wild numbers have gone from nearly 500,000 individuals to 20,000 individuals in just 50 years. The US still allows the import of over 500 trophy lions per year to come out of Africa. Even the best management plan cannot sustain these numbers coupled with loss of habitat and lions poisoned or shot in human-wildlife conflicts with native people. Add to this the disappearance of the Tiger, and Lions are now being poached and sent to Asian markets for medicinal purposes.

Tigers: 5 separate and distinct subspecies equal only 3,500 individuals in the wild. The last stronghold of the tiger is in India with maybe 80% of the remaining populations. Sumatran Tigers, Amur Tigers (Russia), Malaysian Tigers, Indochinese Tigers – maybe 500 each and all under poaching pressures.

There is no reason to miss The Last Lions when it is in Houston. National Geographic is using this film as a vehicle to raise funds for Big Cat conservation and many zoos around the country support cat conservation in the field in both Africa and Asia. And check your PBS listings for the next viewing of Broken Tail: A Tiger’s Last Journey. There is always hope to save species which are beginning to slip away, if we work hard enough to protect them and put enough resources in the right places.

Sorry, did I distract you from watching some guy named Bear finding the remains of a seal carcass and fashioning a wetsuit from its blubbery hide? Good thing he happened to be surviving alone somewhere with a cameraman to catch that for us.

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Jan
26

The Last Lions: National Geographic

Posted by in Africa,Conservation,What You Can Do

Coming to a theatre near you? Maybe not just yet as National Geographic is running the premier of The Last Lions in limited theatres with a scheduled date for Houston of March 11th. 

The Last Lions was filmed by Dereck and Beverly Joubert, world-renowned wildlife photographers and cinematographers with narration by Jeremy Irons who  was the voice of “scar” in Disney’s The Lion King.

From the lush wetlands of Botswana’s Okavango Delta comes the suspense-filled tale of a determined lioness ready to try anything—and willing to risk everything—to keep her family alive. In the new wildlife adventure, The Last Lions, filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert follow the epic journey of a lioness named Ma di Tau (“Mother of Lions”) as she battles to protect her cubs against a daunting onslaught of enemies in order to ensure their survival.

From National Geographic’s storyline: The gripping real-life saga of Ma di Tau, her cubs, the buffalo, and the rival pride unfolds inside a stark reality: Lions are vanishing from the wild. In the last 50 years, lion populations have plummeted from 450,000 to as few as 20,000. Dereck and Beverly Joubert weave their dramatic storytelling and breathtaking, up-close footage around a resonating question: Are Ma di Tau and her young to be among the last lions? Or will we as humans, having seen how tough, courageous and poignant their lives in the wild are, be moved to make a difference?

Watch the trailer at: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2425330457/

Can’t catch the film? Then come out to the Houston Zoo and visit our pride of African Lions 364 days a year.

Male Lion Jonathan at the Houston Zoo

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Dec
29

Cheetah Conservation Botswana

Posted by in Africa,amphibians,Carnivores,community-based conservation,Conservation,Endangered Species,Field Research

In November, Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB) completed its livestock guarding dog demonstration area at our base in the Ghanzi farmlands. Kraals, herder accommodation and shelters for the goats and dogs have been built and with the arrival of a small herd of goats the set up is complete. This will act as a demonstration livestock guarding dog (LSGD) project for farmers’ workshops and visitors to the camp. With this initiative, CCB will showcase the predator-friendly farming techniques that we promote in an attempt to minimize livestock losses to predators and in turn mitigate human-predator conflicts.

When farming in a wild landscape like Botswana, which is rich with a diversity of predator species, it is essential to keep your livestock safe.
Certain farm management techniques can reduce the susceptibility of livestock to predators. Such as using LSGD’s along with kraaling livestock at night, reinforcing kraals with thorn bushes, keeping young livestock kraaled, reducing breeding to once or twice a year and synchronizing breeding seasons to those of wildlife.

CCB is excited to have this new demonstration farm and looks forward to teaching this and other predator friendly farming techniques to those in and around the Ghanzi region.

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Nov
10

Rhinos on the Edge

Posted by in Africa,Endangered Species,Rhino

The Rhino is truly a species on the edge. Zoos, conservation organizations, and field researchers have worked together for many years to help fight for their survival. It is difficult to protect a species whose numbers have plummeted so quickly but when you consider the 25,000 rhinos worldwide are split between 5 species, it makes the challenge of recovery all that more daunting.

Estimated population sizes:

White rhino: 17,000
Black rhino: 4,000
Greater One-horned rhino: 2,750
Sumatran Rhino: 200
Javan Rhino: 35-55

Two of the world’s five rhinoceros species are found in Africa, the white rhino and the black rhino.  Both are victims of illegal hunting, which is done for the sole purpose of obtaining their horns.  Rhino horn is used to concoct traditional medicines in Asia and to produce ceremonial dagger handles in certain Middle Eastern countries.  At the beginning of the 20th Century, the white rhino was perhaps the most endangered of the five rhino species, having been reduced to only a handful of animals, but its numbers have rebounded incredibly to a population of nearly 17,000, thanks to successful conservation efforts both in captivity and in the wild, and the species is no longer considered endangered.  The black rhino, by comparison, has been seriously reduced in numbers to only a few thousand individuals in Africa’s.

In response to the critical situation facing Africa’s black rhino, the Houston Zoo has joined with the International Rhino Foundation to support the return of this species to Botswana, a country in which it used to occur, but from which it has been extirpated (wiped out).  The long-term goal is to eventually translocate animals to protected areas , as well as support Rhino Protection Units in Zimbabwe to assist this species.

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Jul
09

Cheetah Conservation Botswana

Posted by in Africa,Carnivores,community-based conservation,Endangered Species,Featured

The Houston Zoo has been  supporting the work of Cheetah Conservation Botswana since 2008, offering funding for operating support and educational programming. Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB) aims to preserve the nation’s cheetah population through scientific research, community outreach and education, working with rural communities to promote coexistence with Botswana’s rich diversity of predator species.  

The project was formed in 2003 to address the threat to the nation’s cheetah population. The major challenge for the project, funded by grant aid and donor support, is one of improving community perceptions towards predators and ensuring that retaliatory killings do not continue to threaten cheetah numbers, while, at the same time, supporting and protecting rural community welfare. Your generous support is already helping us to achieve that.

Only by working together with communities who live side-by-side with predators, with initiatives tailored to meet their needs and priorities, do we hope to foster the attitudes of coexistence that will see cheetahs remain as an essential component in this remarkable ecosystem and as a flagship species for the rich biodiversity of Botswana.  

Over the next few days, we thought we would update you on some exciting news surrounding the release of two orphaned cheetahs. The two cubs named Tlotlo (Respect) and Kgotso (Peace) came to CCB when they were 6 months old. The cubs had been caught by a community in Southern Botswana and whilst efforts were made to locate their mother, they were not successful. So the brothers moved to the CCB Ghanzi camp in March 2009 and have since been raised with minimal human contact, preparing them for eventual release into the wild.

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Jan
09

Cheetah Conservation Botswana

Posted by in Africa

A Safe Corridor for Cheetahs

DSC_0071As human land use expands, suitable and safe habitat for free-roaming cheetahs continues to shrink. Southern Africa remains one of the cheetah’s last strongholds, yet conflict and poaching continue to threaten its future. The Kalahari region in Botswana is key habitat for the cheetah, and is now a priority for conservation.

Cheetah Conservation Botswana (CCB) recognized that collaboration and innovation offered the greatest hope for cheetahs and people to share space. In 2008, CCB became an in-country partner with Conservation International in the Western Kalahari Conservation Corridor Initiative.

This progressive project links the ecologically-diverse and culturally-rich regions of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Kgalagadi Trans-frontier Park in the western regions of Botswana. The goal is to create safe and viable wildlife corridors between the two regions, promoting the sustainable use of natural resources among ranchers and farmers while allowing cheetahs and other wildlife to thrive.

 CCB’s role in this initiative is to reduce predator conflict in the region by working closely with farmers and ranchers to improve livestock management methods and encourage the use of non-lethal methods of predator control. Their preliminary work has included a Predator Conflict survey, a map of the region and “hot spots” for conflict, and an innovative manual to help reduce losses to predators. In their survey, CCB found that 76% of respondents had a negative attitude towards predators, but only 2% stated that they would kill a predator on sight. Their main concern was the threat to their livestock. This concern opens the door for cooperative efforts to improve livestock management and potentially increase the value of predators in this ecosystem.

To address some of the more dynamic issues, such as illegal trade and confiscated or orphaned cheetah cubs, CCB built a base camp in Ghanzi, in the Western Kalahari. It is strategically located along the wildlife corridor, enabling CCB to easily access the core conservation areas for cheetahs in the country. With continued collaboration from all stakeholders, there is hope for the cheetah in Botswana.

The Houston Zoo Wildlife Conservation Program supports Cheetah Conservation Botswana field and community programs. For more on CCB, go to http://www.cheetahbotswana.com/

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