Existence by Navneet Singh

Picture Courtesy: Navneet Singh

Thanks for your interest in Existence Wildlife magazine ! Existence is published four times a year by the Existence Wildlife Resources Agency. Our readers appreciate the beauty and drama of wildlife but are primarily interested in whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening in Existence. Some are hunters and fishermen; others are campers, hikers, birders and nature enthusiasts. For our contributors, the Existenceangle is all important. Readers will find beauty, adventure, human interest, an occasional shock, some humor and a little crusading. We strive to be interesting and relevant. We want vital, creative writing that holds the readerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention along with dramatic photography and artwork. While agency personnel write many of our articles, there is still room for excellent, timely free-lance pieces, but it is best to query the editor before writing an article since we often have special educational needs. We are always looking for well-written fishing and hunting stories about Existence and stories which emphasize more than just the harvest. We need stories that include outdoor ethics and nature appreciation themes. We receive queries for too many stories and would like to see more articles written from the third person. Articles including fresh material on subjects we have not used recently, and which offer a good variety of photographs, gain our attention first. The magazine is seasonal in content and contributors should keep that in mind. Most stories are scheduled from six months to a year in advance. All work submitted for an issue must be in our office no later than 90 days prior to publication. Submissions are kept on file indefinitely if we feel they have potential for use in future issues. If you want your article returned by a certain date, please tell us in a cover letter submitted with your manuscript.

CONTENTS 3

Why chimpanzees are disappearing and how to save them.

Panda Fun-da

Pelican Puzzle

Friends of the Devil

Where are all the Heroes ?

In Focus - Australia’s ‘Other’ Reef

Picture Courtesy: Navneet Singh

Why Chimps Are Disappearing and How to Save Them Author and conservationist Nancy Merrick first fell under the spell of chimpanzees in the 1970s, when she worked at Jane Goodall’s legendary Gombe Stream Research Center. Charmed by their intelligence and sensitivity, she went on to have a distinguished career at Stanford University founding ChimpSaver.org, an interactive website that helps users contribute to chimp conservation. In 2008, she took her children back to Africa to discover that forests had been destroyed and the number of chimps had shrunk dramatically. Her new book, Among Chimpanzees: Field Notes From The Race To Save Our Endangered Relatives, is both a clarion call for action and a tender evocation of the emotional lives of man’s closest relative. Talking from her home in Ventura, California, she recalls how it was to work with Jane Goodall; explains why intelligent design is wrong about chimps; and why it is crucial for us to protect the Congo Basin for future generations. You took your children to Africa in 2008 and begin your book with that experience. Tell us about Ngamba Island and what happens there. Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary is currently home to 48 orphan chimps rescued by wildlife authorities after they were taken from their mothers to be sold into the pet trade. These are the lucky chimps. There are countless others that aren’t so fortunate. They need a place to survive for the rest of their lives because, for the most part, chimps cannot be put back into the wild having been removed in this way. This wonderful sanctuary is going to provide a home for these chimpanzees for the rest of their lives, which are likely to be anywhere from 35 to 50 years long. It also allows people like my family and me to go there, see chimpanzees up close and personal, and interact with their Ugandan caregivers. It’s a much more personal experience than going to an ecotourism site. I took my family there to ensure they’d get to see chimps and learn about them before we went back to Gombe where I had worked previously and where we were less sure of how many chimps we’d actually get to see.

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ANYONE WHO SEES A GROUP OF CHIMPS AND SEES THEIR INTELLIGENCE, THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH ONE ANOTHER, CANNOT HELP BUT SEE HOW MUCH THEY HAVE IN COMMON WITH US.

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You describe a marvelous experience of walking the chimps in the morning on Ngamba Island. Tell us about that.

They used to offer what was called the Forest Walk. It has recently been dropped because it became apparent that it was having deleterious effects on the chimps. But it was an amazing experience to spend an hour in the forest with a small group of young chimps, sitting down periodically to play or to groom with them. We were always prohibited from even thinking about doing those kinds of things at Gombe. [Laughs] So it was fun for once to break the rules and feel what it is like to be part of a grooming session or to play with a chimp.

You did your fieldwork with Jane Goodall in the 70s. What is it about chimpanzees that drew you to your research? Chimpanzees are so like us in so many ways. We share more than 98 percent of our genetic material with them, so it’s really not a surprise that we so often see our behavior reflected in theirs. They are so intelligent. They feel many complex emotions exactly as we do. When you look at them, their expressions are so much like ours. They are fascinating creatures. I have thought that since the first National Geographic special I saw in high school featuring Jane [Goodall] and the chimpanzees. I hadn’t imagined there were creatures as intelligent as they are until that moment. Give us the skinny on what it was like to work under Jane Goodall. It was like a fairy tale to be going out and studying chimps, walking 15 feet behind them for as many hours as you could keep up. On the other hand, there was a certain schizophrenia about it because you were also experiencing Africa, the poverty and myriad issues that affect the human population there.

We all thought we had made some important discovery that had never been heard of before. She would laugh and very gently try to let us know, well, no, she had seen that a number of times and she could always remember who had first observed that particular behavior and how many times it had since been recounted! She reaches out to all of her students and even to people who write letters. She’s incredible that way. You returned to Africa in 2008 to discover huge changes had taken place in the lives of chimps. Give us a snapshot of that shift. In 1972, there were millions of chimpanzees living in forests full of fruit trees, their staple diet, well away from human presence. By 2008, the chimp population had dropped to somewhere between 150,000 to 300,000 chimps. Things had changed dramatically. That was evident when we got on the water taxi heading toward Gombe Stream National Park. The hills were denuded of vegetation. Where once there had been small fishing camps along the edges of the park, villages had sprung up that were home to hundreds of people. The air was filled with smoke. I’ll never forget it because it reminded me of a forest fire I witnessed in California—the smell in the air from the ash. You write that relationships among chimps are important and that they stay with their mothers until they reach sexual maturity, around 10 to 12 years old. Tell us about how chimps relate to and even adopt each other. Chimps have big hearts and very tight family bonds. I was studying mother and infant chimps so I got a good sense of this. When a mother was lost, or passed away, it was not uncommon that a sister would become the adoptive mother to any children that she had left behind. My first ‘follow’ at Gombe was of a very famous chimp Jane described, named Flint. His mother, Flo, had died two weeks previously. Flint was about eight or nine years old, the equivalent of a young teenager in human life. He was devastated by her passing. He would lie in the stream bed where she had collapsed a couple of weeks previously and went for days without

eating or moving from that site. It was striking to see a chimp dying of grief at the passing of his mother. It was my first experience of how complex the emotional lives of chimpanzees are. In the past decade there has been an upswing in a theory called intelligent design that basically rejects Darwin’s Origin of Species. Talk to us about human perception of chimps and how that theory might endanger chimps and apes. [Laughs] It’s hard to answer this one because it’s so hard for me to imagine people could believe otherwise. Anyone who sees a group of chimps and sees their intelligence, their relationships with one another, cannot help but see how much they have in common with us. Whatever your opinion is of evolution or intelligent design, it doesn’t matter. Experience a chimp. You don’t have to believe they’re our genetic relatives to realize that these are important beings on the planet that are worth saving. Chimps and gorillas are both critically endangered species. What are the biggest environmental challenges facing them and how can they be saved? There are so many challenges. It’s essential that the Congo Basin forests are protected because that’s where the last reservoirs of chimps and gorillas reside. The biggest challenge is unchecked population growth. We’re a planet of about seven billion. By 2050 we will have added about two billion more, many of them to the continent of Africa, which is probably the continent least able to accommodate such an increase.

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THERE ARE SO MANY CHALLENGES. IT’S ESSENTIAL THAT THE CONGO BASIN FORESTS ARE PROTECTED BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE THE LAST RESERVOIRS OF CHIMPS AND GORILLAS RESIDE. 6

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WE NEED TO CREATE A GROUNDSWELL OF INTEREST IN SAVING BIODIVERSITY IF WE’RE GOING TO SAVE MAN’S CLOSEST RELATIVES.

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We’re already seeing that where chimps and gorillas live near human habitats their forests are being rapidly converted to agriculture. Dr. Matt McLennan, of Oxford Brookes University has been studying a group of chimps in Uganda. Over a period of about 10 years he saw nearly complete conversion of forests to agriculture. And a group of chimps that numbered about 30 to 35 in 2008 had been reduced to only 20 individuals. Add to that the risk from bush meat, the illegal pet trade and illegal timber activity. We have a lot of work to do to ensure that we protect these forests adequately. You say that even cell phones are contributing to their endangerment, but we certainly aren’t going to give up our cell phones. What can our readers do to help our nearest relative? The first thing is to learn more about the situation. Chimpanzees are messengers for the broader issues of deforestation in the Congo basin, and the issues of poverty that affect so many Africans. A good way to learn more is to sign up for a free newsfeed like the Great Ape Daily or Like the Facebook page for Chimp Saver Support organizations with great track records protecting chimps, great apes and forests, such as The Jane Goodall Institute or the World Wildlife Fund. We need to create a groundswell of interest in saving biodiversity if we’re going to save man’s closest relatives. We also have to consume a lot less. Cell phones are a great example. Coltan, which is used for the capacitors in our cell phones, has traditionally come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and there has been a lot of illegal militia activity related to the

mining and selling of this product. It’s important that we recycle these devices and that we realize that every time we get a new cell phone it has a very real impact on forests around the planet. One of the most ingenious initiatives in Africa is the Great Apes Film Initiative. Tell us about that. The Great Ape Film Initiative is terrific! They are trying to provide information to Africans who live near these critical forests, so they can better appreciate why it’s important to spare them and care about great apes. They do free screenings and develop some beautiful films, translate them into local languages and show them to local people to educate them about the issues. That’s so important. Every program we have to conserve great apes has to focus on people whose lives are directly impacted every day because they live next to these critical forests. If they want to show a film somewhere where’s no electricity to run the projector, they’ve devised a bicycle that can be used to generate electricity. Pedal-powered cinema! [Laughs] How has working with chimps changed your life? They really touch your heart, and if you get the opportunity to work with them you feel an obligation to try to be a voice for them. They suffer a lot at the hands of human beings, both in captivity and in the wild. Chimps are now extinct in four African countries and severely threatened in ten others. But I don’t think people have any inkling of what fascinating and complex creatures they are. So I feel it’s incumbent on us to educate people so that we have at least a chance of saving them.

For more than 50 years, Jane Goodall has studied and advocated for chimpanzees. This photograph was taken in 1995 when she drew upon her experience and understanding to comfort a chimp in captivity.

Wild Facts #1

Facts about Chimpanzees Much like us Chimpanzees represent our closest living relative, sharing 98% of our genetic DNA.

Complex social lives Chimps live in vast social communities, consisting of up to about 50 individuals and comprising of several family groups.

How they get around They get around by by swinging through trees and by walking on all fours (knuckle-walking), but they can also walk upright on two feet if they want to.

Varied diet While chimps consume a wide variety of foods, including the fruits and leaves of hundreds of plants, they overwhelmingly prefer the fruit of fig or Ficus trees. Though they also eat meat â&#x20AC;&#x201C; their favourite is red colobus monkey â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and invertebrates such as termites, this only makes up an estimated 3 per cent of their diet.

Endangered Chimpanzees are classed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List - numbers are decreasing because of habitat loss and fragmentation, killing for bushmeat and the infant pet trade and disease. 8

PANDA FUN-DA Mysteries of Red Panda

-Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal

“ Every creature was designed to serve a purpose. Learn from animals for they are their to teach you the way of life. There’s a wealth of knowledge that is openly accessible in nature. They’re constantly teaching us things about ourselves and the way of the universe but most people are too blind to watch and listen.” The red panda is dwarfed by the black-and-white giant that shares its name. These pandas typically grow to the size of a house cat, though their big, bushy tails add an additional 18 inches. The pandas use their ringed tails as wraparound blankets in the chilly mountain heights. The red panda shares the giant panda’s rainy, high-altitude forest habitat, but has a wider range. Red pandas live in the mountains of Nepal and northern Myanmar (Burma), as well as in central China. According to the San Diego Zoo, Frédéric Cuvier, a French zoologist, first described the red 11

-Suzy Kassem

panda in 1825, about 48 years before the giant panda was cataloged. He called it the most beautiful animal he had ever seen and named it Ailurus fulgens, meaning fire-colored, or shining, cat. The common name, panda, may be derived from a Nepalese name for these animals, nigalya ponya, which may have meant ‘bamboo footed.’ The giant panda was given its name later because of similarities to the red panda. The strikingly-patterned and charismatic red panda, Ailurus fulgens, is a taxonomically distinct carnivore that is vulnerable to extinction. Red pandas eat only bamboo and have developed many unique

adaptations to survive on diet of such low nutritional quality. The popular zoo species is historically distributed among an important biological hotspot, the Himalayans, where only about 10,000 inidividuals remain. Although the National Zoo and Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute have been at the forefront of red panda breeding, management, and research for three decades, there is still much we have to learn about this species. Our lack of biological knowledge is a major hurdle to long-term survival of red panda populations in captivity and the wild.

Picture Courtesy: Navneet Singh

Wilf facts #2 facts about red pandas • The Red Panda is a small & secretive mammal that is native to the Himalayas - it ranges from the foothills of western Nepal to parts of eastern China. It is estimated that less than 10,000 mature individuals remain in the wild and therefore it comes to no surprise that they are classed as endangered. They are threatened by habitat loss, poaching and inbreeding depression. • They can rotate their ankles to walk down trees. As they spend so much time up trees, it becomes essential for them to come back down, therefore they have adapted themselves to rotate their ankles outwards to give their claws better grip. • The Red Panda is the only species of its kind. Discovered in 1821, 50 years before the Giant Panda, common assumptions are made that they are closely related but in fact, the Giant Panda got its name because of the Red Panda’s similarity in anatomical features.

• Red Pandas are nocturnal. They spend most of their days slumbering in the tree tops using their tails as pillows. They are usually solitary creatures and spend most of their energy foraging for food (bamboo mainly). • The Thumbs up. Both types of Panda have special wrist bones that can be used as a thumb which helps them eat bamboo. • Why are they so special? They are elusive, biologically unique and their existence is so important to our planet’s natural heritage and global biodiversity. • Red pandas aren’t pandas. Despite their name, red pandas aren’t actually closely related to giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), but it wasn’t until the last ten or fifteen years that scientists settled upon just where red pandas fit on the evolutionary tree of life.

PELICAN PUZZLE

Picture Courtesy: Navneet Singh

Wilf facts #3 facts about Pelicans

Pelican is an amazing bird that can be found on all continents except on the Antarctica. There are eight species of pelicans. These birds are usually located in warm regions, near rivers, estuaries and lakes. Pelicans are threatened by water pollution, chemical pollution and major ecological catastrophes such as oil spills. Bycatch is another reason why number of pelicans is decreasing: while diving for fish, pelicans can end up in fishing nets. Brown Pelicans are on the list of endangered species. Interesting Pelican Facts: • Pelicans are one of the largest birds. They can reach between 4 and 6 inches in length, and between 10 and 30 pounds of weight. • Pelican has the largest bill of all birds. It can reach 18 inches in length. Underneath the bill, pelicans have throat pouch that can hold 3 gallons of water. • Pouch is mainly used for feeding, but it can be also used as a cooling “device”. During the warm days, pelican will swing its pouch to cool itself. • Pelican is easily recognized by its large body, short legs with webbed feet and a wingspan of 10 feet. • Pelicans are heavy birds, but thanks to air sacs in their bones - buoyancy is not a problem. They can fly to the height of 10 000 feet using the warm wind currents. • Webbed feet are used for swimming and diving. Pelicans will identify

potential prey from the sky and catch it by accelerating toward it with great accuracy. • Pelicans eat fish mainly. Other than that, they can also eat turtles, crustaceans and tadpoles. Very hungry pelicans will even attack and eat seagulls. • Pelicans often hunt cooperatively. They will splash the surface of the water with their wings to force the fish toward the shallow water where they will scoop it easily with their bills. • Pelicans will take large amount of water together with fish. Before swallowing the fish, pelicans move heads forward to remove excess water. Pelicans can eat 4 pounds of fish per day. • Pelicans are very social birds. They live in large colonies composed of several hundreds of birds. Certain species of pelicans can mate throughout the whole year, while others mate seasonally. • Males use different tactics to attract females during mating season. Some males have colorful feathers while others have ability to change the color of the pouch, neck and bill into bright colors during courtship. • Both males and females are in charge of the building of the nests that are usually located on the trees near the water. Nests are built using the feathers, leaves and sticks.

Solve

Pelican, common name for a large, gregarious aquatic bird of warm regions, allied to the cormorants and gannets. Pelicans are heavy-bodied, long-necked birds with large, flat bills. They are graceful swimmers and fliers, often seen flying in long lines or circling at great heights. Fish are stored in a deep, expansible pouch below the lower mandible; the young feed from the pouch and throat. The white pelican, Pelecanus onocrotalus, of North America ranges from the NW United States to the Gulf and Florida coasts. It is about 5 ft (152.5 cm) long with a wingspread of 8 to 10 ft (244â&#x20AC;&#x201C;300.5 cm). Both sexes have white plumage with black primary wing feathers. The white pelican scoops fish into its pouch as it swims; the smaller brown pelican, 21

P. occidentalis, dives from the air for its prey. The eastern brown pelican of the SE United States and tropical America and the California brown pelican are strictly ocean birds. The spectacled pelican is found in Australia and New Guinea. There are several Old World species. Pelicans are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Pelecaniformes, family Pelecanidae. Pelicans were once thought to be more closely related to cormorants, darters, frigate birds, and gannets and boobies, which were placed in the order Pelecaniformes with them. However, more-recent

genetic analysis suggests that the aforementioned seabirds may be more accurately grouped in their own order (Suliformes). Pelicans segregate well into two separate geographic groups. Populations breeding east of the Rocky Mountains migrate south and east, mostly along river valleys, to winter along the Gulf of Mexico. Populations west of the Rockies migrate over deserts and mountains to the Pacific coast. Migration occurs mainly during daylight in flocks sometimes numbering in the hundreds, often flying in the familiar V-formation and using thermals when available. Fall migration is protracted, with individuals lingering on outherly breeding grounds as late as December in mild winters. Spring arrival on breeding grounds is as early as February in Nevada, March in Utah, and April in Wyoming and Manitoba, usually before lakes but after rivers have thawed, providing some foraging sites even if nest sites are inaccessible. Large numbers of migrating pelicans can be seen in fall at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin; in spring at Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge in Idaho; and in both seasons at Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area in Kansas and Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota.

Friends of the DEVIL Tracking the Wolves

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YOU’RE JUST TALKING ABOUT A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK AND THE HAYSTACK IS ENORMOUS AND THE NEEDLE CONSTANTLY MOVES AROUND

When you’re in wolf country, finding wolf tracks is usually not a difficult task, and if there is a little snow on the ground the job is even easier. Once you have found the tracks, following them can be either easy or difficult depending on these two factors: 1) Ease of Terrain Following a set of tracks over a frozen lake or meadow is simple, so long as time and wind have not erased them from history. But following them through a thick forest with dense underbrush and prickly bushes is no fun at all. There is not much you can do about the difficulty of the terrain, and if the going gets too tough, nobody will blame you for giving up. 2) Age of the Tracks When I’m tracking wolves in Northern Minnesota (my home state), I’m usually doing so in hopes of finding a kill site, or, if fate would smile on me, a den or rendezvous site. (Please note, my intent is only to photograph wolves from a distance.)If the tracks are too old, however, then following them is usually pointless. If they are young and fresh, it might be worth following them for as long as you are able. You never know where they might lead. Here are a few tips to help determine the age of the tracks: • Look for wolf droppings - Wolf poop (let’s call it what it is) is easy to spot because it is made up almost entirely of deer hair. If it is very fresh, it will still be steaming and moist (only once in my life have I seen signs this fresh.) As it gets older it turns from brown to white and becomes dry and dusty. The younger the droppings, the more moist it will be. If it’s not moist and squishy to the touch (use a stick!) then it is older then twelve hours and not worth following.

a few minutes ago in thick snow are quickly erased by wind. To find out how old the tracks truly are, follow them off the lake and into protective cover. You may be surprised by how recently you missed the wolf. • Examine the Ground - If the tracks you have found are in mud or moist ground, then gently prod the earth around them. If the ground has become caked hard and no longer is molded to a foot print, then the tracks are old. If the ground is moist and impressionable then the tracks could be fresh. Better yet, if the tracks are in snow, then examine the snow. How long ago did it fall? Is it old and crunchy or fresh and soft? 3) The Most Difficult Task: Distinguishing Between Wolves and Large Dogs As man continues to move into what was once wild country, and as wolves continue to adapt to human neighbors, a significant challenge presents itself when trying to identify wild wolf tracks. The tracks of a wolf and large domesticated dog are indistinguishable. Even to a trained wolf biologist, the two tracks are impossible to tell apart.The secret to telling the two apart is not in looking at the tracks, but in examining the behavior of the animal that made them. A domesticated dog will move in a wandering cris-crossing path, stopping often to play, sniff, and dig. A wolf, on the other hand, moves deliberately and with purpose. They save playful meandering when they are safe at their den, but when moving across open country, they march most often in single file and only stray from their course to investigate danger or potential food.

• How Sharp is the Imprint? - If the imprint of the wolf ’s paw is still sharp and clear in the ground, then it’s a good chance they are fresh. However, if the tracks are across a frozen lake, they can be deceptive! Tracks made only 28

Wilf facts #3

facts about WOLVES • Wolves are the largest members of the dog family. • The earliest drawings of wolves are in caves in southern Europe and date from 20,000 B.C. • Wolves live and hunt in packs. They are known to roam large distances – as much as 20km in a single day. • Once a wolf has found a mate, they usually stay together for life. • Wolves do not make good guard dogs because they are naturally afraid of the unfamiliar and will hide from visitors rather than bark at them. • A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old. • There are many subspecies of wolf including the Arctic wolf, all of which use a variety of howls to communicate to one another. • They have a highly organised social structure enabling them to enjoy maximum cooperation when hunting, communicating and defending territory. • Wolves feed their young by carrying chewedup food in their stomachs and throwing up, or “regurgitating”, the food for the pups when they come back to the den. • Under certain conditions, wolves can hear as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles on the open tundra. • Wolves were once the most widely distributed land predator the world has ever seen. The only places they didn’t thrive were in the true desert and rainforests. 29

WHERE

ARE ALL THE HEROES ?

Without heroic conservationists many of today’s most beloved species would be extinct: think of pandas, tigers, and elephants. By single-mindly focused on saving a particular species, these conservation champions bring much-needed research, publicity, and, most importantly, targeted actions to keep an imperiled animal from the brink. Through their own exuberance, these heroes also gather others to their cause. But, many of the world’s heroic conservationists are little-known to the broader public. To address this a new book, Wildlife Heroes: 40 Leading Conservationists and the Animals They Are Committed to Saving, strives to introduce the public to some of the world’s most devoted conservationists.

“It tells the story of forty professional wildlife conservationists who have devoted their lives to saving an individual species or addressing a broader threat to wildlife such as climate change or unexplained pollinator declines,” co-author and the North American Regional Director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Jeff Flocken told mongabay.com in a recent interview. “[Co-author Julie Scardina] and I are giving 100% of our profits from the book to the conservationists we feature in it, and I’m happy to say it has been a success: Wildlife Heroes is currently on its’ third printing since it came out in May 2012, and it has won two awards.”

However, the extinction crisis has gone well-beyond the big, charismatic species. Today, the IUCN Red List categorizes over 20,000 species as threatened with extinction, the majority of which do not have a conservation hero. More alarming still, the IUCN Red List has only evaluated about 4 percent of the world’s known species. “Unfortunately, the less charismatic species tend to lack heroes with conservation strategies. It seems like many animals at this point have people studying them, but finding true conservation heroes for the less charismatic species can be tough. For example, I would have loved to have done a chapter on saving paddlefish or freshwater mussels, but we weren’t

able to find a hero that met our criteria. Hopefully newly graduated scientists, economists, lawyers etc will start to spread-out a little more and work on some of the lesser known species that need help,” says Flocken. In recent years, wildlife conservation has attracted great public attention. However, substantial distinctions can be found in the prevailing concepts of wildlife conservation, particularly with the recent notion that emphasizes animal rights. Wildlife welfare and wildlife rights are not synonymous, with welfare more compatible with the reasonable and legal utilization of wildlife. The key to scientific wildlife conservation is the appropriate awareness and appreciation of the relationship between wildlife conservation and utilization and the theoretical basis of holism. Nevertheless, rational biases regarding the public’s understanding of wildlife conservation and the spread of information via social media still exist. As such, expansion of the concept of scientific wildlife conservation requires the application of several measures. Wildlife conservation researchers should be regarded as the most important disseminators of scientificallybased information, with education in schools and universities of growing importance. Furthermore, the media should shoulder the social responsibility for the accurate dissemination of conservation information. Wildlife conservation has two meanings. One is the preservation of both species and species diversity, the other is based on animal welfare, which is primarily aimed at wildlife in captivity. Conservation education is an important component of environmental education, and is aimed at expanding human awareness of conservation biodiversity and at changing environmental attitudes and behaviors to promote conservation through education and practical activities. Wildlife conservation education forms part of conservation education. Since environmental concerns have increased across all society, wildlife conservation has become a significant social issue. However, there are considerable differences in the concepts of wildlife conservation, with several plausible protection ideas currently debated. Some people believe that wildlife conservation should incorporate the protection of all animals, and follow the principles of animal.

Picture Courtesy: Navneet Singh