Jaguars Habitat Fragmented and Shrinking

 Jaguar Fragmented HabitatAt dusk one evening, deep in a Costa Rican forest, a young male jaguar rises from his sleep, stretches, and silently but determinedly leaves forever the place where he was born.

There's shelter here, and plenty of brocket deer, peccaries, and agoutis for food. He has sensed, too, the presence of females with which he might mate. But there's also a mature male jaguar that claims the forest-and the females. The older cat will tolerate no rivals. The breeze-blown scent of the young male's mother, so comforting to him when he was a cub, no longer binds him to his home. So he goes.

But the wanderer has chosen the wrong direction. In just a few miles he reaches the edge of the forest; beyond lies a coffee plantation. Pushed by instinct and necessity, he keeps moving, staying in the trees along fences and streams. Soon, though, shelter consists only of scattered patches of shrubs and a few trees, where he can find nothing to eat. He's now in a land of cattle ranches, and one night his hunger and the smell of a newborn calf overcome his reluctance to cross open areas. Creeping close before a final rush, he instantly kills the calf with one snap of his powerful jaws.

Orangutan on the Brink

BANGKOK, Thailand - Orangutan numbers have declined sharply on the only two islands where they still live in the wild and they could become the first great ape species to go extinct if urgent action isn't taken, a new study says.

The declines in Indonesia and Malaysia since 2004 are mostly because of illegal logging and the expansion of palm oil plantations, Serge Wich, a scientist at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa, said on Saturday.

The survey found the orangutan population on Indonesia's Sumatra island dropped almost 14 percent since 2004, Wich said. It also concluded that the populations on Borneo island, which is shared by Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, have fallen by 10 percent. Researchers only surveyed areas of Borneo that are in Indonesia and Malaysia.

In their study, Wich and his 15 colleagues said the declines in Borneo were occurring at an "alarming rate" but that they were most concerned about Sumatra, where the numbers show the population is in "rapid decline."

"Unless extraordinary efforts are made soon, it could become the first great ape species to go extinct," researchers wrote.

Reclaiming Belize

Mention Belize and most people conjure green thoughts – images of thick rainforest canopies, lush and filled with unexpected living treasures. And well they should. The Belize Rainforest provides habitat for 877 known species of animals including jaguars, ocelots, armadillos, tapirs, howler monkeys, kinkajous, manatees and crocodiles. Toucans, scarlet macaws, and huge jabiru storks, as well as 500 other species of birds soar through the vine-trailed jungle, and over 4,000 species of flowers, including 250 kinds of orchids, bejewel the trees and forest floor.

Saving The Belize Jaguar

Deforestation in Belize

Cowboys have come to Belize. So have the loggers and plantation owners. Like so many other ill-considered wealth schemes that have shaped our global climate and financial crises, land speculators in Belize completely disregard the long-term impact of their greed. The loggers, mostly from China, Japan and Indonesia clear-cut thousands of acres of rainforest and reap enormous profits by shipping exotic tropical lumber to the global market.

Plantation owners and cattle ranchers have not fared so well. American and European land speculators, already intoxicated by the American real estate bubble, came to Belize to buy cheap land upon which to build lucrative citrus, cocoa and banana plantations and money making cattle ranches. Evidently, “due diligence” did not occur to them. Otherwise they would have known that Belize’s lush rainforest canopy disguises rotting vegetation and a thin layer of soil that is poor and devoid of nutrients. Once the trees are burned or bulldozed, all that’s left is a lifeless tract of dirt that quickly erodes. The grass that does manage to grow is sparse, wiry and incapable of sustaining the cattle trucked in to eat it. So the ranchers, desperate to salvage their operations, rip out more rainforest in a futile attempt to provide enough food for their cows. When that fails, land speculators either offer their land at bargain basement prices or file bankruptcy and abandon them altogether.