On a recent visit to El Valle de Anton, we took the opportunity to head out to one of the field sites where a frog known as the Harlequin Frog (Atelopus varius) had once existed in large numbers. The chytrid fungus had reached this area a number of years  and a small population was brought into a captive setting at the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center for safeguarding against the threat of extinction.

Approximately 2 hours from El Valle de Anton is El Cope National Park and one of the few sites where this species may still exist. El Cope rises over 3,000 feet above sea level with the park first being created in 1986, acting as a watershed between the Pacific and the Panamanian Caribbean. Home to jaguar, mountain lion, tapir, monkeys and numerous birds, it is the amphibians which once made this place unique. Although a glimpse ofthe areas mammals and birds was always special. It was the nenver ending sound of dozens of amphibian species calling in the late afternoon and early evening hours which brought this cloud forest alive.

A Somber Silence. But now that is all but gone. There were 2-3 species of amphibians seen on this visit but it is a vastly different forest today than it was just 5 years ago. The same fate has taken amphibian species across the Central America corridor from Costa Rica down through Panama and heading upwards from Colombia.

Until the time comes when conservation biologists can determine it is safe to return amphibians to their native habitat, the Houston Zoo and partners will coninue to maintain assurance colonies of amphibians in their native countries, and spend time in the field surveying remaining amphibian populations. If you would like to support our amphibian efforts in Panama, you can follow the link to http://www.houstonzoo.org/amphibians/

Panamanian Golden Frog Atelopus zeteki

Marsupial Frog Hemiphractus fasciatus

Craugastor tabasarae with eggs. El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center

This trip offers premiere wolf and bear viewing opportunities in the country. This program is a must if you are a bear or wolf enthusiast, or are just curious about large predators. Participants travel to the best sites in Yellowstone to view grizzly and black bear behavior as they emerge from months of hibernation, and the interaction of wolves and their prey. You’ll enjoy spying bison and elk calves, the magnificent green-up of North America’s “Little Serengeti,” and famed scenic highlights of the world’s first national park.

There are few places America you can see 4 or 5 different species of hooved animal mingling together, along with top predators, coyotes, foxes, song birds, multiple  species of  birds of prey, and chirping ground squirrels.

Click the highlighted link above or email conservation@houstonzoo.org for more information. This trip is limited to 12 participants and sold out in 2010.

Bear family. Photo USGS

At the zoo we talk about the struggle to preserve wildlife and wildlife habitat. People need to see what is going on in the world, but you need to see the positives as well.

In Rwanda, a team of field veterinarians are tending to the health of Mountain Gorillas. In Zimbabwe, education bush camps are teaching children to protect Painted Dogs.  In Texas, the Houston Zoo and partners are reintroducing Attwater’s Prairie Chickens and Houston Toad back into native habitat. In Botswana, our partners at Cheetah Conservation Botswana are helping to protect the health of the communities’ domestic animals and working side-by-side to ensure the safety of their livestock. At the zoo, we recycle and reduce our landfill waste stream. 

A colleague once said to me Human nature does not program us to be proactive until it is almost too late. Well that is dissapointing. What really matters is for everyone to do something positive, just one thing. What really matters is that one thing can ultimately lead to a larger chain of events.

Find one minute a day to step back and look around – have you ever just stopped to watch the birds or butterflies in your neighborhood?  A recent poll found Houston #3 on the list of most stressful cities. We work too much, do not get outside enough (it’s hot, it’s humid, it’s buggy – I get it). But if you take a moment and find one minute a day to do that one simple positive thing – that is what really matters.

All of Vietnam’s turtles are threatened by hunting and trade to meet the insatiable demand mainly from consumers in China, where turtles are consumed in special dishes or used to make traditional medicine. Evidence suggests that wild populations of most turtle species in Vietnam have declined significantly over the past 15 years leaving fragmented and degraded populations surviving in the wild.

Education for Nature Vietnam’s Wildlife Crime Unit has documented 434 cases involving illegal hunting, smuggling, or trade of tortoises and freshwater turtles since 2005. These figures include 163 smuggling cases accounting for more than an estimated 25 tons of turtles or up to 30,000 individuals.

Given that only a small fraction of trade is believed to be apprehended, this would suggest that the quantity of turtles being smuggled to China is significantly higher.

In March 2010, Cuc Phuong National Park opened the doors to the region’s first visitor interpretation center focused exclusively on the conservation and protection of tortoises and freshwater turtles. Located on the grounds of the park’s Turtle Conservation Center (TCC), the new educational facilities incorporate a range of interpretive displays and exhibits including underwater viewing tanks, a turtle egg incubation and hatchling room, and a mock hunting camp  and forest trail. The Houston Zoo is proud to support the development of this new effort. To read the full press release – click here Turtle Conservation CenterVietnam

Our Houston toad head-start program has seen over 30,000 tadpoles and toads released to their natal ponds this year alone. One of the most critically endangered birds in the United States, the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken, is hatched and reared for release to augment their ever dwindling wild population. Our Education staff conducts field and science based programs for local school children to foster appreciation for this endemic grouse. Outreach programs also focus on the restoration of the black bear to the dense Pineywoods of East Texas, our vanishing coastal prairies, endangered sea turtles and local amphibian declines. In a state that is 97 percent private, we continue to expand collaboration with landowners – both working with them directly and assisting with workshops to teach them to manage their property for endangered wildlife. Other local research and field activities include turtle road mortality and mitigation, sea turtle nest patrols, and assistance with ongoing graduate projects with local universities.

The Houston Zoo’s conservation mission is to make the Houston Zoo a leader in conservation as it relates to the survival of threatened wildlife, the wise use of natural resources, and the appreciation of our natural world by our zoo visitors. We take wildlife conservation in Texas seriously and we would like for all Texans to appreciate the State’s unique habitats and heritage.

Want to hear more about what makes Texas so special? Then join us on November 17th for a very special speaker event featuring Carter Smith, Executive Director, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. 6:30pm-8:00pm in our Brown Education Center. Link here for tickets.

Due to its low cost, Palm Oil has replaced many of the saturated fats and other vegetable oils that at one time were part of many of the processed foods we purchase in the store. Oil Palms produce more oil per hectare of land than any other oil producing crop – clearly it is the cheaper alternative for companies. But many of these companies look away at the removal of both wildlife and forest to produce palm oil products. Although large companies such as Unilever and Nestle’s have suggested they are moving to a sustainable palm oil product, there are still dozens of large companies who are not, and in turn, fuel the trade in palm oil from poorly managed plantations who will kill wildlife and burn forests to clear land for production.

Orangutans are found only on the islands of Sumatra (Indonesia) and Borneo (made up of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei). 85% of the worlds plam oil comes out of Indonesia and Malaysia. The third largest forest nation with 120 million hectares, Indonesia is subsequently the world’s third largest carbon polluter and loses more than 1 million hectares per year due to illegal logging, illicit land clearing and forest fires. About 90 percent of the approximately 40,000 wild orangutans live in Indonesia, between Sumatra and Borneo islands, while the remaining 10 percent can be found in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysia. Both species of orangutans have been place on the red list of The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with The Sumatran species listed as critically endangered. 

Palm oil plantation and habitat loss

Orangutans are potentially disappearing at the rate of up to 2,000 individuals per year due to loss of habitat and hunting pressures. Loss of habitat is specifically due to increasing plam oil plantations as well as pulp and paper concessions.

I was in Walgreens last week and picked up two bags of a similiar product. One had plam oil in the ingredient, the other did not and was the same price or less. The decision was easy, and only added a few seconds to my trip. Is it worth it? Take a look at your food and even health care packaging (Dove, shampoos, etc.) at home. What percentage of the product you now buy contains palm oil?

Palm oil production has been documented as a cause of substantial and often irreversible damage to the natural environment. It’s impacts include deforestation, habitat loss for critically endangered species, and a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Make a statement with your shopping habits, it is the only way left in keeping orangutans off the extinction list.

Voices of the Forest: Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project

The world’s most endangered otter species, known as the hairy-nosed otter (Lutra sumatrana), has been “rediscovered” in Deramakot Forest Reserve in Sabah by a team of German and Malaysian researchers.

“This is great news for Sabah and shows once again how unique and fortunate we are in terms of wildlife and nature.  In addition, these findings also boost the conservation of this endangered otter internationally as historically this otter was distributed throughout large parts of southeast Asia,” said an elated Sabah Wildlife Department Director, Dr Laurentius Ambu.

The last confirmed record of the hairy-nosed otter in Sabah is a museum specimen collected over a hundred years ago.

“Even over the whole island of Borneo, the last record – a road-kill from Brunei – was 1997, over ten years ago. Therefore it was unknown to scientists if this species can be still found on Borneo,” stated Andreas Wilting, the project leader of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW).

In 2008, IZW initiated the Conservation of Carnivores in Sabah (ConCaSa) project with the collaboration of SWD and Sabah Forestry Department (SFD) to study carnivores such as the Sunda clouded leopard, civets and otters in the state.

The ConCaSa project used automated camera traps that were set up in Deramakot and the surrounding forest reserves during the last two years. As the different otter species look very similar the hairy-nosed otter, pictures had to first be verified by a number of experts before they were published recently by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission journal.

In addition to capturing camera trap pictures of the endangered hairy-nosed otter, the study also confirmed the presence of five Bornean cat species, as well as 13 other small carnivores such as the Banded civet and the sun bear.

“These results mean that out of 25 known carnivore species in Borneo, our project, together with a Japanese researcher Hiromitsu Samejima, confirmed 20 in Deramakot. This makes Deramakot outstanding for being extremely rich in its diversity of carnivores,” explained Wilting.

Besides the pictures, ConCaSa also obtained the first video footage ever taken of some species, such as the otter civet (Cynogale bennettii).

Since 1997, Deramakot Forest Reserve has been managed by the SFD as a sustainable logged forest with the coveted Forest Stewardship Council certification.

“These findings show that long-term sustainable forest management is of great importance for the protection of some of this country’s most threatened species and of the unique biodiversity of the forests of Borneo,” shared Datuk Sam Mannan the Director of the SFD.

I will do what I have to do as long as I do not have to do anything until it is necessary for me to do so.

That about sums it up for most of us as we set aside trivial tasks throughout the week, month, year, decade…Pull the weeds – maybe next week. Touch up the paint on the back door- nobody can see it anyway. Insulate the attic – it’s too hot to work up there 9 months out of the year, I’ll wait until it is cold again. What are all these broken cell phones doing in the junk drawer? They are not really in the way, I’ll throw them out later.

I had a friend bring me a bag of 6 phones and chargers last week. They were in a box in his garage for 2 years. 6 phones? There are 2 people in his family! We cannot keep up with the cell phone revolution and our landfills should not have to either. To make matters worse, every phone not recovered and recycled is equal to minerals and resources coming directly out of the African Congo. Everyobe says – “What can we do?”. Here is what you can do and it really makes a difference.

Bring your cell phone to the zoo for recycling and help save wildlfe, and people, in Africa. Civil wars and rebel groups thrive on the illegal trade in the resources which make our phones,  laptops, digital cameras, and video games run. The mineral called tantalum or coltan and it acts as a capacitor in your phone. Armed groups in eastern Congo that control minerals, mines and trading routes generate an estimated $180 million each year by trading four main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold.

And with these groups comes habitat destruction, illegal poaching and bushmeat, as well as the loss of human life due to the civil unrest. Something as simple as a cell phone has created a power struggle over resources. By recycling that resource so that it can be refurbished and re-used, we cut down on the amount of product imported, and hopefully slow down the trade. Contact conservation@houstonzoo.org for more information.

Painted Dogs, also known as African Wild Dogs, are unique to Africa and they are among this continent’s most endangered species. It is estimated that a mere 3,000  – 5,000 remain. The Painted Dog Conservation program in Zimbabwe focuses on community outreach, education and development,  Painted Dog rehabiliation and re-introduction.

Contact conservation@houstonzoo.org for more information on where to purchase.