One of the world’s most beautiful cats (my favorite is still Pallas’s Cat) is the clouded leopard Neofelis nebulosa, a denizen of southeast Asian forests—and highly endangered. Habitat loss and poaching have reduced the cat’s population to around 10,000, and that’s not many.
That’s why people are excited about the birth of a clouded leopard cub in Tampa, Florida’s Lowry Park Zoo—that and the fact that the cub is adorable, what with its little squeaks and all. Here is the two-week-old cub, which is simply overwhelming the Internet, especially Facebook (even I’ve posted it):
And here is video from 2011 of a one-month-old cub in the Nashv9lle zoo:
But although some places, like the Tampa Bay Times, aver that this birth is a good sign for the species’ survival, what does that survival mean if the animals are kept in zoos—jails for endangered species? Even the zoo is overly optimistic; as the Times notes:
“This birth signifies a milestone accomplishment in our conservation programs at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo,” said Dr. Larry Killmar, vice president of animal science and conservation. “Species survival programs for animals like clouded leopards take years of planning, development and staff commitment. This kitten will contribute to the long term viability of our conservation efforts within the managed population, as well as range countries.”
I’m not sure what that last sentence means, but I translate it roughly like this, “Since we can now breed this cat in captivity, it gives us hope that we can have them to see behind bars for years to come, and of course we can always hope that they can be reintroduced.”
Yeah, right—not with poachers around and habitat loss rampant in their range. We simply have too many damn people.
Here is what we’ll lose, except for those in animal jails:
Why was the cub taken away from its mother? According to this news story, it will be hand reared.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/03/18/baby-leopard-lowry-park-zoo/24964571/
That’s a good question.
Gorgeous!! I wonderhow much relief the coat has?
And sub
Breathtakingly beautiful creature. I hate what poachers and people are doing to them and their habitat. 🙁
Alas, this is true.
And we are to expect billions more in the future.
Really, is the world a better place for having ten billion humans rather than a mere billion? Wouldn’t it be nicer to spread all the world’s wealth over a mere half or third or even tenth of a billion? Wouldn’t that be more than enough people to go around?
The one thing we could do to ease all the world’s problems that would be more effective than any other…
…would be to provide free, no questions asked birth control of any form to anybody and everybody anywhere and everywhere.
Free condom dispensers on every street corner. All prescription-free family planning available in every drugstore without cost. All clinics and hospitals that provide any form of reproductive health services (including pap smears and prostate exams) are required to provide any form of prescription birth control for free, provided there are no medical contraindications — and, of course, have a bowl of condoms next to the bowl of candy at the reception desk. All surgical centers are required to provide for free all surgical forms of birth control on demand with minimal waiting periods. And, of course, free abortions on demand to anybody at any time.
No parental consent for any of that for minors. Indeed, no questions asked of anybody for anything other than simple health reasons.
And, of course, this needs to be global, not just in the developed world.
I know. Never gonna happen.
But it’s the one thing that really would solve all our problems, in a timely manner.
b&
Yes and as batty as some of the things Jane Goodall has said, she makes a very good point about humans. She said if you were able to ask the other animals about which animal the world could do without, who do you think they’d pick? Humans of course.
I’d like to think that Baihu would spare at least one human…but the clouded leopards would certainly be wise to vote us off the planet.
b&
They’re trying to do this in the Philippines because they recognize they have too many people. (It’s also one of the regions where habitat loss is a huge problem.) Free birth control, free tubal ligations etc. And guess who’s trying to stop them? The effing Catholic Church of course. The program was succeeding. It’s my belief that’s a big reason the pope went there not long ago and spoke out against contraception – to counter what the government in trying to do. Not sure if it’s had any affect on the success or otherwise of the birth control program.
The Catholic Church is, without question, the greatest force for evil in the history of Western civilization.
Sure, there’ve been outbreaks of even more concentrated evil — Stalin’s Purges springs instantly to mind, for example — nobody else can compare to the Church for the sheer breadth and depth of evil across space and time.
As horrific the actions of the Church you report in the Philippines — and they are quite horrific — they’re but a drop in the bucket…and even pale in comparison to the ongoing Church-sponsored genocide in Africa through the use of AIDS — a disease the Church is actively and intentionally spreading there because, in their own words, they’d rather people die than use condoms. And the fact that the Church’s African victims are overwhelmingly dark-skinned whilst the Church’s fair-skinned patrons in the developed world are spared the full brunt of the Church’s onslaught cannot be overlooked.
But what really pisses me off is that people actually think those motherfuckers are the ultimate source of moral authority on Earth — and lots more, even if they wouldn’t go that far, think they have an important voice at the table in any conversation about morality.
Jesus Christ!
I will give the Church one thing, though. Their PR department is literally out of this world….
b&
“in their own words, they’d rather people die than use condoms.”
So, the evil (in overpopulation terms) the RCC are doing in the Philippines is balanced by their HIV-based population control efforts in Africa?
Gotta give credit where credit’s due… 😉
The optimistic slide on this population thing is that, in the western world the population has just about stabilized and in some places even going down. Bad news is that in Africa and Asia it still explodes and will for some time.
If you are sick of bumper to bumper people – afraid you are going to need to look to places like where I live…Iowa. No growth happening here. The population of most rural counties like this one in Iowa have gone down 35% since the 1920/30s. In the Phoenix area not so good. When I was down there in 1963 or 4, Phoenix was just going over 1/5 million people and there were no freeways. Now you have a million more in Phoenix alone and tons more in the subs.
I’ve lived here since the tail end of the Reagan administration. Places that used to be literally out in the middle of nowhere, miles from anywhere with no sign of civilization in sight save the road…now have a Walmart on one corner, an Home Depot kitty-corner, and condos on the one corner between and a strip mall with a Starbucks and a McDonalds across from the condos.
And these aren’t isolated developments…it’s like that, solid, non-stop from downtown Phoenix.
Incredibly depressing.
Oh — and there used to be nothing lining the freeway from Phoenix to Tucson. That whole stretch is mostly developed, too, though you still get some open spaces and the developments don’t tend to stray too far away from the freeway.
b&
While there may be no ethical or practical way to significantly limit population growth, most if not all sentient humans have the ability to limit the impact of their existence, if they are concerned enough to be motivated to do so.
The single most destructive thing you can do to the planet, that will cause more global warming and more pollution and CO2 release and everything else…
…is not to buy or drive a car.
…is not to commute cross-country daily by private jet.
…is not even to set bonfires in landfills.
It’s to have but one single child.
Why?
Well, that child is going to buy cars, and ride in planes, and do all the rest — and do it for the better part of a century, long after you’re dead and gone….
b&
Absolutely agreed.
Yet there’s this vast mass of inherited folklore/tradition/brainwashing that says having a kid is supposed to be a happy and fulfilling event that everybody should desire. It’s only that if you really *want* a pet human, and even then they may grow up to be a drug addict or a mass murderer or something.
A kitten is a much safer bet.
Plus, if you bring that kitten inside from off the streets and keep it inside and leashed when outside, you’ve just humanely reduced the feral population of an invasive predator species….
b&
Wait…the most destructive thing you can do is not buy a car? Who signs your paycheck? I’m kidding…your meaning is (I think) clear. As I suggested, there are many ways individuals can limit their impact, and google searches will yield up lists of easily implemented approaches. Changes in local behaviours can have cumulative global impacts.
“The single most destructive thing you can do to the planet…
It’s to have but one single child. ”
Disagree. If all couples had a single child, in just a few generations we would be approaching a sustainable population.
Even having two children per couple would result in a lower population.
The first sane thing I would decree as emperor would be an end to the child tax credit. We do not need to encourage couples to have more than one child.
…but if a couple can cause less harm to the planet with two children rather than six, and with one child rather than two, it should be obvious that no children causes the least harm to the planet.
We could do very well to slam on the brakes of reproduction until attrition has us back well under a billion humans. There’s no worry about not having enough people to preserve the species; there’s always going to be people who choose to forego contraceptives.
What we need to do, immediately, is make contraception universal and free and trivial so that nobody ever gets pregnant without a conscious decision to do so. We probably should get rid of all fertility treatments; if you want a child, there’re literally millions in need of adoption. And we really should make clear that not only is there nothing worng with being childless, but that those without children are doing the most to reduce the overpopulation that’s killing the species and the biosphere.
You should want to be childless, really, when it comes right down to it.
b&
+ 100
Bloody relatives who want to be aunties and uncles solicitously enquiring when you’re going to have a happy event (with the unspoken implication that if it doesn’t happen you’re not quite right in the shagging department…)
(Personally I find all nieces and nephews fairly repulsive till they reach their late teens and can talk sensibly about things that matter like cars and science fiction…)
Cristina Rad in one of her quite entertaining Youtube videos (‘Childfree’) commented that she had received more flak for calling herself ‘childfree’ than anything else she’s said.
We really have to change that perception that the normal state of any (heterosexual) person is to be married and the normal function of marriage is to produce offspring.
Marriage rates have been falling significantly in the US:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/09/26/351736134/marriage-rates-are-falling-and-for-some-faster-than-others
Most of our population increase comes from immigration, I believe.
This would be the video in question:
Hadn’t seen it before. I’ll just say…”ditto.”
b&
So as a grad student in conservation biology, I’m getting kinda sick of people just shrugging and deciding it’s hopeless. It seems less and less like a rational response to the state of the world, and more an excuse to just do nothing, and go on living our lives without feeling guilty about our heavy environmental impact. There are a lot of success stories about reintroducing previously rare species into their former ranges (hi turkeys, Canadian geese, and timber wolves!). Lots of failures too of course, but that doesn’t mean all is hopeless. Sure, not everything can or will be conserved. But that doesn’t we’re screwed and in 50 years will have no nature left.
As a first-time commenter you really should read the Roolz and be a bit more civil. First of all, I gave my feelings on this species alone, not on all species. And if you knew the money I’ve donated for environmental causes, and the amount I have earmarked for them in my will, perhaps you wouldn’t beso quick to accuse us of “doing nothing”. How do you know that we’re doing nothing?
I have also highlighted introduction successes: I’ve posted, for instance, on the stick insects of Lord Howe.
Finally, the number of species we have driven extinct FAR FAR FAR exceeds the number we’ve driven extinct. Too many people, too much habitat loss.
Did anybody say we’d have “no nature left” in 50 years? Not I. Please do not distort what I say or what I’ve written on this site (which you’re apparently ignorant of.)
“Finally, the number of species we have driven extinct FAR FAR FAR exceeds the number we’ve driven extinct.”
Perhaps sometimes your meaning is less obvious than you intend.
NO WAY that Canada Geese can be endangered!
Less than 100 years ago or so they were in trouble. I live ~1.5 miles from a bird sanctuary that was instrumental in their recovery.
http://www.kbs.msu.edu/index.php/visit/birdsanctuary/history
Also, from Wikipedia:
“By the early 20th century, over-hunting and loss of habitat in the late 19th century and early 20th century had resulted in a serious decline in the numbers of this bird in its native range. The giant Canada goose subspecies was believed to be extinct in the 1950s until, in 1962, a small flock was discovered wintering in Rochester, Minnesota, by Harold Hanson of the Illinois Natural History Survey.[15] In 1964, the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center was built near Jamestown. Its first director, Harvey K. Nelson, talked Forrest Lee into leaving Minnesota. Forrest Lee would head the center’s Canada goose production and restoration program. Forrest soon had 64 pens with 64 breeding pairs of screened, high-quality birds. The project involved private, state and federal resources and relied on the expertise and cooperation of many individuals. By the end of 1981, more than 6,000 giant Canada geese had been released at 83 sites in 26 counties in North Dakota.[16] With improved game laws and habitat recreation and preservation programs, their populations have recovered in most of their range, although some local populations, especially of the subspecies occidentalis, may still be declining.”
They’ve made a remarkable recovery.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
Yes we do have too many damn people! It’s the elephant in the room which nobody has the courage to tackle. Yet, we humans are the only species which has the capacity to over-ride our ‘procreational programming’- but most people seem to lack the intelligence to do so.
In this vein, have you ever encountered this very non-PC article, originally from the Irish Times of 2008?
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-irish-perspective-on-africa-this.html
I believe the Chinese government made a serious attempt to address the problem with its ‘One Child Policy’. But they got sod-all approval from the rest of the world for doing so.
Mao tried a number of things (of which the one-child policy was perhaps the most benign) that tended towards depopulating China, while the actual population continued to rise and nearly everyone (demographers and biologists excepted) wondered why. Population policy used to be seriously discussed at the UN, but that was mostly over 40 years ago. The usual emphasis on curbing population growth in developing countries (where the high growth is) was easily made to look like racism or economic warfare, and since racism, militarism and corporate greed have driven national policy far longer and more powerfully than ecological awareness has ever reached, that would probably not be false.
So we’re all just waiting for the next pandemic, because anything else would be politically impossible.
It’s not just disease that tends to bring populations back in check. Famine and war do, too. And wars are often fought in response to dwindling food reserves.
The California drought should have everybody on edge, because it means that food prices are going to rise…and famine is usually as much of an economic problem as anything else. There’s still enough food to go around, but nobody can afford to buy it.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Our entire agricultural system is utterly dependent on cheap oil for both the machinery that does what farm hands used to do and for fertilizers and pesticides that let us do as much in an acre as we used to need an entire valley for.
And cheap oil is almost gone.
There’s still lots of oil left in the ground — indeed, about half as much as there was at the start of the Industrial Revolution. It’s just that we’ve, for obvious reasons, already used up all the high quality easy-to-get-to stuff, and what’s left is neither high quality nor easy to get to. So, you have to pay more to get the stuff, and you get less when you get it.
That’s going to have nasty ripple effects through out the economy…but especially in the food and transportation industries…which are the very backbone of civilization. If you can’t eat and you can’t travel, it’s questionable whether what you have even qualifies as civilization in the first place.
b&
“The usual emphasis on curbing population growth in developing countries (where the high growth is) was easily made to look like racism or economic warfare, and since racism, militarism and corporate greed have driven national policy far longer and more powerfully than ecological awareness has ever reached, that would probably not be false.”
I do agree, sadly. I’m not sure how limiting population growth would satisfy corporate greed (more likely the opposite, I would have thought), however I’m sure the hard-working executives of the multinationals will find a way to profit whichever way it goes.
To my mind population control is the key issue that all the others – depletion of resources, pollution, global warming – hinge on. I hate to see it subverted by association with, as you say, racism, militarism and corporate greed but – even if that allegation were true – it would still be far more important to achieve population control than to stick it to the racist militarist corporates.
Sometime in the early 70’s Garrett Hardin came to Cornell to give an honorary lecture. (This was not long after his “The Tragedy of the Commons” was published.)
I don’t remember much about the lecture but during the comments, someone asked a question about foreign aid. He gave a long and carefully worded answer, essentially saying that while he’d approve of donating money for medical help and the like, he would not contribute to famine aid for pretty much the same reasons given in that paper. I suspect I’m not the only one for whom that answer has remained vivid.
Getting back to Neofelis, the two species of Clouded Leopard have the (relatively) longest canines of all living felids, with distinct posterior cutting ridges. The relatively short limbs are another feature in which they resemble the extinct sabre-toothed cats. They’re not especially closely related to the latter (ancient DNA of Homotherium confirms this), but next time a sabre-tooth evolves it will take somewhat less change starting from Neofelis than from any other extant cat. On the other hand, not very much less change.
I wonder if the best way to preserve endangered cute animals like the clouded leopard is to domesticate them. In Russia, wild foxes were domesticated in just a few generations simply by breeding only the most docile.
Obviously, this is not as desirable as increasing natural habitat, but it might be a good way to hedge our bets. With the way things are going, in a few hundred years, humans will most likely be ceding most of the planet back to its natural (albeit changed) state. Relying on zoos and habitat preservation seems a most risky venture.
Besides, who would not want a tame clouded leopard as one’s daemon?