Spirit BearIn a moss-draped rain forest in British Columbia, towering red cedars live a thousand years, and black bears are born with white fur.By Bruce BarcottPhotograph by Paul NicklenOn a drizzly autumn morning on the coast of British Columbia, a shadowy figure lumbers down to shore. A black bear has come to eat. It's spawning season. Egg-heavy fish glut the streams of Gribbell Island, a small piece of Canada's Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest coastal temperate rain forests in the world. The bear pauses on a patch of rockweed algae to sniff the air. The rain and mist can't mask the funky rot. Pink and chum salmon carcasses lie tangled in linguine strands of tidal sedge. The bear moves like a silhouette across the landscape, its black fur blending in with the dark rocks and dusky woods.Marven Robinson spots the bear but turns away, uninterested. "We might have better luck upstream," he says. Robinson, 43, stocky and swathed in rain gear, is a wildlife guide and member of the Gitga'at First Nation, whose traditional territory includes Gribbell Island. This bear isn't what he's looking for. He's after a more revered and rare creature: what the Gitga'at call mooksgm'ol, the spirit bear, a walking contradiction—a white black bear.Neither albino nor polar bear, the spirit bear (also known as the Kermode bear) is a white variant of the North American black bear, and it's found almost exclusively here in the Great Bear Rainforest. At 25,000 square miles—one and a half times as big as Switzerland—the region runs 250 miles down Canada's western coast and encompasses a vast network of mist-shrouded fjords, densely forested islands, and glacier-capped mountains. Grizzlies, black bears, wolves, wolverines, humpback whales, and orcas thrive along a coast that has been home to First Nations like the Gitga'at for hundreds of generations. It's a spooky, wild, mysterious place: There are wolves here that fish. Deer that swim. Western red cedar trees that have stood a thousand years or more. And a black bear that is white.As his boots slosh up a soggy trail fringed with ferns and devil's club, Robinson scans for movement. No bears. He spots a tuft of white fur snagged on an alder branch. "They're around here, for sure," he says. He points to the chewed bark. "They like to stand and bite the tree just to say to other bears, I'm here using this river."An hour passes. Robinson waits patiently on top of a moss-patched boulder. Then he sees a rustling in the bush. "There he is," he says.A white bear steps out of the tree cover onto a streamside rock. Set against the dark palette of the rain forest, the bear's fur appears shabbily radiant. Not pure white, exactly. More like a vanilla-colored carpet in need of a steam cleaning. The bear swings its head from side to side, peering into an eddy for salmon. Before it can lunge for one, a black bear suddenly comes out of the forest and runs the white bear off its perch—though "runs" might be a bit strong. Everything the bears do seems to unfold in slow motion, as if they're trying to conserve every last calorie for the coming winter. The white bear lumbers into a thicket and disappears.Robinson watches. He's spent 15 years among the spirit bears. Still, he's transfixed. "This particular white bear is very submissive," he says. "Sometimes that gets to me. I'm protective. I once saw an old white bear attacked by a younger black bear. I was about to jump in and pepper spray the black one. The instinct was strong in me. But then the white one reared up and threw him off." Robinson smiles, as if to admit the absurdity of a man jumping into a bear fight. But in his eyes there's a hint that he might have done it.Robinson isn't alone. That same protective instinct runs strong throughout the Great Bear Rainforest. It's one of the factors that have kept the spirit bear alive."Our people never hunted the white bear," says Helen Clifton, sitting in her kitchen in Hartley Bay, a small fishing village marked by tendrils of wood smoke and the echoing calls of ravens. Strong in voice and spirit, the 86-year-old Clifton is a clan matriarch of the Gitga'at, one of 14 bands that make up the Tsimshian people of British Columbia's northwest coast. Bear meat was rarely a main food, she says. But First Nations hunters went after black bear in greater numbers when European merchants established the British Columbian fur trade in the late 18th century. Even in those days, though, taking a white bear was taboo, a tradition that has continued through many generations. "We never even spoke of the spirit bear at the dinner table," Clifton says.That tight-lipped custom might have been an early form of environmental protection. By not speaking of the bear, much less hunting it, the Gitga'at and neighboring bands never let word of the creature reach the ears of fur traders. Even today the Gitga'at and Kitasoo/Xai'xais people keep a watchful eye on their bears during hunting season. "It's not a good idea to come after black bear in our territory," says Robinson. "You never know. Our bears might shoot back."That attitude makes a difference. For decades the presence of poachers and trophy hunters—as well as mills and a cannery—made grizzlies in the Great Bear scarce and skittish. The industries are now gone, as is the grizzly hunt in parts of the rain forest. The bears are responding. "In my early years it was really something to see a grizzly bear," Doug Stewart tells me. As a fisheries patrolman, Stewart has been monitoring fish runs in the Great Bear for over 35 years. "Now you see them all the time. I may come across five grizzlies in a morning."They're doing so well, in fact, that some wonder if the grizzly's return isn't pushing black bears, and some white ones, off the best fishing stations on the rivers. "Where you see a griz, you won't see a black bear—or a white one," says Doug Neasloss, a Kitasoo/Xai'xais wildlife guide. "The black bears give griz plenty of room."That leads to an intriguing possibility: Perhaps the griz had a hand in concentrating the Kermode gene on Princess Royal and Gribbell Islands. "Grizzlies and black bears coexist everywhere except these smaller islands," says Thomas Reimchen, a biologist at the University of Victoria. "There's not enough habitat for grizzlies on those smaller islands. They need big grassy estuaries, subalpine habitat, and an enormous home range, which those islands don't offer."The islands do offer something else: the eyes of humans watching over them. "I tell the younger people," says Helen Clifton, "when you see a spirit bear, don't get on the VHF and broadcast it. If you want to tell someone, say you saw mooksgm'ol. They'll know what you mean. And it'll keep the bears safe."Scientists know how black bears are born white. They're just not sure why. The phenomenon, known as Kermodism, is triggered by a recessive mutation at the MC1R gene, the same gene associated with red hair and fair skin in humans. To be born white, a bear must inherit the mutation from both parents. The parents themselves don't have to be white. They just need to carry the recessive mutation. So it's not uncommon for white bears to be born to black parents.White fur occurs in only one of every 40 to 100 black bears on the British Columbia mainland coast, but the trait is especially pronounced on certain islands in the Great Bear Rainforest. On Princess Royal Island, one in ten black bears is white. On Gribbell Island, directly north of Princess Royal, it's one in three. Biologist Wayne McCrory of the Valhalla Wilderness Society calls Gribbell "the mother island of the white bears."It's unclear how the trait arose. One theory was the "glacial bear" hypothesis that Kermodism represented a remnant adaptation from the last great ice age, which ended here 11,000 years ago. At that time most of modern-day British Columbia was still icebound, and a white coat may have offered camouflage. But the glacial bear theory raised a question: Why didn't the white fur trait die out when the glaciers receded?To learn more, Doug Neasloss and I go looking for bears on Princess Royal Island. "Hey, bear," Neasloss says, as he hops out of a boat near the mouth of a small river. It's like he's hailing a friend named Bear, though there are no animals in sight. "You don't want to startle them," says the 28-year-old guide, who works the traditional territory of the Kitasoo/Xai'xais. A can of grizzly-strength pepper spray rests in a holster on his hip. Crunching across barnacle-encrusted boulders, Neasloss parts the curtain of the rain forest. Under the canopy everything turns soft and muted. Lichen drips from hemlock, cedar, and yew branches. His rubber boots leave no print on the spongy ground, which is so green it appears as if the sky has let loose a snowfall of moss.Neasloss claims a spot under a hemlock tree and pulls his hood tight against the ceaseless rain. He saw a white bear near here recently, he says, though there's no guarantee it'll reappear. At a little past three, he points across the river. A white bear waddles down the riverbank. This bear's bigger and more confident than the Gribbell Island bear. Fat rolls down its belly. It appears to be wearing a coat two sizes too large. It perches over a small pool, then lunges with both paws and comes up with a plump three-foot chum salmon.Researchers have recently proved that the spirit bear's white coat gives it an advantage when fishing. Although white and black bears tend to have the same success rate after dark—when bears do a lot of their fishing—scientists Reimchen and Dan Klinka from the University of Victoria noticed a difference during the daytime. White bears catch salmon in one-third of their attempts. Black individuals are successful only one-quarter of the time. "The salmon are less concerned about a white object as seen from below the surface," Reimchen speculates. That may answer part of the question about why the white-fur trait continues to flourish today. If salmon are a coastal bear's primary fat and protein source, a successful female can feast on salmon to store more fat for winter, potentially increasing the number of cubs she can produce.As the rain continues to fall on Princess Royal Island, Neasloss and I watch the spirit bear feed on a bounty of salmon. When the pickings are this good, bears can turn finicky. Some eat only the fish head. Others may slit the belly and suck out the eggs. Some are gluttons. "I once saw a spirit bear eat 80 salmon at one sitting," Neasloss says. This bear prefers to dine privately. It turns with the salmon in its teeth and runs straight uphill to some unseen hideaway. Twenty minutes later the bear returns, nabs another fish, and takes it into the forest. This goes on for hours, until daylight fades from the sky.http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/kermode-bear/barcott-










Odd that it only happens in BC. What a beautiful variation of Black bear.
 

Wapusk National Park is located at western side of the Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba. This place is popular for polar bear population and it is one of the largest known polar bear maternity denning areas in the world.

Until now grizzly and black bears never have been reported at Wapusk National Park.

Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan set up a camera in the park that captured all three species of bear. Cameras have captured pictures of more than 200 polar and grizzly bears on 3 occasions. The cameras, triggered by motion and heat, have also captured the park's other animals, including wolves, caribou, moose, wolverines and geese.

Researcher Doug Clark tweeted out photos of the three bears, last weak. Photos that researcher Doug Clark tweeted out Thursday show grizzlies, polar bears and black bears in the vicinity of one camera mounted on a fence post in the park, roughly 100 kilometres southeast of Churchill, Man., within seven months of each other.

Clark told CBC News, "Seeing all three species of bear in Canada and in North America, at one spot, 'unique' doesn't even begin to describe it. There are only a couple of places where you'd even have the potential for that in North America and Wapusk National Park is the only place where that amount of overlap has been documented."

Clark, an assistant professor from the University of Saskatchewan, said that his research in conjunction with Parks Canada, began in 2011 as a fact-finding mission to determine how bears, polar bears specifically, operated around the national park's fenced-in research camps.

Why are grizzly bears suddenly showing up in polar bear habitat? Changes in climate could be part of the answer, especially as they move increasingly northward. Churchill represents an interesting intersection of the three species: far south for polar bears, normal for black bears, and actually a bit south for barren ground grizzly which are known to occur northwest of the Western Hudson Bay region.

Wapusk National Park sits on the edge of a transition zone between tundra and boreal forest. It’s also near the transition from polar bear territory to black bear territory. Seeing more grizzlies where they historically have not been seen could be due in part to changing habitat as a result of climate change.

Polar Bears International Senior Director of Conservation Geoff York said, "While black bears have been seen around Churchill for a very long time, grizzly bears appear to be newcomers to this region. The extent of their presence, the drivers behind their dispersion, and the potential impacts of their occurrence here remain as of yet unknown"

For decades, the story of grizzlies in North America has been one of decline but this might be a turn around for the species.
These cameras also allow Clark to analyze the original subjects of the research, polar bears. The pictures allow him to look at the mammals' body condition, their numbers and when they are appearing compared with the years prior.

According to Clark - Body condition is]a very important measure because with concern about polar bears losing access to seal hunting habitat due to climate warming and loss of sea ice, being able to monitor body condition is increasingly important.

The data from this spring is of the most interest to Clark because from 2011-14 Hudson Bay's ice broke up in relatively consistent time periods. This spring, there was a significantly earlier ice melt which will change the bears' behaviours. Clark is interested to see how.
Wapusk National Park is the only place where you can study human-bear interactions safely, thanks to the fenced research camps set up in the park, Clark said.

The location of the park is also key, Clark said, because it is nestled at the edge of the forest and tundra ecosystems, on the coast of Hudson Bay.
"Ecologically things are changing very, very rapidly and grizzlies moving in are just one of the more visible signs of it," Clark said.
The data collected this spring also showed robins in the area for the first time since they began their research.

"Being able to observe changes right at the edges of two habitats, where things are going to start to move, they're going to be the most apparent and the most visible and probably the most dramatic. So it's a wonderful place to ask questions about change too."

Below is image of same place from camera and you can see Polar, Grizzly and Black bear also Note the timing on photo
Polar Bear



Black Bear



Grizzly bears












actually it gets even more diverse: brown-phase black bear in Wapusk National Park

Dear Members,
We are trying to change the text on home page of the forum. First of all we are planning to change the top punch line (just beside the top logo).

Below are the 2 paragraph that we have chosen so far.

'This forum is about the natural world. It offers a voice to wild creatures in general and big predators in particular. Here, they will speak and they will be heard. It is a glimpse into an unknown world, but also a room with a view on the present and the future. As the forum is about (the plight of) those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea, the ones who know about them are invited to join and share their experience'.


'There is a world lying somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are the ones living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild creatures will speak and here they will be heard and respected. The forum is a glimpse into an unknown world and a room with a view on the present and the future. Although quality information will be at the core, good stories, if true, will be appreciated as well. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join'.

Thanks to peter for this. But we are still open to some other great punch line Or you can just choose between these 2 and tell us which one is better. Also I request to those who can correct and rectify it with more proper way by adjusting the wording.
We are also open for suggestion to improve other part of forum. Your suggestion and Input will help us to grow wildfact forum as best forum related to wildlife


 

AN AMERICAN CAT

Although large males in Patagonia as well as Canada and the northwestern part of the US seem to be a bit larger than large male leopards, the cat of one colour didn't qualify for the Panthera family, whereas Panthera pardus did. 

The puma, largest of the small cats, is found in the Americas only. In Surinam, I saw an adult female just marginally larger than a large male ocelot, but males in Canada and Patagonia can exceed 200 pounds every now and then. Young and Goldman ('The Puma - Mysterious American Cat', 1946) concluded that pumas in Canada and the northwestern part of the US have the longest skulls, but the dentition in the Patagonians was heavier.

Remember the Patagonian sample was very limited. They could be larger than many assume. A few years ago, I saw a number of documentaries on pumas in Patagonia. The females featuring in on of these documentaries were definitely larger than those up north. Tony Hughes worked with puma's in the US. Some were as large as lionesses, he told me. Where from, I asked. Southern Argentina, he said.  


BBC-DOCUMENTARY

Yesterday, June 23, 2015, I saw 'The Natural World' on the BBC. It was dedicated to the puma and the footage was exceptional. Try to find it. Until yesterday, many thought adult puma's were solitary animals. But in Wyoming, where 15 youngsters and adults were collared, an adult male was filmed with two adult females. The male could have fathered all cubs in the study area. Males were in demand. The reason is hunting.

Here's a summary of what I remember:

- Adult pumas are not strictly solitary. At least, not in Wyoming. 

- The only adult male in the study area was seen approaching a kill made by a female with cubs. The female and the cubs were at the kill when he arrived. He made himself as small as possible and was very cautious. 

- The same male, when a female accidentally approached his kill, attacked, fought and killed her with a bite to the skull. The three 8-month old cubs didn't make it. The reason was they had not yet learned to hunt. One cub, a female, survived for 10 weeks. She died after attacking a porcupine. Quills can kill.  

- The biologist heading the study told the BBC they want to know why pumas in Wyoming are going downhill. Although the study, as far as I know, hasn't been concluded, two reasons were found. One is adult males often get shot. Two is about 80% of the cubs dies before reaching 18 months of age. Most are killed by other predators. 
 

WHY PUMA'S STRUGGLE IN WYOMING

On forums, hypothetical face-off's between animals are quite popular. For example. Male puma and male timber wolf, one on one. There is overwhelming evidence that adult puma's do ok in encounters with a single wolf, but wolves, at least in winter, live in packs. In Wyoming, they appropiate a lot of puma kills. To such an extent, that pumas are forced to hunt more often.  

In the long run, this can only result in a negative energy balance. If we add the great majority of puma cubs is killed by other predators, the conclusion is pumas struggle in temperate climate zones when faced with wolf packs, bears and large raptors.   


WHY WOLVES STRUGGLE IN EASTERN RUSSIA

A century ago, Sichote-Alin had Amur leopards, Amur tigers, bears and wolves. There were many wolves. In one region, a hunter caught 23 in a wolf trap in 6 weeks only. This was in a part of Sichote-Alin known for tigers. Sichote-Alin today still has tigers, leopards, bears and wolves. But all of them struggle to make a living and wolves are only seen in pairs or alone. What happened? 

What happened was a fifth predator. One that kills from a distance. In a century only, he decimated the others. Large ungulates also were nearly finished. The old four predators survived, but they struggle because of the limited number of prey animals.

Amur tigers compensated by hunting bears. As the number of Amur tigers is limited (about 500 in 2015) and not all adults hunt bears, the bear population wasn't seriously affected. Furthermore, bears are omnivores. This enables them to survive tough periods. The other meat specialists, however, struggle. 

Wolves are more severely affected by the limited number of large ungulates than Amur tigers. One reason is an energy deficit. It takes time to find, track and kill large ungulates. Furthermore, what they eat has to be shared with the pups. Social interaction also takes a lot of time and energy. The result is a deficit and no more packs. The second reason could be competition. Amur tigers don't kill many wolves (I only know of five cases), but wolves are on the list and they know.   

Wyoming today perhaps compares to eastern Russia a century ago. Twenty years ago, there were two large predators (puma's and bears) and plenty of large prey animals. Than a third predator (the wolf) was re-introduced. The result is the system collapsed. Of the old predators, the puma in particular was affected. The main reason is bears and wolves appropiate more kills than before, forcing the puma to hunt more often.          


FELIS CONCOLOR

To return to the cat of one colour. This thread is dedicated to the Mysterious American Cat, perhaps the most athletic of all. See what you can find and good luck.

Who watched the 3 part documentary on Brazil last night on NGC?

It was so beautifully filmed, informative and awe inspiring.
The amazon is so massive and harbors so many animals, its literally the most diverse and largest eco system there is.
1 out of every 10 animal species lives there, new species are discovered commonly and it runs the guantlet of animals. From Jaguars to butterflies, its as diverse as it gets.
I for the first time saw a Bush Dog (smallest wild canine) they are so cool, look like a stocky Dhole.
 Its very sad to see how much deforestation that is going on there, but there is an active effort to save it, so there is still hope.

Any way, I highly recommend it, it was awesome.
 

 

Some paleontologists claim that the bird evolved from dinosaurs while still others claim that birds are dinosaurs. One thing for certain is that birds are not reptiles. So, should warm-blooded dinosaurs be classified as reptiles ?
 

With a recent newsletter by JV and few article on net This topic has become debatable in recent days. Some specialist, Conservationist and experts think If Done in right way trophy hunting can bring great conservation value, How?
Most of time its hard to collect the amount money that needed to carry on the conservation program in countries Like Africa. The tourism does not bring that amount of money and mostly don't reached to many conservation program because it is ended with being shared among many people involve in tourism.
Trophy hunters alone bring million of dollars for a nation and conservation society that can sustain the all expense of conservation and thus help in bringing the better gene of new animal

Read these below article for more detail
http://conservationmagazine.org/2014/01/...servation/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2...ucy-siegle

Love to hear your mature response

 

http://shaggygod.proboards.com/thread/20...ing?page=8  
 
~~www.prooutfitters.ru/netcat_files/452/558/Predators.pdf 
 
Amur Brown Bear ( Ursus arctos lasiotus ) is found on Southern Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Maritime Territory and Ussuri/Amur river region south of the stanovoy Range. His hide is almost black color. The trophy size of Amur Brown Bear runs between 8 - 8.5 feet / 2.4 - 2.6 m.
 

http://www.amazon.com/Beasts-of-the-Roma...nk20280-20
 

A controversy arises over the purity of the Indian tiger after DNA samples show Siberian tiger genes.

By Subhadra Menon

Royal Bengal TigerBlue blood with a hint of A scandalous liaison? That is what a strand of hair and a DNA profile has indicated. A team of wildlife researchers has found the DNA samples of two Royal Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) from Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh "polluted" by genes of the Siberian tiger.

Surrounded by feline DNA fingerprints, Lalji Singh, deputy director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, who led the research team, says the findings are disturbing. "The genetic purity of the Indian tiger in Dudhwa will be lost," he warns, "and we will end up with a mixed-gene pool." The Royal Bengal is small and brilliant coloured -- tawny, golden yellow, with dark stripes -- and its fur sticks close to its body. It has pointed ears and a lean jawline. In comparison, the Siberian tiger -- hardly 200 of which survive in Russia's far eastern corner -- is the biggest of the five living tiger sub-species: the others being the South Chinese (P. tigris amoyensis), Sumatran (P. tigris sumatran) and the Indo-chinese (P. tigris corbett); the Caspian, Javan and Bali tigers are now extinct. The Siberian is a fine cat with rounded ears, a massive jaw, and thick, soft fur.

The CCMB study has busted the myth that Indian tigers are genetically confined to their own pockets. Working on blood and hair samples from 22 tigers of "known wild origin" from all over the country, Singh studied the vital sequences of the DNA that are peculiar to each species. The readings showed around 21 per cent heterozygosity in Indian tigers, which means that the felines drew genetic characteristics from more than one gene pool. Much of the variation arose out of cross-breeding between tigers from the country's 23 tiger reserves. This low level of variation indicates inbreeding, given that the average variation in wild carnivores is 40 per cent. What is more, on analysing 50 to 125-year-old tiger skins from museum specimens, Singh found almost the same level of genetic variation.

The two samples taken from Dudhwa were of tigers suspected to be hybrids. The genetic information obtained certainly related to the Siberian tiger. The big question is: where did the alien genes come from? The two tigers from Dudhwa could be the offspring of Tara, a tigress controversially released into the wilderness by wildlife enthusiast Billy Arjan Singh in the '70s. Questions had been raised in Parliament about Tara's origins and there was, at some point, the admission that she was not of Indian stock.

"Since the 20 other samples showed no Siberian genes, it is possible that the genes came from Tara," says Lalji Singh. He, however, adds that two specimens constituted too small a sample base to conclusively prove that Tara was the source of Siberian genes. "Ideally, all the tigers in the Dudhwa region should be studied before a definitive statement can be made," he says. If not from Tara, who? There are some theories about the influx of foreign genes (see box). While the Himalayas effectively squashes the probability of tigers from India crossing over to China or Russia, it is possible that an Indian tiger mated with a Chinese tiger along the Myanmar tract. The Chinese tiger could, in turn, have inherited genes from a Siberian parent. Theoretically, tigers of unknown lineage which have escaped from zoos and circuses could also be the source of the Siberian genes.

Will the Siberian genes then make the Royal Bengal a pale shadow of its majestic self? "The big cats are characteristically conservative in their breeding habits," says Ravi Chellam, scientist at Dehradun's Wildlife Institute of India. Which is perhaps why the Indian tiger -- anyway restricted to pockets in the tiger reserves -- has tended to breed within its distinctive population. Scientists are worried about inbreeding depression, where highly inbred animals become sterile, are susceptible to infections and lose their vitality. However, Chellam explains that inbreeding isn't a real problem unless the group shrinks to 50 individuals or less.

This strengthens the case for out-breeding, which takes place, say, when a tiger from Corbett National Park in Uttar Pradesh mates with a tigress from the Sunderbans; in other words, when there is an influx of genes from populations other than the one immediately surrounding the animal. The cubs of such a union could show better resistance to diseases or enjoy a robust physique. This means that the Siberian gene could make the Royal Bengal tiger a bigger animal, if a less beautiful one.

Lalji Singh's Siberian gene finding has people worried. "This kind of genetic pollution could affect the purity of the Royal Bengal stock," stresses R.L. Singh, chief wildlife warden of Uttar Pradesh. While there are many who thumb their noses at the argument about retaining the purity of the Indian tiger, it is in keeping with today's thinking. Maintaining the purity of wild gene pools is the current philosophy of conserving species. This is notwithstanding the fact that different species are known to interbreed in the wild. There is, for instance, a new species called the Brown Langur, the product of the mating between the Nilgiri Langur and the Common Langur.

To a lot of experts, genetics lies on the fringe of conservation programmes. "The role of genetics in the endangerment of a species is highly exaggerated," says Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society of the US. He says that the ecological threats faced by vulnerable animals like the tiger are bigger worries. Still, the genetic identification of wild tiger populations is not something that can be ignored. Which is why Lalji Singh thinks he's only just begun an important task. He feels that immediate and extensive studies should be done on the genetic profiles of tigers in all the reserves of India. That, he says, can become the blueprint for action to save these great cats.


Credit to Samkarma Sameer Puri