Photo credit: Goldy Rajiv Santhoji
The Asian Elephant, Elephas maximus, is listed as ‘ENDANGERED’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™. It is found in isolated populations in 13 tropical Asian countries. The Asian Elephant is smaller than its African savannah relative; the ears are smaller and the back is more rounded.
Tattoo by Don (owner) at Art in Motion.
Golden snub-nosed monkeys are Old World primates that inhabit temperate mountain forests in parts of Asia. Primarily an arboreal (tree-dwelling) species, snub-nosed monkeys live in groups of over 600 members. They defend their territory with shouts and have a large vocal repertoire and have been seen calling alone and in groups in a choir-like fashion. During the winter when food is scarce they break off into smaller groups. Their diet consists of tree needles, bamboo buds, fruits and leaves. They have a multi-chambered stomach that helps them digest the roughage.
Little is known about these monkeys, which are considered ‘endangered‘ by the IUCN. It is estimated that there are between 8,000-20,000 left, but populations are declining at such a rapid rate that it has been difficult to obtain accurate numbers. They can be found in a number of protected areas including the Baihe, Foping, Shennongjia, and Wangland Nature Reserves.
The snub-nosed monkey is protected from trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Unfortunately, poaching continues to occur as body parts, thought to prevent rheumatism, continue to be used in traditional Chinese medicines. This, in combination with ongoing habitat loss and use of the animal as bushmeat, has placed these primates in a dire situation. A new species of snub-nosed monkey, which is so snub-nosed that even rainfall sends it into a sneezing frenzy, was recently discovered in Myanmar. Scientists were alerted to the monkey by hunters, and the first and only observed individual of this new species was killed by local hunters and eaten shortly after researchers examined it.
Remember: Tattoos are forever… and so is extinction. To see all of the FANTASTIC art featured on Bush Warriors Tattoo of the Day, and to learn more about this initiative, please click here. You can also share photos of your own wildlife tattoos and enjoy others’ at our Facebook group, Bush Warriors Inked Nation for Conservation.
Note: Please play this MUST SEE video and enjoy. This is what is at stake!
A year ago on November 13th, Bush Warriors was first launched into to the world. This was my attempt to put the truth out there of what is really going on with our world’s wildlife. Everyone loves nature and wildlife. We all love lions, tigers, bears and dolphins. We even love sharks, though we were taught to be afraid of them. Wildlife and nature is gaining more popularity than ever, everywhere you look “a green lifestyle” is the new trend. ‘Organic’ and ‘nature’ are buzz words surrounding corporate board rooms, the way we live, and the food we eat. It’s all about ‘going back to nature’.
The sad and unfortunate reality is that we are just about as far from nature as we can get. In fact, we, as humans, are getting further from it by the minute. Despite the growing popularity of the ‘green revolution’, species continue to be lost at unprecedented rates. The fight to save species is not small or easy. Many challenges block the path to success, including corruption, economics (both poverty and wealth), overconsumption of our natural resources, consumerist demand, and societal values.
Photo by Takeshi Igarashi
We live in a world where biodiversity is given due attention only when it is deemed profitable or there is some underlying financial interest in saving it. Some even say, “What is the point in spending well needed funds on animals we know will be extinct from their natural habitat in a generation or two?”
If we truly open our eyes to see what has happened to the world around us, we will not be able to live with ourselves and the destruction of our planet that we cause on a daily basis. Plastic bags that help us carry food from stores are killing our sea turtles, as they are being mistaken for jellyfish. Palm oil, as harmless as it sounds, is a real killer to many of our earth’s forests and all that inhabit them. Yet it is widely used to give our foods a longer shelf life, so that we may enjoy our microwave popcorn. The cost of palm oil is not just the cost of cheap, processed foods. It is also costing us majestic creatures, like orangutans. Valuable components of an ecosystem that also display many similar emotional and social behavior as us humans. Now they slip into the brink of extinction and are being used, abused and slaughtered, while their natural habitat is replaced by palm oil plantations.
Rhinos and elephants, animal icons that we love so much, are systematically being murdered for their horns and tusks. In fact is its estimated that 102 elephants are being killed a day. That is almost a kilometer (over half a mile) of dead elephants on a daily basis.
Photo Credit: Michael Nicols
Since 1997, 353 new species have been discovered in the Himalayas, 1,220 in the Amazon and 1,231 in the Mekong region. Our world has such a rich biodiversity, and yet, with all of our knowledge and growing understanding of how fragile our ecosystems are, we are losing species before they are even discovered.
We citizens of the world must unite in a unified global voice saying, “Enough is enough.” We must put a stop to the war taking place on our wildlife and natural world. If we don’t, it will be lost for good and we will also lose ourselves in the process.
We need your help is educating and spreading the word. Please join our growing Bush Warriors global tribe in spreading the message. We have created the Bush Warriors Ambassadors program that gives you tools for five second online advocacy. All you need to do is paste our blurbs and links on your Facebook, Myspace, email, or any other social platform, and you are done. By doing this you have become an ambassador for change.
We have already grown so much in our first year, and plan to push harder and reach more people in our coming years. Join us in our efforts and step up to be a voice for wildlife today!
Asante Sana
Dori & The Bush Warriors Clan
The fascinating rhino facts below are brought to you by International Rhino Foundation. Enjoy!
1. A group of rhinos is called a ‘crash’.
Crash of white rhinos.
2. White rhinos aren’t white (and black rhinos aren’t black). The white rhino’s name is taken from the Afrikaans word describing its mouth: ‘weit’, meaning ‘wide’. Early English settlers in South Africa misinterpreted the ‘weit’ for ‘white’.
3. Rhinos are fast! They can run up to 30–40 miles per hour, which may not sound like much, but if one is running straight towards you it feels like a NASCAR race car is coming your way.
Credit: Chris Wildblood
4. Rhino pregnancies last 15-16 months. Yikes!
5. A rhino’s skin is much softer than it looks, and is actually quite sensitive to sunburns and insect bites (that’s why rhinos like rolling in the mud so much – it helps to protect them from the sunburns and insects).
Credit: Pietie
6. Contrary to the common myth, there is no evidence that rhinos stamp out forest fires!
7. The white rhino is the largest rhino (and the largest land mammal after the elephant) – they can weigh up to 6,000 pounds. The Sumatran rhino is the smallest rhino, weighing in at a mere 1,300–2,000 pounds.
Sumatran rhinos.
8. Rhinos have poor eyesight, but very well-developed senses of smell and hearing (and they will charge at you when startled – the best way to escape is by climbing a tree, if one is handy!).
9. African rhinos have a symbiotic relationship with oxpeckers, also called ‘tick birds’. In Swahili, the oxpecker is called ‘askari wa kifaru’, which means ‘the rhino’s guard’. The oxpecker eats ticks and other insects it finds on the rhino, and creates a commotion when it senses danger.
Rhino with an oxpecker.
10. Most rhinos use piles of dung to leave ‘messages’ for other rhinos – nuances in the smell of dung can tell a rhino a lot about others in the area. Each rhino’s smell identifies its owner as unique – the smell is different for young vs adult animals, for males vs females, and females in estrus vs non-reproductive females. Combined with urine left along trails, dung piles create invisible ‘borders’ around a rhino’s territory.
11. Rhinos have existed on earth for more than 50 million years, and once roamed throughout North America and Europe (as well as Asia and Africa).
12. Throughout their history, rhinos have been a very diverse group. The extinct rhino Paraceratherium was the largest land mammal that ever lived, and resembled a big, muscular giraffe. Telecoeras was a single-horned, hippo-like grazer common in North America.
13. The book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow, differs a lot from the movie classic, and actually has a reference to rhinos. Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion each get to meet the Wizard individually and he appears differently to each one of them. To Dorothy he appears as a huge head, to the Scarecrow as a beautiful woman, to the Lion as a great ball of fire, and to the Tin Man as a terrible beast. The beast is described as such, ‘It was nearly as big as an elephant, and the green throne seemed hardly strong enough to hold its weight. The Beast had a head like that of a rhinoceros, only there were five eyes in its face. There were five long arms growing out of its body and it also had five long, slim legs. Thick woolly hair covered every part of it, and a more dreadful-looking monster could not be imagined.’ Somehow, this never made it to the film version.
14. Three of the five surviving rhino species (black, Javan and Sumatran) are Critically Endangered, which means there is at least a 50% chance that these species will become extinct within three generations (for rhinos, this means about 30-60 years).
Java rhinos, credit: International Rhino Fund of New Zealand
15. The ancient woolly rhino, whose entire body was covered in a thick, shaggy coat, was hunted by early humans and is depicted in cave paintings dating back more than 30,000 years ago. The Sumatran rhino is the closest living relative of the extinct woolly rhino (and they’ve got the hair to prove it!).
16. The black rhino has a prehensile lip which allows it to feed on trees and shrubs (the other African species, the white rhino, has a long, flat lip for grazing on grasses).
See the Black Rhino’s narrowed lip designed for browsing?
17. The Javan rhino is the rarest land mammal in the world. Less than 50 individuals survive in only two locations (Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam and Ujung Kulon National Park) in Indonesia.
18. Not all rhinos are solitary – both black and white rhinos commonly live in extended family groups (particularly females and calves).
19. Rhino horn is not used as an aphrodisiac in traditional Asian medicine. It is actually used to reduce pain and fever, although there is no scientific evidence to support this usage, and of course, it is illegal.
20. Sumatran, black and white rhinos all have two horns, Javan and greater one-horned rhinos have one horn (and some female Javan rhinos don’t appear to have a horn at all).
21. The most famous piece of rhino artwork is Albrecht Durer’s woodcut, ‘The Rhinoceros’, printed in 1515. It (not entirely accurately) depicts a greater one-horned rhino sent as a gift from the King of Portugal to Pope Leo X, and has been reprinted countless times over the past 500 years.
22. The word rhinoceros comes from the Greek rhino (nose) and ceros (horn).
23. Depending on the species, rhinos can live to between 35 and 50 years old.
24. Rhino horns are made of keratin, the same material that makes up your hair and fingernails.
25. The closest living rhino ‘relatives’ are tapirs, horses and zebras.
Visit http://www.rhinos-irf.org/ to learn more about rhinos and rhino conservation.
One-Horned Rhinos, only 435 left!
A Javan rhino, one of the world’s rarest large mammals, has been found shot dead with its horn chopped off in a national park in southern Vietnam, a suspected victim of poachers.
A team of rangers found the rhino’s carcass April 29 inside Cat Tien National Park in Dong Nai province, said park official Bach Thanh Hai. It had already fully decayed, and authorities believe it could have died more than three months ago, he said.
Hai said the animal had been shot one time through the front leg and its horn — considered a valuable ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine — had been removed.
Authorities suspect that there are only three to five Javan rhinos left in Vietnam!
To read the full article, click here
A 27-year-old man was arrested in Dhangadi as he tried to smuggle a rhino horn out of Nepal. The arrest of Gagan Lama of Kada-7, Bajhang, occurred at the Dhangadi Bus Park as Lama attempted to sneak out of the country with the rhino horn.
District Forest Officer Ramesh Chand and Geta Area Forest Office Chief Ambika Prasad Proudel led the team that arrested Lama.
Lama is currently being held at the District Forest Office, and forest officials are hopeful that the arrest will lead to more information about rhino horn trading networks operating in the area.
To read the full article, click here
As the demand for ivory continues to rise in Asia, more and more African elephants are feeling the repercussions. A single large elephant tusk can now go for as much as $17,000 on the black market and with that kind of money involved there is no shortage of people willing to sell them illicitly. Sierra Leone & Burundi no longer have any elephants inside their borders, and Senegal now has less than ten. Samuel K. Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington has estimated the value of the illegal ivory trade at $264 million dollars over the past decade and warns that: “If we don’t get the illegal trade under control soon, elephants could be wiped out over much of Africa.”
Two tons of ivory seized in Bangkok that was being transported from Africa.
The primary destinations for illegal ivory have traditionally been Thailand, Japan and China, which have thriving black markets and some of the world’s best ivory carvers. However police forces throughout these nations have begun cracking down on the lucrative trade. Thailand had three seizures last year and already had its biggest yet in February, when 2 tons of African tusks worth $3.6 million were found in containers bound for Laos. In the Chinese city of Putian, where ivory demand is high a dealer by the name of Chen shows how difficult it is to control the ivory trade. Chinese police started cracking down on ivory theft in February. Since the raids, Chen said he has stopped selling the “xiang ya,” the Chinese word for ivory, which translates to “elephant tooth.” But not for long. “I don’t dare sell anything now because they’re cracking down,” he said, over the din of electric saws being used to carve wooden dragon statues. “Come back in early June and I should be able to sell.”
While governments insist their cracking down on the trade, officials admit corruption is rife within their ranks, which remains a huge challenge in the war on ivory. Lt. Col. Adtapon Sudsai, who investigates the illegal trade in Thailand, said it is not unusual to find ivory carvings in Buddhist temples or the homes of politicians or high-ranking police and military officers as a sign of power.
A pile of illegally obtained elephant tusks.
To read the full article click here
This is a great article from our friends at Plan Your Safari’s regarding worrying trends in the illegal animal parts trade. It focuses on the shady business of substituting Lion bones instead of Tiger bones to make traditional medicines. Here is an exerpt from that article.
‘We are beginning to see some worrying trends in the illegal trade of animal parts – and this time it is not just about rhino horns, elephant tusks, bear gall bladders, and shark’s fins – it is about lion bones. Yes, you read that right, lion bones. Ian Michler, writing for Africa Geographic Magazine in February 2009 as reported by Big Cat Rescue, exposed a growing trend in this shady business, and I suspect we have only just exposed the tip of this rotten iceberg.
But back to lion bones. Big Cat Rescue reports the use of “tiger wine” (rice wine carefully aged with added tiger bones or even whole carcasses) to make a person less fatigued and take care of arthritis and rheumatism. Since the tiger harvest is falling off a bit, the manufacturers of tiger wine are now looking for an alternative to make their vintages – lions. Consequently, and probably not only because of the wine market, the price of lion bones is increasing by leaps and bounds. If you happened to have some lion bones lying around the house two years ago, you could have sold a kilo for about $10. If you sell them now, you get $300. Big Cat Rescue estimates that the bony bits of a whole lion can now be sold for $4,000.’
To read the full article and learn more about this terrible issue….Click Here
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