Download or read book Our Vanishing Relative written by H.D. Rijksen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-04-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s, it was believed that no more than about 4,000 orang-utans remained in the wild. Consequently, IUCN - The World Conservation Union - declared the ape an endangered species, demanding its world-wide protection. Nevertheless, the orang-utan today faces extinction because it is dependent on a rain-forest habitat that is rapidly being demolished due to human greed, and a growing human population. Rijksen was among the first to make a detailed study of the ape in the wild, emerging as an authority on orang-utan conservation. In the late 1980s he became so alarmed by local rumours of the rapid decline of wild orang-utans that he initiated the study leading to this book. Meijaard conducted the ambitious, island-spanning surveys in Borneo and Sumatra to reveal the ape's whereabouts. This is the story of their findings. It is the first comprehensive study of the ape's distribution and status based on a wealth of first-hand field data, and a frank, disturbing account of a mixture of good intentions, ignorance and greed, spelling doom for our Asian relative. Nevertheless, the authors emphasise that the orang-utan can survive. A realistic plan to save the ape, and with it thousands of unique wild animals and plants, does exist. It is the authors' hope that Our Vanishing Relative, so urgent and eloquent in its description of the deadly net of problems descending over our helpless relative, will awaken attention and empathy in order to safeguard the future of the orang-utan.
Download or read book Our vanishing relative written by Rijksen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The orang-utan is a superb representative of a major sector of the structure of biological diversity in Sumatra and Borneo. Conservation of the living conditions of the orang-utan implies maintaining the integrity of the entire natural ecosystem of indigenous plant and animal species known as the West Malesian rainforest, i.e. the natural tropical evergreen forests of distinctive floral composition which stretch from the isthmus of Kra, in Thailand, across peninsular West Malaysia, south and eastwards, including Sumatra, Borneo and Java. The main question behind this study is: What is the current status of the orang-utan? Or in other words: • what is the current geographical distribution range? • what have been the trends in the size of its range and numbers? • to what extent is this range covered by (a) conservation areas, (b) timher concessions (i.e. modified habitat) and (c) plans for conversion (i.e. obliteration of the habitat)? • what is the current quality of habitat in this range and what is the prospect for conservation or restoration of such habitat? • what is a plausible average density of the ape in such habitat? • what are the prospects for protection of the ape? • what should and can be clone to give the ape a chance of survival? Several actions were undertaken to find answers to these questions, and the major results are: • In Sumatra the orang-utan has a much more extensive range than was hitherto
Download or read book Our Vanishing Relative written by H. D. Rijksen and published by . This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Species Conservation written by Jamieson A. Copsey and published by Ecology, Biodiversity and Cons. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biodiversity studied by researching island species recovery and management.
Download or read book Our Vanishing Wild Life written by William Temple Hornaday and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Temple Hornaday was the Director of the New York Zoological Society and the nation's leading advocate of wildlife conservation in this era. This unsparing manifesto was written to accompany Hornaday's launching of the Permanent Wildlife Protection Fund; it is thus (in the words of the historian Stephen Fox) both "a campaign tract" and "one of the first books wholly devoted to endangered wild animals" (John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981], p. 149). It is also a landmark of conservation history which had a profound effect on the thought of Aldo Leopold, among others. The book surveys the history and causes of wildlife destruction in America and elsewhere, and sets forth a lengthy program to ensure the protection of remaining wildlife for the future, often in militant and moralistic terms. The work also throws light on some of the complexities inherent in the conservation movement at this time: for example, Hornaday accepts the classification of certain bird and mammalian predators as "noxious" or "vermin" and appropriate for destruction (pp. 77-81); there is no criticism here of the massive campaign for the extermination of wolves and coyotes being sponsored at the time by the Bureau of Biological Survey. On a more general level, Hornaday's fulminations against Italian immigrants as incorrigible bird-killers suggest a connection between nativism and conservationism, while his excoriations of market hunters set forth a deeply-rooted class bias shared by many leading conservationists.
Download or read book The Mind of the Chimpanzee written by Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the chimpanzee mind is akin to opening a window onto human consciousness. Many of our complex cognitive processes have origins that can be seen in the way that chimpanzees think, learn, and behave. The Mind of the Chimpanzee brings together scores of prominent scientists from around the world to share the most recent research into what goes on inside the mind of our closest living relative. Intertwining a range of topics—including imitation, tool use, face recognition, culture, cooperation, and reconciliation—with critical commentaries on conservation and welfare, the collection aims to understand how chimpanzees learn, think, and feel, so that researchers can not only gain insight into the origins of human cognition, but also crystallize collective efforts to protect wild chimpanzee populations and ensure appropriate care in captive settings. With a breadth of material on cognition and culture from the lab and the field, The Mind of the Chimpanzee is a first-rate synthesis of contemporary studies of these fascinating mammals that will appeal to all those interested in animal minds and what we can learn from them.
Download or read book Manatees Our Vanishing Mermaids written by M. Timothy O'Keefe and published by Larsen's Outdoor Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manatees are among nature's strangest-looking, gentlest animals. They're among America's most endangered mammals and were the basis for ancient tales of mermaids, legendary creatures that were half-fish and half-human.
Download or read book Indonesian Primates written by Sharon Gursky-Doyen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indonesia possesses the second largest primate population in the world, with over 33 different primate species. Although Brazil possesses more primate species, Indonesia outranks it in terms of its diversity of primates, ranging from prosimians (slow lorises and tarsiers), to a multitude of Old World Monkey species (macaques, langurs, proboscis moneys) to lesser apes (siamangs, gibbons) and great apes (orangutans). The primates of Indonesia are distributed throughout the archipelago. Partly in response to the number of primates distributed throughout the Indonesian archipelago, Indonesia is classified as the home of two biodiversity hotspots (Wallacea and Sundaland). In order to be classified as a hotspot, an area must have a large proportion of endemic species coupled with a high degree of threat including having lost more than 70% of its original habitat. Two areas within Indonesia meet these criteria. The tremendous diversity of primates in Indonesia, in conjunction with the conservation issues facing the primates of this region, created a need for this volume.
Download or read book Conservation Biology for All written by Navjot S. Sodhi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conservation Biology for All provides cutting-edge but basic conservation science to a global readership. A series of authoritative chapters have been written by the top names in conservation biology with the principal aim of disseminating cutting-edge conservation knowledge as widely as possible. Important topics such as balancing conversion and human needs, climate change, conservation planning, designing and analyzing conservation research, ecosystem services, endangered species management, extinctions, fire, habitat loss, and invasive species are covered. Numerous textboxes describing additional relevant material or case studies are also included. The global biodiversity crisis is now unstoppable; what can be saved in the developing world will require an educated constituency in both the developing and developed world. Habitat loss is particularly acute in developing countries, which is of special concern because it tends to be these locations where the greatest species diversity and richest centres of endemism are to be found. Sadly, developing world conservation scientists have found it difficult to access an authoritative textbook, which is particularly ironic since it is these countries where the potential benefits of knowledge application are greatest. There is now an urgent need to educate the next generation of scientists in developing countries, so that they are in a better position to protect their natural resources.
Download or read book Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia written by Gregory Forth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines ‘wildmen’such as Homo floresiensis and ebu gogo, images of hairy humanlike creatures known to rural villagers and other local people in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. It explores the source of these representations and their status in local systems of knowledge.
Download or read book World Atlas of Great Apes and Their Conservation written by Julian Oliver Caldecott and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive and authoritative review of the distribution and conservation status of Great Apes includes individual country profiles for each species and overview chapters on ape biology, ecology, and conservation challenges.
Download or read book Animals in Traditional Folk Medicine written by Rômulo Alves and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-19 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People have relied on medicinal products derived from natural sources for millennia, and animals have long been an important part of that repertoire; nearly all cultures, from ancient times to the present, have used animals as a source of medicine. Ingredients derived from wild animals are not only widely used in traditional remedies, but are also increasingly valued as raw materials in the preparation of modern medicines. Regrettably, the unsustainable use of plants and animals in traditional medicine is recognized as a threat to wildlife conservation, as a result of which discussions concerning the links between traditional medicine and biodiversity are becoming increasingly imperative, particularly in view of the fact that folk medicine is the primary source of health care for 80% of the world’s population. This book discusses the role of animals in traditional folk medicine and its meaning for wildlife conservation. We hope to further stimulate further discussions about the use of biodiversity and its implications for wildlife conservation strategies.
Download or read book Orangutans written by Serge A. Wich and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-07 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes one of our closest relatives, the orangutan, and the only extant great ape in Asia. It is increasingly clear that orangutan populations show extensive variation in behavioural ecology, morphology, life history, and genes. Indeed, on the strength of the latest genetic and morphological evidence, it has been proposed that orangutans actually constitute two species which diverged more than a million years ago - one on the island of Sumatra the other on Borneo, with the latter comprising three subspecies. This book has two main aims. The first is to carefully compare data from every orangutan research site, examining the differences and similarities between orangutan species, subspecies and populations. The second is to develop a theoretical framework in which these differences and similarities can be explained. To achieve these goals the editors have assembled the world's leading orangutan experts to rigorously synthesize and compare the data, quantify the similarities or differences, and seek to explain them. Orangutans is the first synthesis of orangutan biology to adopt this novel, comparative approach. It analyses and compares the latest data, developing a theoretical framework to explain morphological, life history, and behavioural variation. Intriguingly, not all behavioural differences can be attributed to ecological variation between and within the two islands; relative rates of social learning also appear to have been influential. The book also emphasizes the crucial impact of human settlement on orangutans and looks ahead to the future prospects for the survival of critically endangered natural populations.
Download or read book Life After Logging written by E. Meijaard and published by CIFOR. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a technical review of ecological and life history information on a range of Bornean wildlife species, aimed at identifying what makes these species sensitive to timber harvesting practices and associated impacts. It addresses three audiences: 1) those involved in assessing and regulating timber harvesting activities in Southeast Asia, 2) those involved in trying to achieve conservation goals in the region, and 3) those undertaking research to improve multipurpose forest management. This book shows that forest management can be improved in many simple ways to allow timber extraction and wildlife conservation to be more compatible than under current practices. The recommendations can also be valuable to the many governmental and non-governmental organisations promoting sustainable forest management and eco-labelling. Finally, it identifies a number of shortcomings and gaps in knowledge, which the hope can interest the scientific community and promote further research. This review is, an important scientific step toward understanding and improving sustainable forestry practices for long-term biodiversity conservation. Even in the short term, however, significant improvements can be made to improve both conservation and the efficiency of forest management, and there is no need to delay action due to a perceived lack of information. In the longer term it is expected that the recommendations from this review will be implemented, and that further research will continue to help foster an acceptable balance among the choices needed to maintain healthy wildlife populations and biodiversity in a productive forest estate.
Download or read book Developments in Primate Gesture Research written by Simone Pika and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a themed, mutually referenced collection of articles from a very high-powered set of authors based on the workshop on Current developments in non-human primate gesture research, which was held in July 2010 at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. The motivation for this book following on from the motivation for the workshop series was to present the state of the art in non-human primate gesture research with a special emphasis on its history, interdisciplinary perspectives, developments and future directions. This book provides, for the first time in a single volume, the most recent work on comparative gestural signaling by many of the major scholars in the field, such as W.D. Hopkins, D. Leavens, T. Racine, J. van Hooff, and S. Wilcox (in alphabetical order).
Download or read book An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood written by Gregory F. Tague and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregory F. Tague’s An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them and their habitats, and that in so doing, we will ultimately save earth’s biosphere. The book draws on extensive empirical research from the ecology and behavior of great apes and synthesizes past and current understanding of the similarities in cognition, social behavior, and culture found in apes. Importantly, this book proposes that differences between humans and apes provide the foundation for the call to recognize forest personhood in the great apes. While all ape species are alike in terms of cognition, intelligence, and behaviors, there is a vital contrast: unlike humans, great apes are efficient ecological engineers. Therefore, simian forest sovereignty is critical to conservation efforts in controlling global warming, and apes should be granted dominion over their tropical forests. Weaving together philosophy, biology, socioecology, and elements from eco-psychology, this book provides a glimmer of hope for future acknowledgment of the inherent ethic that ape species embody in their eco-centered existence on this planet.
Download or read book Peatland Restoration and Ecosystem Services written by Aletta Bonn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peatlands provide globally important ecosystem services through climate and water regulation or biodiversity conservation. While covering only 3% of the earth's surface, degrading peatlands are responsible for nearly a quarter of carbon emissions from the land use sector. Bringing together world-class experts from science, policy and practice to highlight and debate the importance of peatlands from an ecological, social and economic perspective, this book focuses on how peatland restoration can foster climate change mitigation. Featuring a range of global case studies, opportunities for reclamation and sustainable management are illustrated throughout against the challenges faced by conservation biologists. Written for a global audience of environmental scientists, practitioners and policy makers, as well as graduate students from natural and social sciences, this interdisciplinary book provides vital pointers towards managing peatland conservation in a changing environment.
