Shock Bonobo extinction threat?
Permalink: Shock Bonobo extinction threat?
The Bonobo - a species of Chimpanzee made famous for the fact that their societies are founded on sexual relations - have been found shockingly absent from their major reserve, the Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Where once they had been easily found and encountered, researchers found nothing but a few physical remains, and a single bonobo call in the trees. No live animals were found in the national park.
In a country racked by civil war and armed conflicts with neighbouring African States, Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation, which runs the national parks in the Congo Basin, has been completely unable to cope. The dense jungle has become a hiding ground for armed milita groups, and rampant poverty in areas of conflict has made the Bonobos easy prey for the bushmeat trade.
Estimates of the Bonobo population are now being made at around 10,000 to 50,000 individuals, but with numbers
Rare Hawaiian Bird: now extinct?
Permalink: Rare Hawaiian Bird: now extinct?
The last known Po’o-uli, a very rare type of Hawaiian Honeycreeper, has died in captivity from avian malaria.
Discovered only as recently as 1973, and given the scientific nomenclature Malamprosops phaeosoma, as few as 200 were recorded in the world - a figure that plummeted to just 3 by 1997. Despite desperate attempts by conservationists to encourage the three known remainging individuals to mate, no progress was made. Only one individual had been sighted this year and was captured in September of this year, in the hope of starting a captive breeding program.
It’s death marks the possibly extinction of yet another species of Hawaiian Honeycreeper - already 13 have become extinct since classification, and a further 7 species are classed as “Critically Endangered”.
Hawaii has suffered not simply due to the introduction of cats and rodents , that predate on the individual birds and their eggs, but the introduction of mosquitoes has also create new vectors for the spreading of avian malaria.
More on that story: Rare bird falls to avian malaria