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Spanning an area of more than 23 sq.km., the Fifa Nature Reserve is located in the southwestern part of Jordan. The wetland lies in the Jordan Rift Valley and is fed by several water sources from natural springs to seasonal floods. The lowest point in the Reserve stands at 420 mt below sea level, making it the "world's lowest wetland of international importance", according to the Ramsar Convention. Established in 2011, the Reserve's location in the Rift Valley makes it a significant spot supporting many species of wintering and breeding birds that migrate between Europe and Africa. It is important as one of the few remaining natural breeding habitats of Dead Sea sparrow" and is known to host the largest population of the Nubian nightjar. It also hosts the endangered killifish, houbara bustard, and the spiny tailed lizard. The Reserve is marked by saline vegetation, one of the several vegetation types of the country. The region is said to be home to a total of 4% of the country's plant species and 8% of animal species, including some that are endangered. Though the wetland is said to display semi-desert systems and high temperatures, the diverse flora and fauna seem to have adapted well to these seemingly difficult conditions.

Wildlife

The birds that can be seen in the Reserve are egrets, herons, bitterns, teals, mallards, garganeys, storks, pratincoles, snipes, redshanks, moorhens, stilts, plovers, lapwings, stints, sandpipers, ibises, grebes, falcons, finches, harriers. owls, shrikes, eagles, larks, doves, kestrels, warblers, sparrows, vultures, gulls, bulbuls, partridges, buzzards, gadwalls, terns, red knots, prinias, wheatears, rollers, bee-eaters, coursers, kingfishers, sunbirds, thrushes, nightjars, and bustards. Among the animals that one can spot in the area are lynx hyenas, deer, etc.

Lynx facts

• Found in the forests of North America, Europe, and Asia, the lynx belongs to the cat family.
• These carnivores can grow up to 40 inches long, but the sizes of the species vary depending on their geography. For instance, the Canadian lynx is smaller than its European cousins.
• These mammals have thick fur, and their paws are furry too, both of which help them survive harsh winters. Their sharp sense of hearing and vision help them spot their prey even a few hundred feet away!
• Though the lynx hunts small animals, deer, birds, squirrels, and mice, it feeds primarily on snowshoe hare. The change in the hare population, especially the decline, is believed to be affecting the cat population.
• These cats are said be hunted by humans sometimes for their fur. One of the species, the Iberian lynx is said to be the most endangered cat.

Houbara bustard facts

• Bustards are large, terrestrial birds, including some of the largest flying birds. They are listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
• The IUCN recognises two types of the houbara bustard - one in North Africa (Chlamydotis undulata) and the other in Asia (Chlamydotis macqueenii). At least 20,000 birds in each species exist today.
• Asian houbara bustards are found from northeast Asia and central Asia to the Middle East, and the Arabian Peninsula.
• The birds are faced with several threats - from habitat destruction to poaching and hunting.

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Situated in the south-western part of the Asian country Sri Lanka, the Sinharaja Forest Reserve covers an area of more than 88 sq.km. The region is considered the country's "last viable area of primary tropical rainforest". Marked by undulating terrain, the area is interspersed with valleys, ridges, and streams. A fertile region with more than 220 species of trees and woody climbers, it has at least 16 species of trees that are rare. More than 30 mammal species, 140 bird species, 20 amphibian species, and 70 reptiles species can be found in the Reserve. It is most noted for its endemism (see box) in mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. Endemism is said to be particularly high in butterfly species. Among the threatened, endangered, and rare species in the Reserve are the Sri Lanka wood pigeon, the greenbilled coucal, the Sri Lanka white-headed starling, the Sri Lanka blue magpie, and the Sri Lanka broad-billed roller. The Reserve, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988, is a large area surrounded by forests that form a natural protective boundary. However, it is not without its threats such as encroachments and development activity.

Wildlife

Spurfowl, junglefowl, pigeons, doves, frogmouths, swifts, coucals, koels, malkohas, waterhen, egrets, owls, buzzards, eagles, kites, trogons, hornbills, bee-eaters, kingfishers, barbets, woodpeckers, parrots, parakeets, pittas, orioles, minivets, swallows drongos, shrikes, magpies, crows, tailorbirds, bulbuls, warblers, babblers, nuthatches, thrushes, mynas, flycatchers, flowerpeckers, sunbirds, and munias are among the birds that can be seen in the region. Among the animals and reptiles found here are leopards, langurs, macaques, jackals, wild cats, boars, sambar, barking deer, mouse deer, otters, pangolins, pythons, forest lizards, and frogs.

What is endemism?

• If any species is spread across only one specific region, it is said to be endemic to the region.
• It could be a small or large area. For instance, a country or even a continent. But the species is not found outside of this region in the wild.
• Usually, plants and animals become endemic to a region in two ways. One way is by evolving in and adapting to a specific environment and continuing to live only there. Sometimes this happens in remote locations. For instance, finches in the far off Galapagos Islands. Another way is when a species loses most of its original range over the years and remains confined to a small region.
• Some of the species endemic to India are the Asiatic lion, sangai deer, Nilgiri tahr, and Malabar civet.

Purple-faced langur facts

• One of the endemic mammals found in Sinharaja Forest Reserve is the purple faced langur. It is also an endangered species, mainly because of habitat loss due to deforestation.
• It has a few sub-species, including the western purple-faced langur. The face of this long-tailed arboreal monkey is actually greyish-black, as opposed to purple as its name suggests.
• It is a folivore, meaning it feeds on leaves. It is said to prefer young leaves for their high protein content. The langur is also known to eat fruit, flowers and seeds.
• Though the langurs habitat changes with the sub-species, it often seems to inhabit areas near permanent water sources.
• It requires a nice canopy cover, but there are very few such forests in the country now, and none of them inside protected areas.

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In September 2021, bioscience and genetics company Colossal announced that it has raised $15 million for its ambitious project to bring the woolly mammoth back to the Arctic tundra. The company is co-founded by Ben Lamm, a tech and software entrepreneur, and George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School who has pioneered new approaches to gene editing. Scientists have set initial sights on creating the elephant-mammoth hybrid, with first calves expected in six years.

The project is framed as an effort to help conserve Asian elephants by equipping them with traits that allow them to thrive in vast stretches of the Arctic known as the mammoth steppe. But the scientists also believe introducing herds of elephant-mammoth hybrids to the Arctic tundra may help restore the degraded habitat and combat some of the impacts of the climate crisis. For example, by knocking down trees, the beasts might help to restore the former Arctic grasslands.

Not all scientists suspect that creating mammoth-like animals in the lab is the most effective way to restore the tundra. “My personal thinking is that the justifications given – the idea that you could geoengineer the Arctic environment using a herd of mammoths – isn’t plausible,” said Dr Victoria Herridge, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum.

“The scale at which you’d have to do this experiment is enormous. You are talking about hundreds of thousands of mammoths which each take 22 months to gestate and 30 years to grow to maturity.”

Lamm said: “Our goal isn’t just to bring back the mammoth, but to bring back interbreedable herds that are successfully rewilded back into the Arctic region.”

Whether Asian elephants would want to breed with the hybrids is, for now, unknown. “We might have to give them a little shave,” said Church.

Gareth Phoenix, a professor of plant and global change ecology at the University of Sheffield, said: “While we do need a multitude of different approaches to stop climate change, we also need to initiate solutions responsibly to avoid unintended damaging consequences. That’s a huge challenge in the vast Arctic where you have different ecosystems existing under different environmental conditions.

“For instance, mammoths are proposed as a solution to help stop permafrost thaw because they will remove trees, trample and compact the ground and convert landscapes to grassland, which can help keep the ground cool. However, we know in the forested Arctic regions that trees and moss cover can be critical in protecting permafrost, so removing the trees and trampling the moss would be the last thing you’d want to do.”

Credit : The Guardian 

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After an epic 17-month journey that made international headlines, China's famous herd of 14 wandering Asian elephants finally began heading home in August 2021. They had left their natural reserve in Pu'er city in Yunnan province, and the return covered a more-than-500-km trek. The highlights of their trip included the birth of a calf and visuals of their nap going viral. As adorable as it sounds, the stark reality is that "large-scale human engineering developments have exacerbated the ‘islanding’ of elephant habitats".

The elephants were also monitored and kept away from residential areas by a team of eight people, who tracked them on the ground and by drone for 24 hours a day.

Local wildlife experts have been unable to pinpoint the reason the herd decided to move. But Zhang Li, a professor on mammal conservation at Beijing Normal University, told the state-run Global Times in June that “Large-scale human engineering developments have exacerbated the ‘islanding’ of elephant habitats.”

This meant “the traditional buffer zones between humans and elephants are gradually disappearing, and the chances of elephants’ encountering humans naturally increase greatly,” he said.

The tourists’ behaviour wasn’t welcomed by all, with some locals complaining that the elephants had eaten entire fields of corn and truckloads of pineapples. A car dealer in Eshan county reported in June that six visiting elephants had drunk two tonnes of water in his shop.

Others monitored the news for incidents that might pose a threat to the animals. In July, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Yunnan authorities had warned locals to avoid poisonous mushrooms growing during the wet season. Soon, the topic “Will elephants eat the poisonous mushrooms” began trending on Weibo, eventually being viewed more than 120m times.

The elephants were also used as state propaganda, starring in an editorial published by the Global Times titled, “China’s care for wandering elephants mirrors adorable national image the West can’t distort.”

Credit : The Guardian 

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On July 29, 2021, International Tiger Day, the Prime Minister tweeted that "India achieved the target of doubling of tiger population four years ahead of schedule and that the country is home to 51 tiger reserves spread across 18 states" and "to over 70% of the tiger population globally. While this was great news, it was also of concern that threats such as poaching, habitat degradation, and human-wildlife conflict continued to exist.

The Prime Minister said that the last tiger census of 2018 showed a rise in the tiger population. "India is home to 51 tiger reserves spread across 18 states. The last tiger census of 2018 showed a rise in the tiger population. India achieved the target of doubling of tiger population 4 years ahead of schedule of the St. Petersburg Declaration on Tiger Conservation," he tweeted.

He further said that India's strategy of tiger conservation attaches topmost importance to involving local communities.

"We are also inspired by our centuries-old ethos of living in harmony with all flora and fauna with whom we share our great planet," PM Modi added. The Saint Petersburg declaration on tiger conservation was signed in 2010. In the meeting, it was decided to celebrate July 29 as Global Tiger Day across the world to create awareness on tiger conservation.

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In May 2021, genetic tests confirmed that a giant tortoise found on the Galapagos Islands is from a species that scientists thought had died out more than a century ago. The single female Fernandina giant tortoise was discovered during a 2019 expedition to Fernandina Island. To prove the link, scientists took samples from the female to compare to the remains of a male from the species Chelonoidis phantasticus. The last previous sighting of the species had been in 1906.

A giant tortoise (Geochelone hoodensis) population that in the 1970s had dropped to about 15 was once again a common sight on the island, said Washington Tapia, a park official who led the survey, which used electronic devices to track the animals. “During the expedition we found nests, recently hatched tortoises, and adults born on Española, which indicates that the tortoise population is doing well.”

The population now numbered between 1,500 to 2,000, said Linda Cayot, a scientific adviser to Galápagos Conservancy. “We will have a much better idea when the survey results are compiled.”

The original population was thought to number up to 5,000 before becoming a vulnerable source of fresh meat for passing sailors.

The project’s success has bolstered a plan to “re-tortoise” another island, Pinta, with the same species in the hope of re-creating a “pre-human” balanced ecosystem. The scattering of rocky, volcanic islands 600 miles west of mainland Ecuador are a Unesco world natural heritage site and home to dozens of endemic species found nowhere else. Some 95%  of the territory’s 3,000 sq miles is a protected area.

“It’s completely amazing, one of the few places where you can actually see evolution happening in real time,” said Henry Nicholls, ambassador for the Galápagos Conservation Trust. He welcomed the recovery of Española’s giant tortoise population. “They are a flagship species which capture the public imagination.”

Credit : Our World

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Scientists at the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) discovered a new species of shrew-Crocidura narcondamica-from the Narcondam volcanic island in the Andaman and Nicobar conglomerate nestled in the Bay of Bengal, according to an article published on May 3, 2021 in the journal Nature. A media report in August 2021 said that India added 557 new species to its fauna, which included 407 new species and 150 new records, as revealed by Animal Discoveries 2020, a document published by the 251. The number of faunal species in India climbed to 1,02,718 with the discovery of the new species.

The new species is of medium size (head and body lengths) and has a distinct external morphology with darker grey dense fur with a thick, darker tail compared to other species of the genus, Dr. Sivaperuman added. He also said craniodental characters of the species such as braincase was rounded and elevated with weak lambdoidal ridges makes the species distinct in comparison to other close congeners.

The discovery of a new insectivorous mammal comes after 43 years. Prior to this, scientists from the ZSI had discovered Crocidura jenkinsi on the South Andaman Island in 1978.

The discovery comes from one of most remote and uninhabited islands, Narcondam island, of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. Narcondam Island is located about 130 km east of North Andaman, and about 446 km of the west coast of Myanmar. The isolated island covers an area of 6.8 km2 and the highest peak (volcanic cone) is 710 m above sea level; however, the base lies approximately 1,500 m beneath the sea. This thickly vegetated island is bordered by cliffs on the southern side and crested by three peaks is part of a volcanic arc that continues northward from Sumatra to Myanmar.

Credit : The Hindu 

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As many as 313 lions died in the Gir National Park in the two years - specifically, 152 cubs, 90 lionesses, and 71 male Asiatic lions-between January 2019 and December 2020, the Gujarat government informed the State assembly on March 5, 2021. The State forest minister said that of the 71 lions, 69 had died of natural causes, as also 144 of the 152 cubs. However, the opposition claimed that rotting cattle meat, illegally transported into Gir from the peripheral villages, is a major cause of the deaths.

Gir, which is the last remaining abode of Asiatic Lions in the world, currently has 674 lions as per a survey conducted by the forest department. “When the enumeration of lions were carried out in 2015, there were 523 lions and when the exercise was carried out again in 2020, there were 674 lions which means there was a 29 per cent increase in population in five years,” Vasava said adding that the state government will take strict action if they get any complaints of dead cattle being given inside the sanctuary.

The forest minister said that the state government has spent Rs 33 crore in making parapets for 43,000 open wells to prevent lions from falling into them. He said the government has started four lion ambulances which is equipped with anaesthesia-cum-ventilator, multiparameters monitor, blood analyser, centrifugal machine and ultrasound machine.

Credit : Indian Express

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In February 2021 came the news that scientists believe they may have discovered the smallest reptile on earth - a chameleon subspecies, the size of a seed. Two of the tiny lizards were discovered by a German-Madagascan expedition team in Madagascar. The male Brookesia nana, or nano-chameleon, has a body of just 13.5mm. This makes it the smallest of about 11,500 known species of reptiles, according to the Bavarian State collection of Zoology in Munich, Germany.

The female nano-chameleon is significantly larger, with an overall length of 29 mm, the research institute said, adding that the scientists were unable to find further specimens of the new subspecies “despite great effort”.

The species’ closest relative is the slightly larger Brookesia micra, whose discovery was announced in 2012.

Scientists assume that the lizard’s habitat is small, as is the case for similar subspecies.

“The nano-chameleon’s habitat has unfortunately been subject to deforestation, but the area was placed under protection recently, so the species will survive,” Oliver Hawlitschek, a scientist at the Center of Natural History in Hamburg, said in a statement.

Credit : World Economic Forum

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