AP: Chimps varied ‘culture’ matters for conservation, study says. “As researchers learn more about Homo sapiens’ closest living genetic relatives, they are also discovering more about the diversity of behaviors within chimpanzee groups — activities learned, at least in part socially, and passed from generation to generation. These patterns are referred to as ‘traditions’ — or even animal ‘culture.’ In a new study , scientists argue that this diversity of behaviors should be protected as species themselves are safeguarded, and that they are now under threat from human disturbance.”
wildlife
Sun Journal: Social media posts about bird sightings may be harming Maine wildlife
Sun Journal: Social media posts about bird sightings may be harming Maine wildlife. “A Facebook group of Maine birders is asking its members to stop posting specific locations of rare species out of concern that the information is being used by hunters. The change to the private group’s policy stemmed from a post that alleged a hunter killed a king eider duck in Wells Harbor after he saw information about it on the group’s page. Although the Maine Birds Facebook group administrator who posted about the incident last month was not able to provide information to corroborate the allegation, the outrage it spurred from the group’s members speaks to a larger question about the ethics of using social media to seek out wildlife.”
BBC: Facial recognition tool tackles illegal chimp trade
BBC: Facial recognition tool tackles illegal chimp trade. “Wildlife criminals had better watch out! The same software that recognises you in a friend’s social media post is being adapted to tackle the illegal trade in chimpanzees.”
National Geographic Australia: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Wildlife Research
National Geographic Australia: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Wildlife Research. “With the help of Wildbook and the nonprofit Giraffe Conservation Foundation, Stacy-Dawes, a research coordinator at the zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, and her colleagues are able to blitz a giraffe population with photos over two days, upload the images and location data to their GiraffeSpotter database, and presto: a robust population assessment emerges. So far they’ve used Wildbook to assess giraffe numbers across three wildlife conservancies in northern Kenya…. By year’s end GiraffeSpotter will be publicly accessible so that everybody from park rangers to tourists on safari can upload their giraffe photos and location information to the online database.”
The Conversation: How we arrived at a $1 billion annual price tag to save Africa’s lions
The Conversation: How we arrived at a $1 billion annual price tag to save Africa’s lions. “A billion dollars. That’s approximately what it would cost, to save the African lion. That’s a billion dollars each year, every year into the foreseeable future. The startling price tag comes from a calculation we did, starting with a new database we compiled of available funding in protected areas with lions. To our knowledge it’s the most comprehensive and up-to-date database of its kind.”
Gazette & Herald: People urged to ‘log their hogs’ for project
Gazette & Herald: People urged to ‘log their hogs’ for project. “TWO conservation charities are urging people in rural area to take part in their project aimed at logging sightings of an increasingly rare mammal. The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society are running the Hedgehog Street project, which asks people to ‘log their hogs’, either dead or alive, in an online database.”
Design Week: Redesigning the biggest list of endangered species in the world
Design Week: Redesigning the biggest list of endangered species in the world. “The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, an exhaustive online database of animals, plants and fungi that are at risk of extinction, has been given a new website in a bid to engage more people in conservation and make finding crucial information easier.”
