Rare and Beautiful

[bigtree]

Javan Leopard. Age Kridalaksana/CIFOR


Camera Traps Capture Rare and Beautiful Javan Leopards

Camera traps placed in the Javan rainforest have captured striking images of beautiful and critically endangered Javan leopards. While resting, grooming, and rolling around, one of the leopards resembles a bigger, spotted version of the average house cat; the others move quickly through the forest.

Researcher Age Kridalaksana, with the Center for International Forestry Research, placed 30 cameras in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park in West Java, letting them record rainforest scenes for one month. When Kridalaksana came back to retrieve the images, he found that among the thousands of images of deer and civets and birds were three Javan leopards — two spotted, one black.

The Javan leopard population is believed to comprise fewer than 250 adults, with deforestation, human conflicts, and a declining prey base among major threats to the population. Since leopards normally have a territory spanning several square miles, seeing three in one area is unusual.

“It’s too much, if we compare it with the prey — like deer, like mouse, like civet,” Kridalaksana says in a related video. “We assume that the condition of the ecosystem is not balanced.”


read/watch short clip: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/javan-leopards-on-camera/?cid=co8173364


Black Javan Leopard Age Kridalaksana/CIFOR

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[lastlib]

2. we are encroaching on their habitat at an alarming rate.

soon there will be no place they can survive, unless people act now.

[Plucketeer]

3. You are correct, but...

There have been waves of extinctions in eons past. While we might have found some of the disappeared species intriguing and precious (had we "been there" of course), we couldn't have done anything to stop it.

Now, with the numerous situations such as what's going on here in Java, we ARE here and we ARE aware we COULD have a real impact if we CHOSE to. Sadly, it's not our nature to worry about anything but ourselves - even when we can reason that we'll be screwing ourselves in the end. So, given the inevitability of our collective stupidity, we are in the same class as a giant meteor impact or some other global catastrophe. We're really just another agent of extinction. One that has a sense of self, for sure. But one that feels that it's "advancement entitlements" supercedes everything else - period.

[Flaxbee]

4. beautiful, breathtaking creatures

I wish we valued life like that over cheap furniture and other crap spurring the deforestation...

our human lives will be so diminished - in my opinion, not worth living - if/when we kill off all these magnificent animals.

[snooper2]

5. I knew you were going to post a picture

but thought it might be this

[bigtree]

6. another fine animal

lol

[libodem]

7. What is that rare beast?

Not a 'cudda or a cougar? I could never tell make, model, or year, on any thing.

[snooper2]

8. 1971 hemi cuda convertible

very rare

[libodem]

9. very cool

Lucky guess from me.

[Blue_Tires]

10. kitteh?

[bigtree]

11. megrowl!