I came across this 2007 article about a Sumantran Tiger on the WWF website, while doing some research about the Amur Leopard. I wanted to post it, because I want everyone to see that WE MUST CARE ENOUGH TO DO SOMETHING! Please don't turn your back on these beautiful creatures. I know we are busy people, and we can't donate away all our money, but a few dollars donated won't kill us, and may save the life of just one cat, and besides there are plenty of others things we CAN DO THAT DON"T COST A PENNY, like sign petitions on the WWF , or The Care2 Petition Site for instance, and invite others to do so! It won't cost anything to do that, but a few moments of your time ... something these animals might not have much left of.

I hope this big fellow is still alive, and doing well. Sad...

WWF Photographs Three-Legged Sumatran Tiger That May Have Survived Capture, Escaped from Snare

For Release: 07/05/2007

WWF Male tiger missing the lower half of his right front leg For media inquiries, contact: Tom Lalley tom.lalley@wwfus.org 202/778-9544

WASHINGTON - A WWF camera trap inside an Indonesian national park has captured photographs of a Sumatran tiger in the wild that appears to have escaped from a snare by cutting its paw off.

Four pictures captured by WWF´s camera trap in March inside Tesso Nilo National Park in central Sumatra show a male tiger missing the lower half of his right front leg. The same tiger was photographed again in a different location in May walking in the forest. On both occasions, the tiger appears to be in good physical condition. WWF staff suspect this tiger is the same individual reported caught in a snare in November 2006 but that somehow scratched or cut his paw off, to escape, leaving part of his leg behind in the snare.

The Sumatran tiger is the most critically endangered tiger subspecies in the world, with fewer than 400 individuals left in the wild. They are only found on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where they have been relentlessly hunted for the black market and where their habitat is rapidly being lost to agricultural and logging operations. Snares are an added threat to them - some are set specifically by poachers to catch tigers, while most are designed to catch other species as bushmeat for local villagers or as a means of pest control.

"It's particularly upsetting that this happened inside a national park, where tigers are supposed to enjoy protection. This tiger looks like he's in good condition in our photos, but his future is uncertain," said Sunarto, WWF's tiger biologist in Riau. "The Sumatran tiger population is at such low levels, we can't afford to lose even one individual to a snare."

WWF is working with the Tesso Nilo National Park authority and natural resource conservation office (BKSDA) in Riau to increase awareness of tiger conservation, including urging people to stop using snares and educating them on potential risks of such practices.

Since 2005, WWF and BKSDA's antipoaching teams in central Sumatra have confiscated at least 101 snares, 75 of them inside the protected areas of Tesso Nilo National Park and Rimbang Baling Wildlife Reserve. Of the 101 snares, 23 were identified as specifically targeting tigers; the rest are used for wild boar, muntjac and sambar deer and sunbears.

"The use of snares is not only threatening the remaining tiger population, it also leads to a bigger problem: human-tiger conflict," continued Sunarto, leader of WWF's antipoaching team. "When a tiger is sick or crippled its ability to hunt and catch natural prey is reduced significantly. As a result, such tigers search for food in nearby villages, attacking livestock or even people."

Tesso Nilo National Park is crucial to the survival of endangered Sumatran tigers and Sumatran elephants. WWF and partners have proposed an extension of the park from 38,576 hectares to at least 100,000 hectares to ensure long-term viable populations of elephants and tigers in the area. But the park faces a serious threat from illegal encroachments for widespread, small-holder palm oil plantation development, which has resulted in the loss of close to 20,000 hectares of natural forest, through August, 2006. This condition has led to fragmented and reduced habitat and more frequent human-wildlife conflict.

From The Wildlife Conservation Society

The leopard is rarely found in cold environments and exists mostly in the savannas of Africa and the jungles of Southeast Asia where populations are relatively stable. However, in the extreme northern part of the leopard’s range, a rare subspecies of this cat lives in the temperate forests and harsh winters of the Russian Far East. Known as the Amur leopard, it is the most endangered big cat with only 25-40 left in the wild. In the north, the extreme cold and deep snows prevented successful colonization and in the south, the intensive development in China had destroyed leopard habitat. Thus, leopards occur only along the Russia-Chinese border, with the majority being found in Southwest Primorye, Russia. A few leopards may still exist in North Korea but attempts to conduct surveys there have not been successful.

The Human Aspect
High human populations and intensive use of forest resources has largely excluded leopards from northeast China. Due to the poor economy in southwest Primorye, people there have been forced to rely on local forest products as a source of income and food. Poor economic conditions create a strong incentive for poaching and its close proximity to China and major seaports have made wildlife smuggling to Asian medicinal markets easy. Despite a significant proportion of Amur leopard range being protected, the total habitat available for this population is extremely limited. Fires set by humans in fall and spring to clear and generate growth in meadows and fields often burn into forests. The long-term consequences of such fires have been devastating, preventing regeneration of trees and shrubs. Consequentially, as large trees die, forests are converted to open grasslands, which is totally unsuitable for leopards.

Threats
Amur leopards experience various threats. First, the area is politically sensitive because of its borders with China and North Korea. Second, Amur tigers coexist with amur leopards, which are also critically endangered. This poses a difficult conservation challenge because competition from tigers may significantly impact the leopard’s chances for survival. Third, the area is subject to habitat loss and fragmentation through logging, frequent human-caused fires, and planned and ongoing development projects, such as a major oil pipeline. Fourth, leopards are endangered by poaching and ‘retaliation killing’ on local deer farms. Poaching of wild boar and sika deer, its primary prey, pose as great a threat as poaching of leopards themselves. Last, because leopards are found in one small population, they are threatened by inbreeding depression, introduced diseases, and catastrophes such as major fires. Data are urgently needed on which to base recommendations to minimize the impact of development, logging, and other human activities and to develop a more detailed protected areas plan that includes defined movement corridors between Russia and China.

WCS Activities
WCS cooperates with Russian authorities in an attempt to increase the chance for this cat’s survival in the region. Our research and conservation activities are focused on population monitoring and working with local hunting groups, which are responsible for wildlife management, to identify ways to increase compatibility of human activities with leopard conservation. In the mid-1990’s, WCS’s field team of Russian and American biologists fitted five leopards with radio-collars in Kedrovya Pad Reserve to obtain key information on movements, home range size and habitat needs. Presently we are attempting to extend this work to other regions to better understand leopard ecology

My Gr.Gr.Gr. Gr. Grandfather, Seaborn Goodall has been the subject of a long-time local legend in Screven County, Georgia. The story took place in the now gone town of Jacksonborough, and involved a traveling minister, who by all accounts is a legendary figure, himself. Here's the story:

One of the oddest events in Georgia history arose from the ministry of a man who took the Gospel of the Bible quite literally. It is the well-documented story of Lorenzo Dow and the town of Jacksonborough.

Jacksonborough was founded in 1797 to be the county seat of the newly formed Screven County. The town took its name from the then Governor of Georgia James Jackson. Jackson was a hard-fighting man who fought 23 duels in his lifetime and the town lived up to Jackson’s reputation. By 1820, the time of our story, Jacksonborough had a rough and rowdy reputation. The book Statistics of the State of Georgia, published in 1849, described Jacksonborough as a place known for its hard drinking and hard fighting residents. The book says, “that in the morning after drunken frolics and fights you could see children picking up eyeballs with tea saucers.”

Lorenzo Dow was an itinerant Methodist preacher of some renowned. The 43-year old was an odd character who nonetheless had preached to the Georgia General Assembly at their request. Elsewhere in the state, he gathered crowds as large as 5,000 people to hear him preach the Gospel. Or perhaps they just came to see Dow himself. The tall, slightly humpbacked preacher had long hair and a beard that caused him to stand out. He often referred to himself as “Crazy Dow.” His chosen method of evangelism was to go into a town, hand out handbills, gather a crowd and preach. Dow usually stayed no more than a night or two in a town before moving on.

When the famed Methodist preacher showed up in Jacksonborough, the rowdies in the town were pretty sure they didn’t want his tea-totalin’ ways taking root in the town. The local Methodist Church offered Dow its pulpit for the night. While a crowd gathered at the church to hear Dow, a second crowd gathered at a whiskey store. Soon after Lorenzo Dow launched into his fire and brimstone sermon, a group stormed up to the church and broke up the meeting by pelting the preacher with rotten eggs. People left in fear of the fight that was sure to follow. The mob returned to the whiskey store to celebrate their victory. Though covered with the stink of rotten eggs, Dow was unbowed. The evangelist followed the angry mob back to the whiskey store where he took up a fireplace tool and broke open a barrel of whiskey, dumping its contents across the floor.

Anger flashed through the crowd, whose next item of business was to find an appropriate tree from which to hang Dow. That’s when Seaborn Goodall broke in through the crowd. The Methodist church goer was a fellow Mason with many of the men in the angry mob and he persuaded them to hand Dow over for the night. Goodall promised that he would see that Dow left in the morning, if the mob would leave him alone.

The rowdies stayed up drinking through the night. By morning the unappeased and well pickled mob gathered at the Goodall home with a supply of eggs and tomatoes. Dow walked out of town in a barrage of produce. When Lorenzo Dow got to the edge of town at the Beaver Dam Creek Bridge, he stopped. Taking the words of the Gospel quite literally, the preacher took of his shoes and shook the dust of Jacksonborough from his feet. The mob listened as Crazy Dow cursed all of Jacksonborough, save the Seaborn Goodall home where he had been offered peace. The men of the mob had a good hard laugh at the evangelist.

Jacksonborough was a thriving county seat town that wasn’t going anywhere. However, it was Dow who got the last laugh. Within a generation, Jacksonborough was no more. The rough and rowdy town got such a bad reputation that the county seat was moved, brick by brick, a few miles away to Sylvania, Georgia. Within 30 years of Dow’s visit, the only home left standing in Jacksonborough, Georgia was the Goodall home. The white clapboard house sits alone on a dirt road. The ruined foundations of Jacksonborough dot the woods around Seaborn Goodall’s house to this day.

It is now owned by The Briar Creek Daughters of the American Revolution. Over the course of ten years they restored the home to it's former glory, and have turned it into a museum, that is open to the public for tours, by appointment.

Seaborn Goodall, born 13 Feb 1796, in Briar Creek, Georgia, was the son of Pleasant "The Pleasant" Goodall, who fought in The Battle of Briar Creek, during the American Revolution. Seaborn married Racheal Kemp and had four children. Seaborn served as Clerk of Superior Court in Screven County. He eventually moved to Savannah, Georgia, and died there about 1868.

From the Care2 Petition Site:

Save the Amur Leopard

The Amur Leopard, a very rare and critically endangered big cat, is on the verge of extinction!

With only a few left remaining in the wild due to logging, farming, building and poaching- this beautiful species is on a harsh road to extinction if there is not any action done immediately.

This is my second petition to try and push for more conservation efforts for these beautiful, majestic creatures. If I meet the signature goal, I could get these cats the media attention they need and deserve to have so that more people may be educated on their critical endangerment.

There are approxiamately only 30 remaining in the wild; only 5-6 of which are female. In captivity, the situation is also very serious, as interbreeding with animals of unknown heritage has affected a large percentage of the captive breeding pool. Because of this, of the 150 remaining in captivity, only 12 are purebreds.

There has been very little research done to protect the Amur Leopard and it has been virtually ignored.

There is still hope to save them. We can make similar steps that were made to save the Siberian Tiger; most importanly we need to make people aware of the situation the Amur Leopards are in and their extreme danger of extinction.

Please don't let these gorgeous creatures disappear! Something must be done!

(Photo courtesy of the EFBC-FCC. That is the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound, Feline Conservation Center.
Photo taken by Nancy Vandermey. The cat's name is Svetlana.