Op Ed: Why Some and Not Others?

Happy Merdeka Day!

To celebrate Malaysian pride, I'm going to...keep talking about animals. Yay! 

Talking about my project to a friend, they brought up a question I had never even considered.

Why is it OK to eat some animals and not others?

To a die-hard animal lover, this sort of thought never even crosses their minds. It never did for me. I never asked myself why I was dedicated to conservation; I just knew in my heart that I was. 

Coming from this perspective, I am going to try and answer my friend's question. I'm not trying to create a perfect answer with no loopholes. if this sort of issue was black-and-white, I don't believe I'd even be answering this question.

Humans, in previous years, were the top of the food chain. For the most part, we have now (luckily) been removed from that food chain (most of us are not so worried about being eaten by a lion this afternoon). However, we have taken with us a select few species of domestic animals. 

Lucky for you, this guy doesn't think you'd make a very good meal. He doesn't seem very impressed at all, really. Photo from Lion's Share Digital.

They, too, have been removed from the food chain. We are responsible for them. We now farm things that we eat - chickens, cows, pigs, goats. (I will not address the issue of factory farming here.) So we've effectively taken them with us. They are no longer subject to being eating by roving lions either. When we eat them, we have control over their population and their lifestyle.

However, with wild animals, we have not removed them from the food chain. They are still subject to the forces of nature - different species working in a sort of "checks and balances" system where controlling one effectively controls all. 

In a simple example, if we have too many top predators, too many middle-range herbivores will be eaten, leading to seeds that won't get spread and grass that won't get eaten. This in turn will lead to numerous ecological balancing catastrophes.

Notice that humans often do not feature in these sorts of pyramids - we are no longer native to these ecosystems. Illustration from Tutor Vista.

When we step in here and try to artificially manage a population, we have an issue. We are no longer part of the system - we don't really know what we're doing. When we eat from this environment, we destroy the balance. 

This is just a sort, simple way to think about it. I won't go into issues of morality here - there is too much gray area to make a proper assessment. Hopefully this helps clear the air in terms of "WHY?" for a little bit. 

P.S. A bonus reason is that wild animals are pretty and don't need to be eaten because they look better running majestically through the 2000 sq ft of habitat they have left. ;)

Majestic zebras run in their 2000 sq ft. Image via Wallpaper Wide.

Perhaps I should have included more Malaysian wildlife... oh well. 

Cuteness Overload...Right?

For someone who doesn't know any better, this video is downright adorable. 

And that's the problem. People don't know any better - that needs to change.

According to work done by the likes of Professor Anna Nekaris (basically the slow loris lady out there), videos like these are boosting demand for any species of slow loris.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how this is possible. When I first saw this video, I thought it was completely harmless. Not long after, I started to learn the truth.

A loris in the wild, where it should be. Image from Arup Shah via BBC Wildlife.

Basic Loris Myths Debunked

• "They come from captivity." Experts have found it near impossible to breed lorises in captivity - they often don't survive long enough.
• "This loris is happy." Raising arms, like the loris in this video is doing, is often a sign of distress in lorises. Lorises are also very sensitive to light, being a primarily nocturnal species, and you can see the wide eyes of the one in the video.
• "They are easy to look after." Lorises have a very specific diet that humans cannot replicate in captivity. They are not meant to survive off of bananas and rice balls, and will not last long on such a diet.
• "They can just go back to the wild later." Most lorises, after being removed from the wild, have their teeth violently removed with pliers. They never eat properly again.

In a disturbing turn of events, YouTube refuses to remove this video and others like it, claiming it not to be animal abuse. In the comments, if you talk about the wildlife trade and discuss ramifications of the video, chances are you will be voted down so much YouTube will remove your comment!

The first step to curbing demand for the loris is recognizing that is it not a cut pet but a wild animal. Also, take a minute to sign this petition asking YouTube to remove videos of captive lorises.

For more on slow loris conservation, visit Nekaris' Little Fireface Project and learn about her work in the region.

World Orangutan Day

Several weeks ago, an Italian member of parliament was called an orangutan by her colleagues. Although this was a racially-charged, insensitive and derogatory remark, I must say: I've met more than my fair share of cheeky, incredibly intelligent and totally adorable orangutans. I would take it as more of a compliment. 

Dozens of adorable babies like this one are orphaned every year and must then be rehabilitated in purpose-built centers like Sepilok, in Sabah, Borneo. Picture thanks to Orangutan Foundation International.

All this to say that two days from now we will be celebrating the inaugural World Orangutan Day!

Orangutans are one of the most iconic symbols of Southeast Asia. The "man of the forest" has been facing extinction for years, but recently, wild populations have plummeted despite repeated efforts from NGOs and government bodies alike.

This paragraph from the front of WOD's website gives startling statistics:

"From 1992-2000, the population of the Sumatran orangutan declined by more than 50% and only an estimated 7,000 animals are left in the wild. The Bornean orangutan population fell nearly 43 % in the past decade and estimates place their population at about 45,000 animals."

This lucky individual was found and sedated for transport and re-release into the wild, into a more viable habitat. Many orangs lose their lives in situations like this because plantations do not yet have adequate organization to deal with it. Image via EVOHE. 

As the Huffington Post outlines in this short editorial, however, orangutans are not safe yet. Bornean populations may sound promising, but they are not stable. Considering a constant influx of deforestation, less and less space is there for the orangutan. Pushed to the edge, many plantations have not yet learnt how to deal with the wild creatures wandering onto their land.

This World Orangutan Day, speak out.

Even BBC can get it wrong! In this Facebook screen capture, they spelled orangutan incorrectly!

Another One Bites the Dust

'Keruing paya' now extinct.

"It is a sad fact that to many people the loss of a plant species is of less moment than the loss of a football match." 

Richard Fortey, Dry Store Room No. 1

This is "old news", considering this report is from about a week ago, but it still resonates with me.

Another species of Dipterocarpus. Picture from arkive.org

To be honest, it's amazing it was even reported. So many species slip by unnoticed into the realm of extinction while we are too preoccupied with the latest Facebook post. The keruing paya (Dipterocarpus coriaceus) is just one of hundreds that probably disappeared that day, most still unknown to modern science.

Losing a species is more of a tragedy than most people realize. Even if it is not one at the top of the food chain, it's loss still has a lasting impact on all the other species connected to it. In South America, these survival-oriented symbiotic relationships are to such an extent that if a single species of hummingbird were to go extinct, an entire specie of Heliconia would go with it.

A purple-throated carib, a specie of hummingbird that has evolved to eat almost entirely from a single species of Heliconia (hence the extensively curved beak). Picture by Ethan Temeles via Smithsonian Magazine Online.

Some say that losing a species is part of progress; but development is not the same as progress. We cannot continue to develop so irresponsibly if we want to have something other than a concrete jungle left.

The keruing paya, only one of a staggering 230 species of flora on the brink of extinction in peninsular Malaysia, is a stark reminder that we need to act now if we do not want to lose even more of our own biodiversity.

Happy World Lemur Month

I know, I know, lemurs seem to be a far cry from having any relevance to either Malaysia or wildlife trafficking. In fact, a vast array of tortoise seizures in our country originate in Madagascar. But I'm not going to get into that today. 

It is officially World Lemur Month! Arbitrary holiday though it may be (and there are no days off), it helps draw attention (as most of these World Anything Days/Months/Years tend to do) to a serious issue.

A Sifaka lemur bounds through the forest. Zaboomafoo, the American children's TV show character, was a Sifaka. Image by Burrard-Lucas/Barcroft via the Telegraph.

Our cute lemur friends are the most endangered group of vertebrates in the world. Of anything on this planet with a spine, these guys are at the highest risk of extinction, with a staggering 91% of species considered threatened by the IUCN, or the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

 Lemurs, you could say, have drawn the short straw - they exist only one island, an island that has seen continuous political turmoil, economic exploitation, poverty, and naturally, deforestation. Less than a third of the island's original forests remain.

Even today, we do not know all that Madagascar holds. Just recently, three new species of lemur have been discovered, including this adorable little fellow below, whose common name has not yet been ascribed.

Microcebus mittermeieri, a newly discovered species of mouse lemur. It is small enough to fit into your hand. Photo from Mongabay.

Madagascar is a reminder that we do not, by any means, know all that our rain forests hold.

Belated Global Tiger Day

This is a few days late, I know. I just had to share this infographic - a LOT of food for thought!

Global Tiger Day, not to be confused with World Tiger Day later this year, is a day specifically aimed at raising awareness for the plight of tigers, specifically from major NGO groups like WWF and Traffic. I too, however, am guilty of confusing the two holidays, so don't despair! There are dozens of purpose-created holidays that help get attention.

Consider this: 

The top estimate for world tiger populations is 3200.

Just under half of the 3200 must have been killed in order to supply seizures. 

This includes only official seizures.

In a good year, law officials catch around 20-30% of trafficked goods.

How many tigers are there actually left??