The Bengal tiger is a population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies and the nominate tiger subspecies. It ranks among the biggest wild cats alive today. It is considered to belong to the world's charismatic megafauna.
The Free State, formerly known as the Orange Free State, is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bloemfontein, which is also South Africa's judicial capital. Its historical origins lie in the Boer republic called the Orange Free State and later the Orange Free State Province.
Species reintroduction is the deliberate release of a species into the wild, from captivity or other areas where the organism is capable of survival. The goal of species reintroduction is to establish a healthy, genetically diverse, self-sustaining population to an area where it has been extirpated, or to augment an existing population. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are typically threatened or endangered in the wild. However, reintroduction of a species can also be for pest control; for example, wolves being reintroduced to a wild area to curb an overpopulation of deer. Because reintroduction may involve returning native species to localities where they had been extirpated, some prefer the term "reestablishment".
The South China tiger is a population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies that is native to southern China. The population mainly inhabited the Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. It has been listed as Critically Endangered on the China's Red List of Vertebrates and is possibly extinct in the wild since no wild individual has been recorded since the late 1980s. In the late 1990s, continued survival was considered unlikely because of low prey density, widespread habitat degradation and fragmentation, and other environmental issues in China. In the fur trade, it used to be called Amoy tiger.
John Varty is a South African wildlife filmmaker who has made more than 30 documentaries and one feature film. Varty is an author, singer-songwriter and activist. He co-owns Londolozi Game Reserve and Tiger Canyon – A project which aims to create a free-ranging, self-sustaining tiger population outside of Asia.
Functional extinction is the extinction of a species or other taxon such that:
- It disappears from the fossil record, or historic reports of its existence cease;
- The reduced population no longer plays a significant role in ecosystem function;
- The population is no longer viable. There are no individuals able to reproduce, or the small population of breeding individuals will not be able to sustain itself due to inbreeding depression and genetic drift, which leads to a loss of fitness.
The Aspinall Foundation is a British charity which works to promote wildlife conservation. It was set up by casino owner John Aspinall in 1984 and runs the two zoos he established, Port Lympne Wild Animal Park and Howletts Wild Animal Park in Kent, England. It also runs conservation projects overseas to protect endangered species and return captive animals back to the wild. The charity is now run by Damian Aspinall, son of the founder.
Pleistocene rewilding is the advocacy of the reintroduction of extant Pleistocene megafauna, or the close ecological equivalents of extinct megafauna. It is an extension of the conservation practice of rewilding, which aims to restore functioning, self-sustaining ecosystems through practices that may include species reintroductions.
A wildlife corridor, habitat corridor, or green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities or structures. This allows an exchange of individuals between populations, which may help prevent the negative effects of inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity that often occur within isolated populations. Corridors may also help facilitate the re-establishment of populations that have been reduced or eliminated due to random events. This may moderate some of the worst effects of habitat fragmentation, whereas urbanization can split up habitat areas, causing animals to lose both their natural habitat and the ability to move between regions to access resources. Habitat fragmentation due to human development is an ever-increasing threat to biodiversity, and habitat corridors serve to manage its effects.
The tiger is an iconic species. Tiger conservation attempts to prevent the animal from becoming extinct and preserving its natural habitat. This is one of the main objectives of the international animal conservation community. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has played a crucial role in improving international efforts for tiger conservation.
Founded by Claudine André in 1994, Lola ya Bonobo is the world's only sanctuary for orphaned bonobos. Since 2002, the sanctuary has been located just south of the suburb of Kimwenza at the Petites Chutes de la Lukaya, Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes. It differs from other forms of ecological restoration in that rewilding aspires to reduce human influence on ecosystems. It is also distinct from other forms of restoration in that, while it places emphasis on recovering geographically specific sets of ecological interactions and functions that would have maintained ecosystems prior to human influence, rewilding is open to novel or emerging ecosystems which encompass new species and new interactions.
The Northeast African cheetah is a cheetah subspecies occurring in Northeast Africa. Contemporary records are known in South Sudan and Ethiopia, but population status in Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan is unknown.
The Southeast African cheetah is the nominate cheetah subspecies native to East and Southern Africa. The Southern African cheetah lives mainly in the lowland areas and deserts of the Kalahari, the savannahs of Okavango Delta, and the grasslands of the Transvaal region in South Africa. In Namibia, cheetahs are mostly found in farmlands. In India, four cheetahs of the subspecies are living in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh after having been introduced there.
The Laohu Valley Reserve (LVR) is a nature reserve located near Philippolis in the Free State and near Vanderkloof Dam in the Northern Cape of South Africa. It is a roughly 350-square-kilometre private reserve.
Li Quan is a Beijing-born tiger and wildlife conservationist who lives in London.
The Siberian Tiger Introduction Project involves reestablishing populations of the Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, in their former range and also expanding their range by introducing them as replacements of their genetically similar relative, the extinct Caspian tiger, which inhabited Central and Western Asia. Currently, the Siberian tiger inhabits the cold mountains of the Russian Far East and northern China.
Rewilding Europe is a non-profit organization based in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, working to create rewilded landscapes throughout Europe. The group's efforts have helped increase the stock of previously endangered species such as the European bison and the Iberian lynx.
Reed F. Noss, a conservation biologist since the beginning of the field in the early 1980s, is a writer, photographer, and speaker, retired in 2017 as Provost's Distinguished Research Professor, Pegasus Professor, and Davis-Shine Professor at the University of Central Florida. He is President and Chief Scientist for the Florida Institute for Conservation Science, Chief Science Advisor for the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative, and Chief Science Advisor for the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance. Noss' published work consists of over 350 published or in press scientific articles, book chapters, and major reports and eight published books, with another book in preparation.
Iberá National Park is a national park in Argentina located in the northeast province of Corrientes. The national park adjoins the 5,530 km² Iberá Provincial Park to the southeast. The national park and provincial park are both within the Iberá Provincial Nature Reserve, a conservation area of 13,245 km² created in 1982. The combined protected area is the largest in Argentina.
