The once-common jaguar has become a rare sight in North America, thanks to hunting and habitat fragmentation.

Now two were spotted in exceedingly rare and unrelated events this month.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department caught and collared a wild jaguar in Arizona for the first time, officials said Thursday. While a handful of the big cats have been photographed by automatic cameras in recent years, the satellite tracking collar will now help biologists learn more about this animal's range.

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In 1997, a team was established in Arizona and New Mexico to protect and conserve the species. The Jaguar Conservation Team (JCT) began working with Mexico two years later, recognizing that the presence of jaguars in the United States depends on the conservation of the species in Mexico.

Interestingly, the project set up to do all this is funded by Arizona Lottery ticket sales.

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"The photographs provide information about new recording sites, and allow us to deduce that the area where the animal was observed may be a corridor connecting jaguar populations," Monroy-Vilchis said.
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Jaguars can live in several types of forest, grassland and dry habitat. They prey on a variety of animals, including fish, birds and reptiles. The largest contiguous area of habitat now remaining for jaguars centers in the Amazon Basin.

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In 1996, when the langurs were highly endangered, Dr. Pan Wenshi, China's premier panda biologist, came to study them in Chongzuo at what was then an abandoned military base. This was at a time when hunters were taking the canary-yellow young langurs from their cliff-face strongholds, and villagers were leveling the forest for firewood.

Pan quickly hired wardens to protect the remaining animals but then went a step further, taking on the larger social and economic factors jeopardizing the species. Pan also believed that alleviating the region's continuing poverty was essential for their long-term survival.

In the 24-square-kilometer nature reserve where he has focused his studies, the langur population increased to more than 500 today from 96 in 1996.

"It's a model of what can be done in hot-spot areas that have been devastated by development," said Dr. Russell Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International. "Pan has combined all the elements — protection, research, ecotourism, good relations with the local community; he's really turned the langur into a flagship for the region."

Historically, local farmers had occasionally killed langurs for food, but then teams of outside hunters began taking a serious toll on the population.

"In the 1990s, the Chinese economy started booming, and those with money — governors, factory owners, businessmen — all wanted to eat the wildlife to show how powerful they were," said Pan, 71.

A breakthrough in protecting the species came in 1997 when he helped local villagers build a pipeline to secure clean drinking water. Shortly thereafter, a farmer from the village freed a trapped langur and brought it to Pan.

"When you help the villagers, they would like to help you back," he said.

As self-appointed local advocate, Pan raised money for a new school in another village, oversaw the construction of health clinics in two neighboring towns and organized physicals for women throughout the area.

"Now, when outsiders try to trap langurs," Pan said, "the locals stop them from coming in."

In 2000, he received a $12,500 environmental award from Ford Motor Company. He used the money to build biogas digesters — concrete-lined pits that capture methane gas from animal waste — to provide cooking fuel for roughly 1,000 people.

Based on the project's success, the federal government financed a sevenfold increase in construction of tanks to hold biogas. Today, 95 percent of the population living just outside the reserve burn biogas in their homes.

As a result, the park's number and diversity of trees — the langurs' primary habitat and sole food source — has increased significantly.

In 2001, the county government built a research center in the reserve with accommodations for Pan and his students, a guesthouse and a yet-to-be completed education center to showcase the region's biodiversity.

In 2002, when Pan inaugurated the Chongzuo Eco-Park, a small part of the Nongguan Nature Reserve that is open to the public, he had a quote from the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius carved into stone at the front gate. The phrase, "In an ideal society, everyone should work for the well being of others," was a subtle reminder to local officials that the park should not be misused for their own financial gain. But the quote also reminds those looking to protect the langurs that they must consider the area's human community.

Yet his greatest achievement may well be what he has passed on to the next generation. In 1991, he founded Peking University's department of conservation biology — now the Center for Nature and Society — one of the first institutions in China dedicated to studying and protecting endangered species.

Currently staffed by 10 of Pan's former students, the department conducts fieldwork on everything from dolphins in the South China Sea to snow leopards on the Tibetan Plateau.

Pan became interested in langurs in the early '90s after reading "Sociobiology: The New Synthesis," a groundbreaking book by Dr. Edward Wilson, the Harvard biologist, environmentalist and writer. It suggested that certain social behaviors were evolutionarily advantageous. Pan wanted to test Wilson's ideas in the field, but needed a more gregarious species than the panda, which lives primarily in solitude.

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The long-eared jerboa, a tiny nocturnal mammal that is dwarfed by its enormous ears, can be found in deserts in Mongolia and China.

Zoological Society of London (ZSL) scientist Jonathan Baillie said the footage was helping researchers to learn more about the mysterious animal.

The species is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red list.

"These creatures hop just like a kangaroo; it is amazing to watch. Little hairs on their feet, almost like snow shoes, allow them to jump along the sand," he explained.

"And in terms of mammals, they have one of the biggest ear-to-body ratios out there."

The footage revealed that the creatures spent daylight hours in underground tunnels beneath the sand, and that their diet was mostly made up of insects.

We travelled to the Gobi to find out about the animal's status and learn more about it so we can develop a thorough long-term action plan."

The expedition formed part of ZSL's Edge programme, which focuses its efforts on conservation plans for animals that are both endangered and evolutionarily distinctive.

The long-eared jerboa is one of 10 species that the programme is looking at this year.

"Everyone thinks the desert is a totally desolate area, void of biodiversity, and often when conservation planning is done, deserts are overlooked.

"But there are some remarkable species in the desert, so we really need to start paying attention to this environment."

A Sumatran rhinoceros has been photographed in peninsular Malaysia in the first sighting for more than a decade, raising hopes the animal can avoid extinction, a report said Sunday.

The report did not reveal where the rhino was snapped, but said the photo was taken in a wildlife corridor targeted by the Wildlife and National Parks Department which also spotted elephants, sun bears and the bison-like gaur.

"We're going back to areas where the rhinos were once recorded, looking for more signs and taking samples," said Siti Hawa Yatim, head of the department's biodiversity conservation division.

World Wildlife Fund Malaysia announced earlier this year that it had captured video footage of the extremely rare Borneo sub-species of the critically-endangered Sumatran rhino. The footage, taken in a forest in Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo island, showed a rhino eating, peering through jungle foliage and sniffing the automatic video camera equipment used to shoot it.

The Bornean sub-species is the rarest of all rhinos, distinguished from other Sumatran rhinos by its relatively small size, small teeth and distinctive shaped head.

WWF says scientists estimate there are only between 25 and 50 of the Bornean sub-species left.

SOS Rhino.

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Captured just before midnight on November 13 by fishers in Cambodia, this Mekong giant catfish is 8 feet long (2.4 meters long) ands weighs 450 pounds (204 kilograms).

"This is the only giant catfish that has been caught this year so far, making it the worst year on record for catch of giant fish species," said Zeb Hogan (far right), a fisheries biologist at the University of Reno in Nevada.

After collecting data on the fish, Hogan released it unharmed.

Giant catfish were once plentiful throughout Southeast Asia's Mekong River watershed, including the Tonle Sap River—home of the fish in these exclusive pictures taken near Phnom Penh.

But in the last century the Mekong giant catfish population has declined by 95 to 99 percent, scientists say. Only a few hundred adult giant catfish may remain.

Earlier this year Hogan launched the three-year Megafishes Project to document the world's giant freshwater fish.

Listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union, the Mekong giant catfish is big but toothless, as shown in this exclusive photo.

"For the Mekong giant catfish, northern Thailand is a spawning ground, whereas the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia is a rearing area," said U.S. biologist Zeb Hogan, who studied the fish pictured for his Megafishes Project, which is documenting the world's giant freshwater fish.

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The Legendary Hoan Kiem Lake Turtle.

A new species of wild pig previously unknown to science has been discovered in the Brazilian jungle.

The large creature grows to a length of more than four feet and is almost twice as heavy as its nearest relative.

Named the 'giant peccary', (photo) the creature was unknown until the skins and bones of animals killed by local hunters came to the attention of Dutch biologist Marc van Roosmalen.

The animal, only known to live along the remote banks of the Aripuana river, is thought to be endangered by the illegal timber trade and road building.

Local tribes call it "Caitetu Munde", which means "great peccary which lives in pairs" and may have been spotted by an American rubber-cutter, John Yungjohann, who worked in the Amazon from 1906 to 1919.

While other peccaries dig up the ground in search of seeds and roots, this one mostly lives off freshly fallen fruit.

They have recommended that the giant peccary be placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources' Red List of threatened species.

Photo (National Geographic)

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