Might macronutrient requirements influence grizzly bear–human conflict? Insights from nutritional geometry

In 1916, Cornelius Birket Johnson, a Los Angeles fruit farmer, killed the last known grizzly bear in Southern California and the second-to last confirmed grizzly bear in the entire state of California. Johnson was neither a sportsman nor a glory hound; he simply hunted down the animal that had been trampling through his orchard for three nights in a row, feasting on his grape harvest and leaving big enough tracks to make him worry for the safety of his wife and two young daughters. That Johnson’s quarry was a grizzly bear made his pastoral life in Big Tujunga Canyon suddenly very complicated. It also precipitated a quagmire involving a violent Scottish taxidermist, a noted California zoologist, Los Angeles museum administrators, and the pioneering mammalogist and Smithsonian curator Clinton Hart Merriam. As Frank S. Daggett, the founding director of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art, wrote in the midst of the controversy: “I do not recollect ever meeting a case where scientists, crooks, and laymen were so inextricably mingled.” The extermination of a species, it turned out, could bring out the worst in people.

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THE ESSENTIAL CONTRIBUTION OF CAPTIVE SUMATRAN ELEPHANT IN ELEPHANT TRAINING CENTER, WAY KAMBAS NATIONAL PARK FOR WILDLIFE GENETICS CONSERVATION

BIOVALENTIA Biological Research Journal ◽

10.24233/biov.6.1.2020.173 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Elly Lestari Rustiati ◽

Priyambodo Priyambodo ◽

Yanti Yulianti ◽

Eko Agus Srihanto ◽

Dian Neli Pratiwi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

National Park ◽

In Situ Conservation ◽

Training Center ◽

Conservation Effort ◽

In The Wild ◽

Wildlife Genetics ◽

Way Kambas National Park ◽

Human Conflict ◽

Essential Contribution

Way Kambas National Park (WKNP) is home of five protected big mammals including sumatran elephants. It shares its border with 22 of 37 villages surrounding the national park. Understanding their existence in the wild is a priority, and wildlife genetics is a crucially needed. Besides poaching and habitat fragmentation, wildlife-human conflict is one big issue. Elephant Training Center (ETC) in WKNP is built for semi in-situ conservation effort on captive sumatran elephants that mainly have conflict histories with local people. Participative observation and bio-molecular analysis were conducted to learn the importance of captive Sumatran elephant for conservation effort. Through captive sumatran elephants, database and applicable methods are expected to be developed supporting the conservation of their population in the wild. Participative observation and molecular identification was carried on captive sumatran elephants in ETC, WKNP under multiple year Terapan grant of Ministry of Research and Technology Higher Education, Indonesia. Gene sequence and cytological analyses showed that the captive sumatran elephants are closely related and tend to be domesticated. Translocation among ETC to avoid inbreeding, and maintaining the captive sumatran elephant as natural as possible are highly recommended. Developing genetic database can be a reference for both captive and wild sumatran elephants.

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