By Herp News

Two Japanese men have been charged with trying to smuggle 30 lizards out of Western Australia.

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By Herp News

With its collapsed economy, entrenched poverty, and political tremors, one would not expect that a country like Zimbabwe would have the capacity to safeguard its rhinos against determined and well-funded poachers, especially as just across the border South Africa is currently losing over two rhinos a day on average. And indeed, without the Lowveld Rhino Trust (LRT), rhinos in Zimbabwe would probably be near local extinction. But the LRT, which currently manages around 90 percent of the country’s rhinos in private reserves along with aid from conservation partners and government officials, has proven tenacious and innovative in its battle to safeguard the nation’s rhinos from the poaching epidemic.

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By Herp News

Sir David Attenborough, Bill Oddie and Chris Packham are supporting an effort to save the orangutan from extinction by raising £1m in just two weeks. Orangutans in their natural environment live in undisturbed ancient forests and for many years it was believed they shunned any other habitats. But researchers have discovered they can survive just as well and perhaps even better in forests that have been intensively thinned out by loggers, giving renewed hope for the species.

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Cancer: It’s a word no one wants to hear. Especially when it happens to a family member.

As many members of the East Texas Herpetelogical Society (ETHS) in Houston know, a longtime member of their family and the herp community, Nathan Wells, has been fighting a battle with cancer since first diagnosed in the summer of 2012.

Nathan kept friends and family up to date with his battle throughout the year, posting updates of his fight from hospital bed describing his treatments and procedures, until he beat his cancer.

But as any cop will tell you, you may beat the ticket, but you never beat the ride.

Even with medical insurance, a long cancer fight is an expensive battle, one that continues long after the illness has passed, and Nathan and his family have been left with a pile of medical bills.

His family at ETHS pitched in during their 23rd Annual Conference and Breeders Expo over the weekend, and held a fundraiser with a goal of raising $10,000 for Nathan’s medical expenses. They continue to take donations on his behalf.

Nathan’s story, a story that can happen to any one of us, is detailed on the ETHS website this month. To read more about one herper’s incredible fight against cancer and for details on how to donate to his medical expense fund, click here.

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Cancer: It’s a word no one wants to hear. Especially when it happens to a family member.

As many members of the East Texas Herpetelogical Society (ETHS) in Houston know, a longtime member of their family and the herp community, Nathan Wells, has been fighting a battle with cancer since first diagnosed in the summer of 2012. Nathan kept friends and family up to date with his battle throughout the year, posting updates of his fight from hospital bed describing his treatments and procedures, until he beat his cancer.

But as any cop will tell you, you may beat the ticket, but you never beat the ride.

Even with medical insurance, a long cancer fight is an expensive battle, one that continues long after the illness has passed, and Nathan and his family have been left with a pile of medical bills. His family at ETHS pitched in during their 23rd Annual Conference and Breeders Expo over the weekend, and held a fundraiser with a goal of raising $10,000 for Nathan’s medical expenses. They continue to take donations on his behalf.

Nathan’s story, a story that can happen to any one of us, is detailed on the ETHS website this month. To read more about one herper’s incredible fight against cancer and for details on how to donate to his medical expense fund, click here.

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Veterinary Practice News is reporting that reptile and exotic animal vet, author, and longtime kingsnake.com community member Dr. Kevin Wright passed away unexpectedly Sept. 26 after a brief illness. He was 50 years old.

Dr. Wright was a prolific writer on reptile and amphibian subjects, contributing over 300 articles to Reptiles magazine and other publications over the years, and was an original board member with the Association of Reptilian and Amphibian Veterinarians.

A 1988 graduate of the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Wright was co-author of the 2001 manual “Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry.” His career included work at zoos in Philadelphia, Miami, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C., and he owned Wright Bird and Exotic Pet House Calls, a mobile practice based in Mesa, Ariz.

He is survived by his wife, Marlene.

For more information, read the article on the Veterinary Practice News website.

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By Herp News

Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $230.2 million an

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By Herp News

Tortoise Pipeline & Energy Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $389.4 million and its unau

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By Herp News

Tortoise North American Energy Corp. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $259.5 million and its unaudited

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By Herp News

Tortoise MLP Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $1.9 billion and its unaudited net asset valu

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Independence Fund, Inc. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $448.9 million and its unaudi

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Capital Corp. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $1.1 billion and its unaudited net asse

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By Herp News

Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corp. today announced that as of Sept. 30, 2013, the company’s unaudited total assets were approximately $2.1 billion and its unaudited n

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By Herp News

A loggerhead turtle tangled in fishing lines was rescued Monday off the Florida coast by a good Samaritan on a surfboard. The turtle was spotted struggling to stay afloat Monday Afternoon off Cocoa Beach on the state’s East Coast. Loggerhead Sea Turtle Gets Artificial Flippers…

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By Herp News

In a country where most conservationists are still foreigners—either European or American—Nurzahafarina Othman stands out: not only is she Malaysian, a Muslim, and a mother of a young daughter, but she’s rapidly becoming a top researcher and champion for the world’s smallest elephant: the Bornean elephant (Elephas maximus borneensis). Although sometimes described as a pygmy elephant, they still weigh 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds). The origin of these ‘tiny’ elephants in Malaysian Borneo have baffled scientists for decades.

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Nine baby ocellate mountain vipers (Vipera wagneri) are helping their species stay off the brink of extinction, thanks to the efforts of the St. Louis Zoo.

From Scientific American:

In 2009, with populations down at least 80 percent and a new dam on the Aras River threatening to destroy a large portion of the snake’s habitat, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the ocellate mountain viper as “critically endangered.”

[…] The Saint Louis Zoo coordinates a Species Survival Plan (based on the programs created by the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums) for the ocellate mountain viper, which includes a cooperative breeding program among several zoos. There aren’t many zoos that hold these snakes, though. Saint Louis is one of only three in the U.S. with the species in their collections, and they have the majority: Including the nine snakes born on August 16, Saint Louis Zoo has 23 of the 28 ocellate mountain vipers in the U.S.

The snakes are considered critically endangered in the wild. Read the full story here.

Photo: Mark Wanner, Saint Louis Zoo …read more
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By Herp News

This notice provides stockholders of Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. with information regarding the distribution paid on Sept. 30, 2013 and cumulati

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By Herp News

Scientists have identified four distinct species of legless lizards in California.

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By Herp News

In the Lower Basin of the Sanaga River in Cameroon, near Lake Ossa and the Douala-Edea National Parks, manatees swim and float about like round, potato-shaped mermaids. This region is home to the West African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis), an aquatic mammal facing a decline in population. Classed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List, the West African manatee is threatened by excessive kills, habitat loss, and habitat degradation. Given this, and the dearth of information about manatees, a group of Cameroon scientists have taken an ethnobiological approach (i.e. the interaction between people and wildlife) by employing skilled, knowledgable locals to collect data on the manatees.

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By Herp News

A camera trap survey along the Sikre River in Honduras has discovered that the region is home to a menagerie of rare mammals, including giant anteaters. The survey, published in mongabay.com’s open access journal, Tropical Conservation Science, recorded five cat species in 70 square kilometers.

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By Herp News

In open areas, like the African savannah, scientists often estimate wildlife populations through manned aerial surveys. However a new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal argues that using small drones may be more cost-effective, safer, and capable of reaching more remote areas. Researchers tested the accuracy of drone counts in Bazinga Game Ranch (NGR) in Burkina Faso.

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By Herp News

Scientists have applied a species prioritization scheme to Brazil’s diverse mammals to deduce which species should become the focus of conservation efforts over the next few years in a new paper published in mongabay.com’s open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science.

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By Herp News

In 2009 conservationists estimated that less than 2,000 lions survive in Kenya, a drop of 26 percent in just seven years. In addition, the East Africa country continues to hemorrhage lions: around a hundred a year. Poaching, poisoning, and large-scale habitat loss has put lions on the defensive across Africa, but even countries once thought lion strongholds–like Kenya–have seen populations harried to devastation and in some cases local extinction. Shivani Bhalla, a fourth-generation Kenyan, is working to turnaround this trend in Samburu National Reserve.

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By Herp News

“I went to medical school to care for patients, not to fill out forms.”        

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Check out this video “Egyptian Uromastyx,” submitted by kingsnake.com user stingray.
Submit your own reptile & amphibian videos at http://www.kingsnake.com/video/ and you could see them featured here or check out all the videos submitted by other users! …read more
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By Herp News

As executive director of the Colorado Reptile Humane Society, Ann-Elizabeth Nash hears some odd stories, but the post-flood call that began “I've got this black and yellow lizard in our window well” topped most of them.

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By Herp News

A Utah reptile expert who consults with police has seen a rise in illegal reptiles in Utah.

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By Herp News

Fitch Ratings assigns an 'AAA' rating to the following notes issued by two closed-end funds managed by Tortoise Capital Advisors, LLC:

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By Herp News

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton on Thursday deployed their mother-daughter star power to help the effort to save African elephants, brokering an $80m effort to stop the ivory poaching which threatens the animals with extinction.

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By Herp News

Torrent frogs use their toes, belly, and thighs to attach to rough, wet, and steep surfaces. In a multipart study, researchers compared the attachment abilities of two species: torrent frogs (Staurois guttatus) and tree frogs (Rhacophorus pardalis). They found that the torrent frog is better able to attach to extremely wet, steep, and rough surfaces due to its superior attachment abilities.

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By Herp News

In Missouri, about a third of the ponds are infected with chytrid, the notorious skin fungus that has sickened and killed amphibians in other parts of the world. Why only a third, scientists wondered? A comprehensive study of the ponds suggests there are hidden constraints on the survival of the fungus. One possibility is that invertebrates present in some ponds but not others allow the fungus to persist by acting as alternative hosts or reservoirs.

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By Herp News

The attention paid to charismatic popular primates—such as gorillas, chimps, orangutans, lion tamarins, and even some lemurs—could make one suppose that conservationists have the protection of our closest relatives well in hand; the astounding fact that no primate species is known to have gone extinct in the last hundred years (despite large-scale destruction of their habitats) seems to confirm this statement. However, looking more closely at the data, one finds that not only are many of the world’s primates slipping toward extinction, but a number of them have received little conservation attention. According to the IUCN Red List, a staggering 48 percent of the world’s primates are threatened with extinction: that’s a worse percentage than amphibians which have been ravaged by a global epidemic. And although a handful of the world’s 600-plus primates have garnered conservation adoration, many remain obscure.

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We’re always happy to see the media grasping that “venomous” and “poisonous” don’t mean the same thing. For your Friday viewing pleasure, stop by io9.com and check out some of the world’s coolest venomous crittters!

Photo from the kingsnake.com photo gallery: BakerReptiles …read more
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By Herp News

During a routine Amur tiger survey with remote camera traps in December 2011, a few photos gave biologists a shock when they revealed
the stunning sight of a golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) launching itself on the back of a 7-month old sika deer (Cervus nippon) and bringing down prey that outweighed it by at least seven times. Photographed in remote Far East Russia, the photos show an incredibly-rare instance of an eagle preying on a deer.

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By Herp News

As tropical forests worldwide are increasingly cut into smaller and smaller fragments, mammal extinctions may not be far behind, according to a new study in Science. Tracking native smalls mammals in Chiew Larn Reservoir, Thailand for over 25 years, scientists found a stunning and rapid decline in mammal populations, until most forests were almost completely emptied of native mammals.

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Before the age of the dinosaurs, a mass extinction event occurred that destroyed 70 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate species and almost all aquatic species. It took as long as 10 million years for life on earth to recover from what is now known as the end-Permian extinction event.

After that recovery but before the rise of the dinosaurs, the ancestors of modern lizards and snakes emerged.

From the University College London:

Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs), were alive during the Middle Triassic period – around 240 million years ago.

The new fossil finds predate all other lepidosaur records by 12 million years. The findings are published in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The international team of scientists who dated the fossil jaws have provided evidence that lepidosaurs first appeared after the end-Permian mass extinction event, a period when fauna began to recover and thrive in the more humid climate.

Lead author Dr Marc Jones, who conducted the research at UCL, explained: “The Middle Triassic represents a time when the world has recovered from the Permian mass extinction but is not yet dominated by dinosaurs. This is also when familiar groups, such as frogs and lizards, may have first appeared.”

The small teeth and lightly built jaws suggest that the extinct animal preyed on small insects. The new fossils are most closely related to the tuatara, a lizard-like reptile.

[…]

The new fossil jaws can improve molecular dating estimates of when reptiles began to diversify into snakes, lizard and tuatara, and when the first modern lizards inhabited the earth. Previous estimates have varied over a range of 64 million years and the team are keen to help narrow this down.

“Some previous estimates based on molecular data suggested that lizards first evolved 290 million years ago,” said second author Cajsa Lisa Anderson, University of Gothenburg. “To a palaeontologist this seems way too old and our revised molecular analysis agrees with the fossils.”

Revised molecular dating in light of this new fossil find now suggests lizards began to diversify into most of the modern groups we recognise today, such as geckos and skinks, less than 150 million years ago in the Cretaceous period, following continental fragmentation.

Read more here.

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By Herp News

The fossilized remains of a reptile closely related to lizards are the oldest yet to be discovered. Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs) were alive during the Middle Triassic period — around 240 million years ago.

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By Herp News

He was last seen on Manchester Road near Highway OO in July. When it gets cold, he won't survive long.

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By Herp News

The fossilized remains of a reptile closely related to lizards are the oldest yet to be discovered. Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs), were alive during the Middle Triassic period — around 240 million years ago.

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Noted California herpetologist and author of many popular reptile and amphibian field guides used by amateur and professional herpetologists alike, Robert C. Stebbins passed away yesterday at the age of 98.

Born on March 31, 1915, in Chico, California, the first of seven children, his work with reptiles and amphibans on the west coast has been described as “what the Oxford English Dictionary is to lexicographers” and includes such noted works as;

• Amphibians of Western North America (UC Press, 1951)
  
• Amphibians and Reptiles of Western North America (McGraw-Hill Press, 1954)
  
• Reptiles and Amphibians of the San Francisco Bay Region (UC Press, 1960)
  
• A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1966)
  
• Amphibians and Reptiles of California (UC Press, 1972)
  
• A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, 2nd edition (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1985)
  
• A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, 3rd edition (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 2003)
  
• Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of California, revised edition (w/ Samuel M. McGinnis; UC Press, 2012)

To read more about Robert Stebbins and his work, click here for more from the (bio)accumulation web site . …read more
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