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Accoustic monitoring to stop poachers:
Populations of large cats such as jaguars and pumas are in global decline due to habitat loss and indiscriminate hunting of them and their prey by humans. Newly developed acoustic loggers are able to record sounds of shotguns and chainsaws, shedding light on the frequency and patterns of illegal exploitation.
The results, presented today at the 'Ecology Across Borders' conference in Ghent, Belgium will help monitor biodiversity and reduce human-wildlife conflicts in tropical forests.
Ecologists from the University of Southampton (UK) and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico) have been studying the presence and distribution of the elusive jaguar and puma in three contiguous regions of protected and unprotected forest in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
Camera traps and analysis of faeces revealed that jaguars and pumas prefer to prey on peccaries, deer and coati—species that are regularly hunted by local communities for their wild meat.
Are jaguars and pumas tastier than peccaries or deer?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 15 2017, @06:27PM (1 child)
Pretty vague, probably not wanting to tip off the locals to what they should look for.
A better story is here: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/listening-acoustic-monitoring-devices-detect-illegal-hunting-logging/ [britishecologicalsociety.org]
which included pictures.
The story wanders around before giving the above little hint of what they actually are building. But no explanation on how it is powered, deployed, serviced, or retrieved.
Sounds like city folk sneaking into indigenous back yards and expecting to get away with it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:02PM
i take it that you're more in the market for wearing exotic cat furs than by denying someone the chance to hasten their extinction via capitalism?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
sure this sounds great. save the animals and all, but the cynic/paranoid in me thinks this is just one piece of the technical infrastructure(ai, sensors and drones) that will keep the hordes of starving zombies who escape from the mega cities/prison pods from making use of the elites' private resource reserves (UN word heritage sites, national and state parks, etc.).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @08:50PM
Lay off the faux-news teat a bit there Boris.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @08:28PM (1 child)
Jaguars and pumas are hazardous to humans.
It's like smallpox... an endangered species that we fucking hate. Anybody want to volunteer to provide habitat?
Some things need to be eradicated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @03:26PM
I meant the jaguars and pumas, of course, not smallpox.
Too soon?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:29AM (3 children)
Was anyone else confused by loggers being used to catch loggers?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:57AM (1 child)
Well, the loggers catching the loggers were disguised as pumas and jaguars, so it can seem confusing at first...and second...and third...
Ah well, let's face it. It's a jungle out there. ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @08:39PM
correction -- was a jungle out there. It's been clear cut...
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.
.
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by the loggers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:09PM
that would work better, but loggers probably fear other loggers or don't want to be snitches. the problem is that something must be going on to prevent a regular sustainable income for these people if they need to go out and break laws that were put into place to help ensure future populations can still use the resources when they are harvested sustainably.
thered not be much poaching and illegal logging if the economies affected were corrected, but isn't mexico filled with corrupt officials anyway. if those were the fat cats getting logged, the outcome might actually improve for everyone.