Illinois Lion Meat Act? Bill Would Be Nation’s First Banning Sale Of Lion Meat, Slaughter Of Animal

The Huffington Post

A newly proposed Illinois bill could make the land of Lincoln the first U.S. state to make the sale of lion meat illegal.

The proposal, HB 2991, was filed late last month by state Rep. Luis Arroyo, a Chicago Democrat, and was assigned Thursday to the state’s Agriculture & Conservation Committee.

Hurdles Remain for Jaguar Habitat

The New York Times (Leslie Macmillan)

Last fall, remote cameras in a rugged expanse of desert grasslands in Southern Arizona captured arresting images of a jaguar slinking through the underbrush, its yellow eyes fixed on some distant sight. The photos add to the dozen or so documented sightings of the endangered cat on American soil in the last century.

The monitoring project, conducted by the University of Arizona in conjunction with the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, is providing data that will inform decisions about a proposed critical habitat for the big cat: 838,000 acres in Southern Arizona and New Mexico, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island.

Kesha and Humane Society: List African Lions as an Endangered Species

Ecorazzi (Ali Berman)

Kesha and Humane Society International (HSI) are asking the public to sign a petition that would declare African lions as an endangered species.

Even though the African lion population has been just about cut in half over the last three decades, according to HSI, “lion trophy imports to the United States are on the rise.”

‘Yak Insurance’ Plan Saving Nepal’s Snow Leopard

Phys.org (Frankie Taggart)

This handout photograph taken by a remote camera trap and released by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Nepal shows a rare snow leopard in the Kangchenjunga Conservation Area, 260 kilometres (160 miles) east of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu. An innovative insurance plan for yak and other livestock is deterring herders from killing snow leopards that attack their animals.

Cheetahs on the Edge

National Geographic (Roff Smith)

Anticipation ripples through the crowd. Fingers tighten around binoculars. Camera lenses snap into focus. No fewer than 11 canopied safari buses, bright with tourists and bristling with long lenses, huddle near a solitary acacia tree in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. For the past half hour a mother cheetah named Etta has been sitting in the shade with her four young cubs, eyeing a herd of Thomson’s gazelles that drifted into view on a nearby rise. Now she’s up and moving, sidling toward the herd with a studied nonchalance that fools no one, least of all the gazelles, which are staring nervously in her direction.

An Unlikely Mother: The First Reported Case of a Wild Leopard Cub Adoption

Panthera

Unlikely adoption among animals, both wild and domestic, make for lighthearted and exceedingly popular news stories. Admittedly or not, most of us have gushed over viral videos and photos showing both inter and intraspecies adoptions, such as domestic dogs who have adopted orphaned piglets, or lionesses who have assumed responsibility for the young of another pride member.

Interestingly, while this phenomenon is common among mammals and frequently highlighted in the press, adoption among big cats in the wild occurs less often than one might expect.