Word: cats
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Around the world, the incidence of big-cat attacks on people is low compared with other natural perils. In India, tigers kill 30 to 40 people annually, while 20,000 Indians die each year from snakebites. Jaguars, cheetahs, snow leopards and clouded leopards have never been known to attack humans. In the U.S., 17 people have died from mountain lion attacks over the past 100 years; many more are killed by lightning in a single year. This year, however, California has had three attacks by mountain lions on humans--one fatal. All involved hikers or bikers in cougar country; their...
...India that pioneered the use of sanctuaries to save big cats. In 1973, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi became the toast of the conservation community when she launched Project Tiger, setting aside nine wilderness areas for tigers. Now India, with its neighbor Nepal, is leading the way in the next big phase in cat conservation: building links to turn isolated preserves into one continuous habitat. Scientists call this approach landscape conservation, and many believe it's the best hope for saving the world's tiger population, which, despite decades of effort, remains in peril: only 5,000 to 7,000 animals...
...friendly habitats and work out ways to bridge them. The Terai Arc program gives local people incentives to plant trees or tall thatch grass, which they can harvest and which tigers can use as cover. As forests and grasslands recover, deer, wild pigs and other tiger prey return. "Big cats can handle a modest amount of disturbance," observes WCS's Ginsberg, "but what they really need is cat food...
Scientists working in other places with other cats are devising similar plans to stitch together patches of wilderness with corridors to provide havens for big cats seeking prey or a mate. In the Americas, Rabinowitz of the WCS has proposed a 2,000-mile-long chain of public and private lands to link the disparate populations of jaguars. It would extend from Mexico through Central America to northern Argentina. Jaguars have lost half their habitat in the past century, and much that remains has been fragmented by logging and ranching. Experts have identified 51 conservation areas in 16 countries that...
Like Laurence Frank in Kenya, Jackson focuses much of his work on teaching people how to better husband their flocks in cat country. The methods are simple and inexpensive. His organization provides goatherds with 4-in.-by-4-in. wire mesh and poles over which it can be hung to keep the snow leopards out of goat pens. The cats may stalk goats by day while they are grazing, but then the leopards kill only once, which is less financially ruinous than multiple mayhem at night...