Tag: Wildlife Conservation Society

In 2012, the «Dalnauka» publishing house (Vladivostok) released the monograph «Diseases and Parasites of Wild Animals of Siberia and the Russian Far East», edited by I.V. Seryodkin — Candidate of Biological Sciences, associate professor, acting head of the laboratory at the Pacific Geographical Institute of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences — and by D.G. Miquelle, director of the Russian representative office of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)[1]. On pp. 96–107 it contains a chapter with a curious title: «Broken Teeth in Tigers: A Cause of Conflicts with Humans?»[2]. This work was published under the authorship of participants in the WCS «Amur Tiger» project — J.M. Goodrich, I.V. Seryodkin, D.G. Miquelle, L.L. Kerley, H.B. Quigley and M.G. Hornocker. Judging by its content, the scientific arguments of this chapter were a kind of response to accusations that the methods WCS uses to trap tigers for scientific purposes inflict ruinous harm on the animals and provoke their conflicts with humans[3..6]. The authors try to convince us of the opposite, backing up their conclusions with an analysis of the condition of 46 tigers caught in Aldrich foot snares. Moreover, the discussion concerns only damage to the dental system, and more precisely «broken canines with exposed pulp; other broken teeth were not examined». Injuries to the limbs, inevitable to one degree or another when trapping with foot snares made of steel cable, are not mentioned at all.

( read on here )

( read the conclusion )

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