India is a good example of what can happen when decisions are made to make an effort to conserve the wildlife. Tiger numbers are stabilising with protections and enforcement in place but their survival continues to depend on how human activities such as farming and hunting are managed. Balancing the needs of human populations with the wildlife continues to be a complicated juggling act. Tiger numbers have the capacity to grow if prey species exist however the challenges is dealing with people hunting deer and other tiger prey for food. These prey species are critical for the survival and growth in tiger populations along with the right habitat. 

A proposed hunt of up to 22 grizzly bears in Wyoming has been derailed by a determined group led by the likes of Jane Goodall. The group are buying up the tickets in the hope of winning one and enabling a bear to live instead of being shot by a trophy hunter. America seems to be controlled by gun loving animal hunters that appear to believe it's some god given right. It isn't and what they do is wrong on every level. To kill animals that cause no threat just for pleasure is an awful crime against nature. I hope the group is successful in garnering support and awareness of the brutality of trophy hunting.

Eastern quolls have bred on the Australian mainland for the first time in 50 years ! wow how good is that. I love good news wildlife events and this is one of them. So many of Australia's small creatures have been decimated by feral animals such as foxes, cats, wild dogs and the list goes on. Following a reintroduction of 20 captive bred animals in Tasmania into Booderee National Park in NSW there has been successful breeding. 

As wildlife traffickers get more devious so must those who fight the miserable trade. Australia is leading with some innovative new ways to determine if an animal is wild caught or captive bred. By studying the nutritional value of the food that has sustained the animal it becomes clear what it's origins are. Since there is a significant loophole in the laws around export of wild species in Australia this new technology will help close the possibility of claims that the animal is captive bred when in fact it has been taken from the wild. The new technology will have major importance further afield in trafficking other species that are at huge risk of being exploited to extinction such as the pangolin in Africa. The huge financial gain for just a single animal is enough to make the traffickers continue to take risks and exploit any weakness in the law so maybe this will make it harder for them.

Sudan the last of his kind a Northern White Rhino male died earlier this year. With only two remaining females left of the entire species the only hope now of preventing the demise of this ancient species is science and technology. It is truly sad that it has to come to this and that we have let it happen and now are madly scrambling through the aid of IVF technology to bring a species back literally from the dead in a test tube. These animals symbolise what could happen to so many other precious animals that walk our planet trying to survive in a world of ballooning human populations, where they are regarded as a commodity or a means to make money and even to fund terrorism. We cast out into space looking for new frontiers, why ? Perhaps we should be using that vast bank of funds to care for and prevent the ultimate end of our precious wild and the animals in it.