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Saturday, July 25, 2009

Enviro News from the Animal Kingdom

Posted by Charles Mudede on Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM

A headline from The Independent: Villagers discover 'extinct' leopard cub eating a monkey

The heart of the story:

Villagers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in south-east Bangladesh captured the clouded leopard cub after they disturbed it, its sibling and their mother eating a dead monkey in the jungle. The others escaped, but the villagers captured the three-month-old and put it in a cage.

What part of this story, or its core, is not sad? The dead monkey, the feeding leopards, the fleeing leopards, the captured leopard, the idiotic villagers—all of it brings the higher spirits down.

Comments (7) RSS

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I think the sad part is the lack of a link or attribution.

Posted by Baconcat on July 25, 2009 at 12:05 PM

…And now you've paid that sadness forward by lowering my spirits.

Posted by eric (the other one) on July 25, 2009 at 12:07 PM

the link is there.

Posted by Charles Mudede on July 25, 2009 at 12:13 PM

Last sentence: tigers?clouded leopards. No tigers were involved. Conservationists persuaded the villagers to free the captured clouded leopard, and it seems mature enough to survive.

I'm saddened every day by humanity's strangling and poisoning of ecosystems.

Posted by rob!

on July 25, 2009 at 12:46 PM

dead monkey is not such a bad thing. some of those buggers deserve it.
besides, that was the "natural" part of the scenario. leopards were just feeding themselves.

Posted by onion on July 25, 2009 at 2:27 PM

The sad part is these fucking dipshits going "oh, look, previously believed extinct" and then PUTTING IT IN A CAGE.

Posted by Fnarf

on July 25, 2009 at 4:28 PM

Did nobody read the article? They fed it. They released it on advice from conservationists. Yeah, it would have been nice if they hadn't captured it in the first place, but if they hadn't, no one would even know any existed there anymore. It's not like your average man-in-the-street can identify an endangered species on sight. Five years ago in Bangladesh, they would have skinned all three of them on sight. That's progress - lay off the fucking "idiots" bullshit.

When you have people who are starving, trying to just survive, "endangered species" and "habitat preservation" aren't really high on their priority list. That's why conservation is so hard - the issues of the people who are in the area need to be sorted out before they can begin to take care of anyone other than themselves.

Posted by wench on July 26, 2009 at 6:39 PM