A Guide to the Carnivores of Central America: Natural History, Ecology, and Conservation [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Carnivores such as pumas, jaguars, and ocelots have roamed the neot-ropical forests of Central America for millennia. Enshrined in the myths of the ancient Maya, they still inspire awe in the region's current inhabitants, as well as in the eco-tourists and researchers who come to experience Central America's diverse and increasingly endangered natural environment. This book is one of the first field guides dedicated to the carnivores of Central America. It describes the four indigenous families - wild cats, raccoons and their relatives, skunks and their relatives, and wild canids - and their individual species that live in the region. The authors introduce each species by recounting a first-person encounter with it, followed by concise explanations of its taxonomy, scientific name, English and Spanish common names, habitat, natural history, and conservation status. Range maps show the animal's past and current distribution, while Claudia Nocke's black-and-white drawings portray it visually. The concluding chapter looks to the carnivores' future, including threats posed by habitat destruction and other human activities, and describes some current conservation programs. Designed for citizens of and visitors to Central America, as well as specialists, this book offers an excellent introduction to a group of fascinating, threatened, and still imperfectly understood animals. The authors have studied Central American carnivores for many years. Carlos L. de la Rosa is Director of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies' Riverwoods Field Laboratory in south Florida, where Claudia C. Nocke is currently working on a Ph.D.

Carnivores such as pumas, jaguars, and ocelots have roamed the neot-ropical forests of Central America for millennia. Enshrined in the myths of the ancient Maya, they still inspire awe in the region's current inhabitants, as well as in the eco-tourists and researchers who come to experience Central America's diverse and increasingly endangered natural environment. This book is one of the first field guides dedicated to the carnivores of Central America. It describes the four indigenous families - wild cats, raccoons and their relatives, skunks and their relatives, and wild canids - and their individual species that live in the region. The authors introduce each species by recounting a first-person encounter with it, followed by concise explanations of its taxonomy, scientific name, English and Spanish common names, habitat, natural history, and conservation status. Range maps show the animal's past and current distribution, while Claudia Nocke's black-and-white drawings portray it visually. The concluding chapter looks to the carnivores' future, including threats posed by habitat destruction and other human activities, and describes some current conservation programs.

Designed for citizens of and visitors to Central America, as well as specialists, this book offers an excellent introduction to a group of fascinating, threatened, and still imperfectly understood animals. The authors have studied Central American carnivores for many years. Carlos L. de la Rosa is Director of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies' Riverwoods Field Laboratory in south Florida, where Claudia C. Nocke is currently working on a Ph.D.

How to care about tropical Carnivores
A few years ago, I was working on the development of a field station on the side of Volcan Orosi, an extinct volcano in northern Costa Rica. The site of the Maritza Biological Field Station had been in the past a logger’s camp from which the beautiful hardwoods that covered the slopes of the mountains were extracted and processed into lumber. Later, Maritza was used as a hunting camp, a stopping place from which to explore the still thick and rich forests in search for peccaries, deer, tapirs and jaguars. Maritza was the little daughter of the owner of the original ranch destined to become a National Park. When I was researching the book I met with Maritza, now in her forties, and heard from her the tales of the jaguar hunts on the slopes of the Orosi and Cacao volcanoes. One year, she told me, jaguars had been routinely killing cattle in the lower pasture-covered slopes. A series of jaguar-hunting expeditions were organized. Over the course of the year, a total of 15 jaguars were killed on Orosi and Cacao alone. Today, some thirty years later, jaguars are still present in the park, although much harder to see and to find. I have yet to encounter one in the wild, although I have been close enough to hear them, smell them, and see their fresh tracks. They are now protected by law in most of Central America, but are still killed when they impinge on human activities. Ranchers still have problems with “rogue” jaguars and the result of such conflicts is usually the death of the offending cat. I met with similar stories in Nicaragua.

I became very interested and concerned about not only jaguars, but also the other five species of cats that usually meet similar fates when confronted with farmers and ranchers. The black market traffic on these and other protected species is still active in much of Central America. How are these activities affecting the populations of these and other animals? Do we know enough about them and their environmental requirements to design appropriate conservation areas to protect them?

This book was born out of these and other similar questions. Are we doing enough to protect these and other species? I don’t think so, and in part the book is an attempt to do something more. Someone said to me once that in order to protect the remaining tropical wildlands and the species that live in them, we first need to purchase or secure somehow these wildlands. Then we need to study them, inventory what they have, and learn as much as we can about the natural history of their inhabitants. Only this way we’ll be able to manage them and their habitats and guarantee their protection in perpetuity. The plants and animals inside these parks will not protect themselves. Only we can do that, and the more we know about what we are trying to protect, the better job we’ll be able to do.

We chose to bring these issues to the readers by a combination of story-telling, adventure style, and by compiling the latest information available on each of these species. We feel very close to many of these creatures, and have been fortunate to have experienced first hand their presence in the wild. If we can get you to become interested in knowing more about a given species, we’d feel we have done our job. If we make you say “Hmm, I didn’t know that” we’d come a little closer to get you involved. If the book makes you say “I want to go there and experience this myself” you’d have caught “the bug” and will probably become one of the selected but growing group of conservationists willing to spend the time applying what we know to protect and save these magnificent representatives of tropical fauna.

And believe us, the journey is worth the trouble. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .