Science Daily

Understanding local human cultures is key
to preserving gorillas, elephants and other wildlife in African parks
and reserves, according to new research from Purdue University.

"Conservation efforts and the management of protected areas are often
designed with the best intentions, but sometimes supporting scientific
data is missing or incorrect assumptions are made about a local  
culture or even the outsiders or trade that plays a role in the area," said
Melissa Remis, a professor of anthropology who studies gorillas.
"Conservation isn't just about protecting wildlife, you also need to
consider the human dimension such as how local hunting technologies or
even migration can change how land is used."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100113172140.htm

13/01/2010
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Shinya Yamamoto, Masayuki Tanaka. 2010. The influence of kin relationship and reciprocal context on chimpanzees' other-regarding preferences. Animal Behaviour, 79, 595-602

We investigated the evolutionary origin of other-regarding preferences, one of the strong underlying motivations for altruism, in the chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes. Although altruism is expected theoretically to be kin biased and frequent in a reciprocal context, few experimental studies to date have specifically tested these hypotheses from the viewpoint of proximate mechanisms. We examined the other-regarding preferences of individuals in mother-offspring pairs and in nonkin adult pairs in both reciprocal and nonreciprocal contexts. Based on the previously established choice paradigm with mutually or selfishly beneficial options, we developed a novel task using buttons. In experiment 1, chimpanzee participants involving three mother-offspring pairs were offered two options: delivering food rewards to their partner and themselves or only to themselves.We compared their choices between partner-present and partner-absent conditions. In experiment 2, we developed a reciprocal context in which the two participants alternately chose the two options. In contrast to the theoretical predictions, the chimpanzees did not show any prosocial tendencies even between mother and offspring or in a reciprocal context. We propose that the experimental set-up which prevented direct interactions between the participants might have influenced these results. In conclusion, the present study suggests that voluntary and/or strategic other-rewarding behaviour arose in humans after divergence from the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622782/description#description

08/01/2010
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Knott, C. D, Thompson, M. E., Stumpf, R. M. and McIntyre. M. H. 2010. Female reproductive strategies in orangutans, evidence for female choice and counterstragies to infanticide in a species with frequent sexual coercion. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences. 277, 105-113.

Intersexual conflicts over mating can engender antagonistic coevolution of strategies, such as coercion by males and selective resistance by females. Orangutans are exceptional among mammals for their high levels of forced copulation. This has typically been viewed as an alternative mating tactic used by the competitively disadvantaged unflanged male morph, with little understanding of how female strategies may have shaped and responded to this behaviour. Here, we show that male morph is not by itself a good predictor of mating dynamics in wild Bornean orangutans but that female conception risk mediated the occurrence and quality of male-female interactions. Near ovulation, females mated cooperatively only with prime flanged males who they encountered at higher rates. When conception risk was low, willingness to associate and mate with non-prime males increased. Our results support the hypothesis that, together with concealed ovulation, facultative association is a mechanism of female choice in a species in which females can rarely avoid coercive mating attempts. Female resistance, which reduced copulation time, may provide an additional mechanism for mate selection. However, coercive factors were also important as prime males were frequently aggressive to females and females used mating strategies consistent with infanticide avoidance.

http://apps.isiknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=UA&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=1&SID=T1Oia1GngBlgGiidD1m&page=1&doc=1&colname=WOS

07/01/2010
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Indonesia will rehabilitate degraded forests and plant millions of hectares of new forests to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent from projected levels by 2020, reports Reuters.

Presenting in Jakarta, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said that 500,000 hectares of new forest would be planted each year from now until 2020, at a cost of 2.5 trillion rupiah ($269 million) per year. Indonesia would also rehabilitate 300,000 hectares of degraded forest every year using funds from international donors. In all Hasan said that Indonesia could expand its forest cover by up to 21 million hectares by 2020, although it wasn't immediately clear the extent to which new forest would consist of plantations.

www.mongabay.com

07/01/2010
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Unsustainable farming methods continue to endanger planetary soils. Giles Crosse plants some ideas for a more productive relationship. 

 "Conservation agriculture is an alternative to slash and burn crop production methods that were used successfully for millennia," says Theo Dillaha, Program Director of the SANREM CRSP and Professor of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech.

"The basic principle of slash and burn agriculture is to alternate lands between crop production and native vegetation and forests. During crop production without fertiliser additions and good soil management practices, soil quality and crop yields decline over time."

http://www.un-redd.org/NewsCentre/tabid/969/language/en-US/Default.aspx

06/01/2010
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Tajima, T. and Kurotori, H. 2010. Nonaggressive interventions by third parties in conflicts among captive Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). (Journal unknown)

Whereas orangutans are regarded as semisolitary animals in the wild, several studies have reported frequent social interactions, including aggression, among orangutans in captivity. As yet, there is a lack of knowledge about how they cope with aggression. In this report, we provide a number of new observations of interventions by third parties in aggressive interactions within a captive group of Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) in the Tama Zoological Park, Japan. We observed that an adult female and a juvenile male orangutan intervened in aggressive interactions. The victim was a newly introduced juvenile female who was unrelated to anyone in the zoo. The ways in which the orangutans intervened were not aggressive, as the interveners simply aimed to separate the opponents, and these interventions did not lead to further aggression in almost every case. Our observations suggest that third parties can play an important role in managing aggressive conflicts among captive orangutans and, under conditions in which orangutans share limited space, nonaggressive interventions by third parties for settling conflicts appear. It is possible that orangutans may actively promote the peaceful coexistence of other individuals.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20052605

06/01/2010
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